Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/48

Rh my meaning. Systematic exposition the essays undoubtedly do not contain; for that would imply that I took up the system as a whole, that I began at its beginning, and went on, through all the intervening and successive steps, to the final result, having nothing directly in view but the orderly establishment of the logical whole that the system constitutes; and this, of course, I was not doing: I was occupied, rather, in exhibiting the Rational Pluralism in the light of its bearings upon the deeper human problems. But adequate exposition, in the sense of thorough proof of every essential principle, as well as clear enunciation of it, I certainly intended they should contain; and I am firmly persuaded that they do. I presumed that I should gain a wider and a more interested attention by the method of separate essays on questions that have always deeply engaged the most thoughtful; and I took it for granted — with good reason, as I still believe — that I should thus establish a favourable presumption, to say no more, in behalf of a theory that could show itself capable of casting a new and clarifying light upon our oldest and obscurest puzzles. But it could cast no lasting or solving light unless its sources were shown to be real, and this showing I still suppose the essays actually accomplish.

It will be pertinent to point out here, that, of the ten propositions in which I state the theory in out-