University of Virginia Library

Chapter 12
Evolution and Dissolution

§93. An entire history of anything must include its appearance out of the imperceptible and its disappearance into the imperceptible. Any account of an object which begins with it in a concrete form, or leaves off with it in a concrete form, is incomplete; since there remains an era of its existence undescribed and unexplained. While admitting that knowledge is limited to the phenomenal, we have, by implication, asserted that the sphere of knowledge is co-extensive with the phenomenal — co-extensive with all modes of the Unknowable which can affect consciousness. Hence, wherever we now find Being so conditioned as to act on our senses, there arise the questions — how came it to be thus conditioned? and how will it cease to be thus conditioned? Unless on the assumption that it acquired a sensible form at the moment of perception, and lost its sensible form the moment after perception, it must have had an antecedent existence under this sensible form, and will have a subsequent existence under this sensible form. And knowledge of it remains incomplete until it has united the past, present, and future histories into a whole.

Our daily sayings and doings presuppose more or less such knowledge, actual or potential, of states which have gone before and of states which will come after. Knowing any man personally, implies having before seen him under a shape much the same as his present shape; and knowing him simply as a man, implies the inferred antecedent states of infancy, childhood, and youth. Though the man's future is not known specifically, it is known generally. that he will die and decay, are facts which complete in outline the changes to be gone through by him. So with all objects around. The pre-existence under concrete forms of our woollens, silks, and cottons, we can trace some distance back. We are certain that our furniture consists of matter which was aggregated by trees within these few generations. Even of the stones composing the walls of the house, we are able to say that years or centuries ago, they formed parts of some stratum in the Earth. Moreover, respecting the hereafter of the wearable fabrics, the furniture, and the walls, we can assert this much, that they are all decaying, and in periods of various lengths will lose their present coherent shapes. This information which all men gain conceding the past and future careers of surrounding things, Science continues unceasingly to extend. To the biography of the individual man, it adds an intra-uterine biography beginning with him as a minute germ; and following out his ultimate changes it finds his body resolved into certain gaseous products of decomposition. Not stopping short at the sheep's back and the caterpillar's cocoon, it identifies in wool and silk the nitrogenous matters absorbed by the sheep and the caterpillar from plants. The substance of a plant's leaves, in common with the wood from which furniture is made, it again traces back to certain gases in the air and certain minerals in the soil. And the stratum of stone which was quarried to build the house, it leads was once a loose sediment deposited in an estuary or on the sea-bottom.

If, then, the past and the future of each object is a sphere of possible knowledge; and if intellectual progress consists largely, if not mainly, in widening our acquaintance with this past and this future; it is obvious that the limit towards which we progress is an expression of the whole past and the whole future of each object and the aggregate of objects. It is no less obvious that this limit, if reached, can be reached only in a very qualified sense: inference more than observation must bring us to it. This garden-annual we trace down to a seed planted in the spring, and analogy helps us back to the microscopic ovule whence the seed arose. Observation, verifying forecast, extends our knowledge to the flowers and the seeds, and afterwards to the death and decay which, sooner or later, ends in diffusion, partly through the air, partly through the soil. Here the rise of the aggregate out of the imperceptible and its passage back into the imperceptible is indistinct at each extreme. Nevertheless we may say that in the case of this organism, as of organisms in general, the account, partially based on observation but largely based on inference, fulfils the definition of a complete history fairly well. But it is otherwise throughout the inorganic world. Inference here plays the chief part. Only by the piecing together of scattered facts can we form any conception of the past or future of even small inorganic masses, and still less can we form it of greater ones; and when we come to the vast masses forming our Solar System, the limits to their existence, alike in the past and in the future, can be known but inferentially: direct observation no longer aids us. Still, science leans more and more to the conclusion that these also once emerged from the imperceptible through successive stages of condensation and will in an immeasurably remote future lapse again into the imperceptible. So that here, too, the conception of a complete history is in a sense applicable, though we can never fill it out in more than an indefinite way.

But after recognizing the truth that our knowledge is limited to the phenomenal and the further truth that even the sphere of the phenomenal cannot be penetrated to its confines, we must nevertheless conclude that so far as is possible philosophy has to formulate this passage from the imperceptible into the perceptible, and again from the perceptible into the imperceptible.

