The following suggestions are offered with extreme diffidence, and only as uncertain and indeterminate approximations.  In some respects they seem not inconsistent with the most recent scientific research which already is casting so much doubt on many of the assumed factors behind evolution and on the accepted methods of its operation.  The true solution, if it is found, will result from the cooperation of scientists, philosophers and theologians, illuminated by the fire of the Divine Wisdom—­Hagia Sophia—­for in such a problem as this, almost the final secret of the Cosmos, no single human agency acting alone can hope to achieve the final revelation, while all acting together could hardly escape falling into “the falsehoods of their own imaginings” if they relied solely on their unaided efforts in the intellectual sphere.

Assuming then that life is an enduring process of the redemption of matter through the interpenetration of spirit, what is a possible method of action?  To explain what I mean I must use a diagrammatic figure, but I admit this must be not only inadequate but misleading, for instead of the two dimensions of a diagram, we must postulate three, with time added as a vital element, and, I dare say, a “fourth dimension” as well.  Confessing inadequacy in the symbol, let us conceive of a space divided into four strata.  The lowest of these is the primary unknowable, the region of pure spirit, pure spirit itself, the creative energy of the universe, the unconditioned Absolute, in the terms of Christian theology, Almighty God.  The second is the plane of matter, an area of potential, but in itself inert and indeterminate.  The third is the space of what we call life in all its forms, the area in which the transformation and redemption take place.  The fourth is the ultimate unknowable, that is to say, that which follows on after life and receives the finished product of redemption.

[Illustration:  DIAGRAM NO. 1.  The interpenetration of Matter by Spirit. x, The primary Unknowable; x’, the ultimate Unknowable; [Greek:  alpha], the plane of Matter; [Greek:  beta], the plane of Life.]

Now there is eternally in process a penetration of the stratum of matter by jets of the elan vital from the realm of pure spirit, each as it were striving to detach from the plane of matter some small portion, which is transformed in its passage through life and achieves entrance into the ultimate unknowable, when the process of redemption is, for this small particle, completed.  Always, however, is exerted the gravitational pull of matter, and the energy that drove through, instead of pursuing a right line, tends to bend in a parabolic curve, like the trajectory of a cannon ball.  In the completion of the process some portion of redeemed matter “gets by,” so to speak, but other portions do not; they return to their source of origin and are reabsorbed in matter, becoming subject to the operation of future interpenetrating jets of spiritual energy.  The upward drive of the elan vital constitutes what may properly be known as evolution, the declining fall the process of devolution or degeneration.  Evolution then is only one part of the cosmic process, it is inseparable from degeneration.