Sec. 33. Does it still seem incredible that, notwithstanding it requires mental processes to interpret external nature, external nature may nevertheless be destitute of mind? Then let us look at the subject on its obverse aspect. According to the theory of evolution--which, be it always remembered, is no mere gratuitous supposition, but a genuine scientific theory--human intelligence, like everything else, has been evolved. Now in what does the evolution of intelligence consist? Any one acquainted with the writings of our great philosopher can have no hesitation in answering: Clearly and only in the establishment of more and more numerous and complex internal or psychological relations. In other words, the law of intelligence being "that the strengths of the inner cohesions between psychical states must be proportionate to the persistences of the outer relations symbolised," it follows that the development of intelligence is "secured by the one simple principle that experience of the outer relations _produces_ inner cohesions, and makes the inner cohesions strong in proportion as the outer relations are persistent." Now the question before us at present is merely this:--Must we not infer that these outer relations are regulated by mind, seeing that order is undoubtedly apparent among them, and that it requires mental processes on our part to interpret this order? The only legitimate answer to this question is, that these outer relations _may_ be regulated by mind, but that, in view of the evolution theory, we are certainly not entitled to infer that they _are_ so regulated, _merely_ because it requires mental processes on our part to interpret their orderly character. For if it is true that the human mind was itself evolved by these outer relations--ever continuously moulded into conformity with them as the prime condition of its existence--then its process of interpreting them is but reflecting (as it were) in consciousness these outer relations by which the inner ones were originally produced. Granting that, as a matter of fact, an objective macrocosm exists, and if we can prove or render probable that this objective macrocosm is _of itself_ sufficient to evolve a subjective microcosm, I do not see any the faintest reason for the latter to conclude that a self-conscious intelligence is inherent in the former, merely because it is able to trace in the macrocosm some of those orderly objective relations by which its own corresponding subjective relations were originally produced. If it is said that it is impossible to conceive how, apart from mind, the orderly objective relations themselves can ever have originated, I reply that this is merely to shift the ground of discussion to that which occupied us in the last section: all we are now engaged upon is,--Granting that the existence of such orderly relations is actual, whether with or without mind to account for them; and granting also