This last sentence contains a tacit suggestion which must, however, be excluded. The apparent implication is that a confessedly imperfect theory may, by extension after the manner described, be changed into an avowedly perfect one. But we may anticipate that the extension will prove in large measure impracticable. Complete accounts of the beginnings and ends of individual objects cannot in most cases be reached: their initial and terminal stages are left vague after investigation has done its best. Still more, then, with the totality of things must we conclude that the initial and terminal stages are beyond the reach of our intelligence. As we cannot fathom either the infinite past or the infinite future, it follows that both the emergence and immergence of the totality of sensible existences must ever remain matters of speculation only: speculation more or less justified by reasoning from established data, but still — speculation.

Hence the conception of Philosophy above implied must be regarded as an ideal to which the real can never do more than approximate. Ideals in general — even those of the exact sciences — cannot be reached, but can only be nearly approached; and yet they in common with other ideals, are indispensable aids to inquiry and discovery. So that while it may remain the aim of philosophy to give that comprehensive account of things which includes passage from the imperceptible into the perceptible and again from the perceptible into the imperceptible, yet it may be admitted that it must ever fall short of this aim. Still, while recognizing its inevitable incompleteness, we infer that such approach to completeness as is possible will be affected under guidance of the conceptions reached in the last two chapters. That general law of the redistribution of matter and motion which we lately saw is required to unify the various kinds of changes, must also be one that unifies the successive changes which sensible existences, separately and together, pass through between their appearance and their disappearance. Only by some formula combining these characters can knowledge be reduced to a coherent whole.

§94. Already in the foregoing paragraphs the formula is foreshadowed. Already in recognizing the fact that Science, tracing back the histories of various objects, finds their components were once in diffused states, and forecasting their futures sees that diffused states will be again assumed by them, we have recognized the facts that the formula must be one comprehending the two opposite processes of concentration and dispersion. And already in thus describing the general nature of the formula, we have approached a specific expression of it. The change from a dispersed, imperceptible state to a concentrated, perceptible state, is an integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; and the change from a concentrated, perceptible state to a dispersed, imperceptible state, is an absorption of motion and concomitant disintegration of matter. These are truisms. Constituent parts cannot aggregate without losing some of their relative motion; and they cannot separate without more relative motion being given to them. We are not concerned here with any motion which the components of a mass have with respect to other masses: we are concerned only with the motion they have with respect to one another. Confining our attention to this internal motion, and to the matter possessing it, the axiom which we have to recognize is that a progressing consolidation involves a decrease of internal motion; and that increase of internal motion involves a progressing unconsolidation.

When taken together, the two opposite processes thus formulated constitute the history of every sensible existence under its simplest form. Loss of internal motion and consequent integration, eventually followed by gain of internal motion and consequent disintegration — see here a statement comprehensive of the entire series of changes passed through: comprehensive in an extremely general way, as any statement which holds of sensible existences at large must be; but still, comprehensive in the sense that all the changes gone through fall within it. This will probably be thought too sweeping an assertion, but we shall quickly find it justified.

§95. For here we have to note the further all-important fact, that every change suffered by every sensible existence, is a change in one or other of these two opposite directions. Apparently an aggregate which has passed out of some originally discrete state into a concrete state, thereafter remains for an indefinite period without undergoing further integration, and without beginning to disintegrate. But this is untrue. All things are growing or decaying, accumulating matter or wearing away, integrating or disintegrating. All things are varying in their temperatures, contracting or expanding, integrating or disintegrating. Both the quantity of matter contained in an aggregate and the quantity of motion contained in it, increase or decrease; and increase or decrease of either is an advance towards greater diffusion or greater concentration. Continued losses or gains of substance, however slow, imply ultimate disappearance or indefinite enlargement; and losses or gains of insensible motion will, if continued, produce complete integration or complete disintegration. Heat rays falling on a cold mass, augmenting the molecular motions throughout it, and causing it to occupy more space, are beginning a process which if carried far will disintegrate the mass into liquid, and if carried farther will disintegrate the liquid into gas. Conversely, the decrease of bulk which a volume of gas undergoes as it parts with some of its molecular motion, is a decrease which, if the loss of molecular motion proceeds, will be followed by liquefaction and eventually by solidification. And since there is no such thing as a constant temperature, the necessary inference is that every aggregate is at every moment progressing towards either greater concentration or greater diffusion.

