Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/91

30 form of evolutionism confessedly inexplicable, evolution as an explanatory principle comes upon a fatal check.

In this self-confessed inability to supply any final explanation of the great fact upon which its own movement rests, evolution as a principle of philosophy, that is, of thorough explanation, exposes its Fourth Limit. There is a bottomless chasm between the Unknowable and the Explanatory.

When the philosophic progress has arrived at this point, however, its further pathway becomes evident, and consistent thought will discover what this limiting Something is. It may provisionally be called, correctly enough, the Omnipresent Energy; it might well enough be called by the apter and still less assumptive title of the Continuous Copula. We can now determine the real nature of this undefined Something; and I say its nature purposely, and with the intention of discriminating; for our immediate settlement will only be in regard to its kind, and not as to the specific being or beings, amid a possible world of noumena, in which that kind is presented. We cannot, by our next philosophic advance, determine forthwith whether the being having the nature referred to is the absolutely Ultimate Being of that kind; but the kind may be ultimate, even