the same amount of energy. The universal category of science, then, is not mechanical cause and effect. There must be a genetic science and a genetic standpoint, which shall recognize the genuine character of development, the presence of a new element or form of synthesis at the later stages which is not simply the old over again. Moreover, this genetic series cannot be constructed a priori: "No formula for progression from mode to mode, that is, no strictly genetic formula in evolution or in development is possible except by direct observation of the facts of the series which the formulation aims to cover, or by the interpretation of other series which represent the same or parallel modes."[1]
Now there can be no doubt that Professor Baldwin is right in insisting that a genetic series is not mechanical, and must ultimately be interpreted by a different category than that of cause and effect. But the question with which we are here concerned is whether his own statement of the principle of development is adequate, whether he himself ever reaches a 'genuinely genetic point of view.' For the distinction which he labors seems to be the familiar one between existence and value, between the causal and the teleological standpoint. It is possible that I have failed to understand Professor Baldwin, but I do not find that either in the passages which I have summarized, or in his discussion of the Retrospective and Prospective categories, he clearly puts the distinction in this way. Indeed, if we take his statements literally, it seems that he has not realized how completely the causal point of view is left behind when we think of things as developing. As we have seen, his way of stating the distinction between the mechanico-causal and the genetic or developing series, is that in the progression of the latter 'something new' appears in the consequent which is not present in the antecedent, and is not accounted for by it. Now this statement in itself would leave the series unintelligible; since the new factor or feature is asserted to come in simply as 'something new' without being related through identity to anything else. The identity of matter or energy which gives to the principle of cause and effect its explanatory power is denied, while the nature of the identity
- ↑ Development and Evolution, p. 23.