§96. A general idea of these universal actions under their simplest aspects having been obtained, we may now consider them under certain more complex aspects. Thus far we have supposed one or other of the two opposite processes to go on alone — we have supposed an aggregate to be either losing motion and integrating or gaining motion and disintegrating. But though every change furthers one or other of these processes, neither process is ever unqualified by the other. For each aggregate is at all times both gaining motion and losing motion.

Every mass from a grain of sand to a planet, radiates heat to other masses, and absorbs heat radiated by other masses; and in so far as it does the one it becomes integrated, while in so far as it does the other it becomes disintegrated. In inorganic objects this double process ordinarily works but unobtrusive effects. Only in a few cases, among which that of a cloud is the most familiar, does the conflict produce rapid and marked transformations. One of these floating bodies of vapour expands and dissipates, if the amount of molecular motion it receives from the Sun and Earth exceeds that which it loses by radiation into space and towards adjacent surfaces; while, contrariwise, if, drifting over cold mountain-tops, it radiates to them much more heat than it receives, the loss of molecular motion is followed by increasing integration of the vapour, ending in the aggregation of it into liquid and the fall of rain. Here, as elsewhere, the integration or the disintegration is a differential result.

In living aggregates, and especially in animals, these conflicting processes go on with great activity under several forms. There is not merely what we may call the passive integration of matter, which inanimate masses effect by simple molecular attractions, but there is an active integration of it under the form of food. In addition to that passive superficial disintegration which inanimate objects suffer from external agents, animals produce in themselves active internal disintegration, by absorbing such agents. While, like inorganic aggregates, they passively radiate and receive motion, they are also active absorbers of motion latent in food, and active expenders of that motion. But notwithstanding this complication of the two processes, and the immense exaltation of the conflict between them, it remains true that there is always a differential progress towards either integration or disintegration. During the earlier part of the cycle of changes the integration predominates — there goes on what we call growth. The middle part of the cycle is usually characterized, not by equilibrium between the integrating and disintegrating processes, but by alternate excesses of them. And the cycle closes with a period in which the disintegration, beginning to predominate, eventually puts a stop to integration, and after death undoes what integration had originally done. At no moment are assimilation and waste so balanced that no increase or decrease of mass is going on. Even in cases where one part is growing while other parts are dwindling, and even in cases where different parts are differently exposed to external sources of motion, so that some are expanding while others are contracting, the truth still holds. For the chances are infinity to one against these opposite changes balancing one another; and if they do not balance, the aggregate as a whole is integrating or disintegrating.

Hence that the changes ever going on are from a diffused imperceptible state to a concentrated perceptible state, and back again to a diffused inmperceptible state, must be that universal law of redistribution of matter and motion, which serves to unify the seemingly diverse groups of changes, as well as the entire course of each group.

§97. The processes thus everywhere in antagonism, and everywhere gaining now a temporary and now an enduring predominance the one over the other, we call Evolution and Dissolution. Evolution under its most general aspect is the integration of matter and concomitant dissipation of motion; while Dissolution is the absorption of motion and concomitant disintegration of matter.

The last of these titles answers its purpose tolerably well, but the first is open to grave objections. Evolution has other meanings, some of which are incongruous with, and some even directly opposed to, the meaning here given to it. The evolution of a gas is literally an absorption of motion and distintegration of matter, which is exactly the reverse of that which we here call Evolution. As ordinarily understood, to evolve is to unfold, to open and expand, to throw out; whereas as understood here, the process of evolving, though it implies increase of a concrete aggregate, and in so far an expansion of it, implies that its component matter has passed from a more diffused to a more concentrated state — has contracted. The antithetical word Involution would more truly express the nature of the change; and would, indeed, describe better those secondary characters of it which we shall have to deal with presently. We are obliged, however, notwithstanding the liabilities to confusion resulting from these unlike and even contradictory meanings, to use Evolution as antithetical to Dissolution. The word is now so widely recognized as signifying, not, indeed, the general process above described, but sundry of its most conspicuous varieties, and certain of its secondary but most remarkable accompaniments, that we cannot now substitute another word.

While, then, we shall by Dissolution everywhere mean the process tacitly implied by its ordinary meaning — the absorption of motion and disintegration of matter; we shall everywhere mean by Evolution, the process which is always an integration of matter and dissipation of motion, but which, as we shall now see, is in most cases much more than this.