Page:Philosophical Review Volume 9.djvu/685

669 IV. In the historical evolution of religion there are three stages: the stage of magic and of sacrificial rites, of creed and dogma, of a right intellectual attitude toward the deity, and of conduct and character. In the last, religion affords morality an important service by its appeal to supernatural sanctions. Yet moral conviction and religious faith must not be identified.

V. For its theoretical support, for the establishment of those metaphysical beliefs which form the intellectual bases of its faith, religion requires ethics. Ethics as a moral science rests upon the present order, and furnishes support for a religious interpretation of the world.

VI. There need be no fear that religion will be ultimately merged in morality; for religion has its source in man's nature, and in his experience of the world distinct from that of morality. A sense of incompleteness in our ethical ideals, together with æsthetic and intellectual impulses, compel man to be metaphysical and religious. By the necessities of his own nature he will be compelled to give his ethical ideals a larger setting than that which is offered by human life, and will interpret them as a part of the cosmic order.

Mr. Herbert Spencer contends that the increase of mental vigor acquired by parents is transmitted in some degree to their children, who thus start at a higher level of natural intellectual power than their progenitors. Darwin's advocacy of natural selection as the main cause of organic progress led to its application in human affairs. Assuming the soundness of these principles, and their applicability to human folk, under the conditions of civilization, it would seem that there is an increase of mental faculty. But the writer of this paper considers some of the criticisms to which these principles, thus applied, may be subjected, and reaches the conclusions: (1) that it is at least questionable, whether the Darwinian factors of evolution are efficacious in raising the standard of mental endowment in civilized communities; (2) that for civilized mankind there are not sufficient statistics of the right sort, to enable us to come to any independent decision on the question of the transmission from parent to child of acquired increments of mental power. Is it then true that evolution ceases when civilized progress commences? No, rather has evolution been transferred from the organism to its environment. Such an unconscious organism as a plant inherits congenital definiteness and a certain amount of plasticity, both subject to variation. The method of progress is through natural selection. Among the higher animals heredity plays a like part, but the plasticity has assumed a higher form; for with consciousness and intelligence tradition begins where the animals live in social communities. Just here are the initial stages of a transference of evolution from the organism to the environment which it