Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/93

32 noting in the result the conditions essential to the conception if it is to be taken as a real principle as wide as the universe of possible phenomena. It will readily become evident that the elements uniting in the notion Evolution are the following:

(1) Time and Space. — The conception of evolution is a serial conception, relating only to a world of items arranged in succession, or else in contiguity more or less close, or more or less remote. But Time and Space are the media without which this seriality essential to evolution could neither be perceived nor thought.

(2) Change and Progression. — Evolution is not a static but a dynamic aspect of phenomena. Under evolution, the items in the time-series and the space-series are viewed as undergoing perpetual change; and not simply change, but change that on the whole is marked by stages of increase in complexity and diversity of being, so that the world of phenomena, as a whole, is conceived as gradually attaining a greater and greater fulness and richness of life. The expert in biology would very rightly tell us that the “ascent of life” is extremely irregular; that there is decline and decadence as well as growth and aggrandisement. But even the biologist finds the persistent ascent in life when life is regarded in the large, in the range from the lowest plant to the highest animal, and through the series