Page:Modern Rationalism (1897).djvu/145

Rh to the evolutionary doctrine. The evidence of embryology and of comparative anatomy is more than adequate for scientific proof that man has descended or ascended from another animal species. Then comparative psychology has done much towards bridging the gulf between the mind of man and that of other animals. The mental powers of the higher animals have been carefully studied (for the first time) on the one hand by Darwin, Romanes, Lubbock, etc., and the mental powers of the lowest races of men on the other; and a close rapprochement, if not satisfactory evidence of continuity, has been the result. In the mean time, the old psychology, the scholastic psychology, which mistook a superficial for a radical and specific difference, and thus erected an a priori barrier to the transition, has lost favour. Modern psychology is an empirical science that refuses to dogmatize about the "spirituality" of the soul. Hence no metaphysical objection can be raised to the development of man from another animal species, and the whole weight of the law of evolution, absolutely proved up to this point, and most strongly corroborated by anatomy, embryology, comparative psychology, and ethno logy, teaches that development. Only a vague mysticism, taking the form of certain "extra-rational" considerations, is opposed to the scientific view. The doctrine is strongly re-inforced by the discovery of the action of evolution in every department of human activity—in art, in science, in religion, in morality, in sociology, in language. At no point is there a breach of continuity by an extra-mundane intervention. All the alleged historical interventions have been dissolved into myths and legends.

It will be now apparent that science has a powerful influence upon religion quite apart from its positive mythology. The cardinal points of every religious scheme are the existence of a personal God, and the distinctive spirituality of the human mind or soul. Science builds up such a conception of the universe and its contents as