Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 13.djvu/109

Rh Now, in evolution, also, we have no new truth, but only an old truth in a new form: and lo! how it startles us out of our propriety! The evolution of the individual by a slow process from a microscopic germ. Everybody knows this. Yet it has never heretofore interfered with a belief in an intelligent Maker of each of us. Perhaps most of you may remember, when first at your mother's knee, you were asked, "Who made you?" and you answered as you were taught, "God made me." But suppose you had asked in return, "How?" The only true answer would have been, "By a process of evolution." Yes, every one of us was individually made (and is not this far more important for us individually than any origin of species, even of the human species?) by a slow process of evolution from a microscopic spherule of unorganized protoplasm—the germ-cell. Yet the knowledge of this fact did not make us ridicule the reverent answer of the little one, or despise the pious teachings of the mother. Why, then, should it be different in this case of the origin of species by evolution?

Again, all vexed questions are such, because there is truth on both sides. Unmixed error does not live to plague us long. Error lives only by virtue of a contained germ of truth. In all vexed questions, therefore, there are three views, viz., two opposing, partial, one-sided views, and a third, more rational and comprehensive, which combines and reconciles them.

I can best illustrate this by the familiar story of the fabled shield. You well remember how, in the good old times of knight-errantry, this shield was hung up in the sight of all men in token of the fact that the owner challenged the world to mortal combat. You well remember that the shield having been seen by many knights, these knights, on comparing notes, could not agree as to its color, some declaring that it was white, and some equally certain that it was black. You well remember that after many lances had been splintered, after many broken heads and bloody noses had been endured in the vain attempt to settle this vexed question, by the blundering logic of blows and knocks, as was the fashion in those days (alas! do we not even now settle many questions in the same way, only we call the process now, the "logic of events")—after, I say, many blows had been given and taken in the sacred cause of truth, some one who, strange to say, had something of the spirit of science, and who, therefore, thought that truth was to be discovered, not by conflict, but by observation, proposed that the shield be examined. The result you all know—one side was white and the other was black.

Now, do you not observe that both parties in this dispute were right and both were wrong? Each was right from his point of view. Each was wrong in excluding the other point of view—in imagining his truth to be the whole truth. And do you not observe also that the true view combined and reconciled the two partial views? There is an old adage that "truth lies in the middle," between antagonistic