Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/154

Rh because of the doom that seems manifestly to await all forms of actual energy. Besides, both immortality and freedom must share in that general discredit of everything unattested by experience which the persistent and exclusive culture of empiricism begets.

In effect, while the empirical method ignores, and must ignore, any supersensible Principle of existence whatever, thus tending to a loose and careless identification of the Absolute with the Sum of Things, evolution and the principle of conservation have familiarised the modern mind with the continuity, the uniformity, and the unity of Nature in an overwhelming degree. In the absence of a conviction upon independent grounds that the Principle of existence is rational and personal, the sciences of Nature can hardly fail, even upon a somewhat considerate and scrutinising view, to convey the impression that the Ground of Things is a vast and shadowy Whole, which moves towards some unknown destination; sweeping forward, as one of the leaders of modern science has said, “regardless of consequences,” unconcerned as to the fate of man’s world of effort and hope, which looks so circumscribed and insignificant when viewed from the outlook of sense only — from the vanishing shore of Time, giving upon the boundless expanses of Space.