After these preliminaries, we can pass on to consider the main subject of physics, the scale of being. We should notice, in the first place, that it is also a scale of values. What is higher in the scale of being is of more worth, because the principle of form is more advanced in it. It constitutes also a theory of development, a philosophy of evolution. The lower develops into the higher. It does not, however, so develop in time. That the lower form passes in due time into a higher form is a discovery of modern times. Such a conception was impossible for Aristotle. For him, genus and species are eternal. They have neither beginning nor end. Individual men are born and die, but the species man never dies, and has always existed upon the earth. The same is true of plants and animals. And since man has always existed, he cannot have evolved in time from a lower being. There is no room here for Darwinism. In what sense, then, is this a theory of development or evolution? The process involved is not a time-process, it is a logical process, and the development is a logical development. The lower always contains the higher potentially. The man is in the ape ideally. The higher, again, contains the lower actually. The man is all that the ape is, and more also. What is merely implicit in the lower form is explicit in the higher. The form which is dimly seen struggling to light in the lower, has realized itself in the higher. The higher is the same thing as the lower, but it is the same thing in a more {294} evolved state. The higher presupposes the lower and rests upon it as foundation. The higher is the form of which the lower is the matter. It actually is what the lower is struggling to become. Hence the entire universe is one continuous chain. It is a process; not a time-process, but an eternal process. The one ultimate reality, God, reason, absolute form, eternally exhibits itself in every stage of its development. All the stages, therefore, must exist for ever side by side.