Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 13.djvu/547

Rh  an inward and personal aspect of the nature and progress of evolution which ought not to be overlooked. For the very method and circumstances of man's creation by evolution planted within him a consciousness from which, when acted upon by myriads of slowly-widening experiences, were evolved all the fundamental powers of his moral nature. Let us illustrate this position by the cognate example of the genesis of religious beliefs. These were developed, let us say, either from the worship of ancestors, or (according to the mythological theory) by personifying the operations of Nature. But it seems to me totally impossible that any merely external cause could have produced a belief so primitive, so powerful, so universal, so permanent, and above all so strongly marked by certain original and undeviating characteristics, unless they had been correlated with the consciousness of a creature in whom by the very law of his origin the Spirit of Evolution was always suggesting an unanswerable question: "Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding." Primitive man had enough of philosophy to ask this question, and enough of science to attempt to answer it out of such materials as lay ready to hand; hence it is that speculations as to their own origin are common, if not universal, among savage races. As in religion so in morality. All the external impressions arising out of society, law, utility, and the like, were related to and conditioned by an innate sense of rightness in the individual, wrought in him by the power of evolution itself by which he was created. And thus we arrive at that inward and side of evolution to which I have endeavored to call attention, in the belief not only that justice remains yet to be done to it, but also that it contains a reconciling and adjusting element much needed amid the conflicts and misunderstandings of modern thought. But from the further pursuit of this thought I am obliged, however reluctantly, to turn away.—Nineteenth Century.



OW are we to guard our youth against this debasing influence? The answer appears to be easy, and has often been given before. Let us set up the palladium of humanism against that natural science which would subject to dissection our ideals, which contemptuously 