If this ideal of thought may be taken as adumbrating
the ultimate nature of Reality, nature is neither wholly
blind, nor wholly the creature of intelligent purpose.
Origin and purpose are mutually dependent parts of one
scheme. What was in the beginning was in order that
what shall be might be realised. But what shall be, and
the way in which it shall come about, are equally the
creations of that which was at first. If we seek to realise
in some concrete fashion what this means, we shall think
once more of the germ of a soul in a living organism.
The soul would not exist in germ, but that there is laid
up in store for it a futurity which repays the travail of
development. Neither could it exist but for the physical
conditions in which it is immersed. Its development is a
war with these conditions which maintain and yet limit it
and its triumph is the submission of the conditions to its
perfected nature. In this image we have a brief account
of the whole process of the evolution of Mind as traced
in these chapters, and therewith the process of evolution
upon this earth appears as the working out in concrete
shape and on this relatively narrow stage of the vaster
process which we dimly conceive as constituting the
essential life of the world.

-446-