impulse of the Unknowable. And yet it may, as I think, be reaffirmed that no progress is possible except by direct contact with the consciousness of a preceding age. This larger interpretation of consciousness, called for by the theory of development or progress, is indirectly suggested by the philosophy of evolution.[1]
While evolution directs us to the future, development, by emphasizing the direct effort to appreciate the thought that now exists, fixes attention upon the present. Evolution has made us too anxious about posterity. When in excuse for the fact that this continent has not produced a Shakespeare, it is urged, "Oh, give us time!" it ought to be said, "Now is the time, if only we had other thoughts." It is the tendency of evolution to repose confidence in the mere lapse of time.[2]
III. A third point of significance has been taken over from the scientific principle of evolution into philosophy. Not only is it now looked on as proved by investigations in palaeontology that lower types of being slowly give place to higher; but modern research in embryology has ascertained that the individual human being is an epitome of the history of life. This fact of science, given what seems to be its natural meaning in philosophy, appears as the theory that the various phases of the human consciousness are not independent aspects but stages in its necessary completion and perfection. Thus sensations, emotions, cognitions, etc., are in this theory so united, that they grow out of one another in a regular sequence. Moreover, the order of development in the individual mind is said to correspond with the order of nature. Just as sensibility or sensation is a characteristic of simpler and earlier organisms than is imagination, so sensation is said to be lower and less adequate than imagination, as a mark of the human consciousness. As, also, animal life has evolved from the stage characterized by simple sensation to another characterized by something at least akin to imagination, so, too, the human mind has
