Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 46.djvu/338

324 of being? If that in us which is to oppose and correct the cosmic process is not itself a product of the cosmic process, whence does it come? To the consistent evolutionist there could seem to be but one answer to this question. As such, Prof. Huxley would hardly fall back upon the discredited dogma of special creation, and no other refuge is left him from the logic of that conclusion which he has so persistently ignored.

Leaving out the Oriental imaginings and metaphysical speculations which so largely tinge and illustrate the thought of Prof. Huxley, and confining ourselves to what science definitely assures us regarding the cosmic process as illustrated in our own little earth, we are surely justified in viewing it as the exponent of something more and different from a merely cyclical alternation of evolution and degeneration. Whether viewed in its purely physical or in its biological aspects, the process of evolution on this planet has been one of progressive refinement, development, and progress—from a molten ball to a solid globe; from the theater of terrific Plutonic activities to a condition where such activities are rare and exceptional; from the coarse and rank vegetation of the Carboniferous era to the more delicate and beautiful growths of our own time; from lower to higher forms of life, from moneron to ape and from ape to man; from savagery to barbarism and from barbarism to civilization: such is the story of evolution as written in rock and soil, the rude inscriptions of the earlier races, and the nature of man himself, so plainly that he who runs may read. Occasional lapse and degeneration have indeed been incidental to this progress, rendering it rhythmical rather than serial in its method; but this does not detract from the impressive reality of evolution^s majestic march through the centuries.

Not only has Prof. Huxley erred, as it appears to me, in giving a partial interpretation of the trend and meaning of the cosmic process in inanimate Nature, he seems to be still more grievously at fault in interpreting its significance when it mounts to sentiency in animal and human organisms. One is forced to wonder by what curious mental bias he was led to debit Nature with all the pain, misery, and suffering that sentiency implies, without crediting it with the conscious satisfactions, pleasure, and happiness which are equally the product of the evolutionary process. Mr. Spencer has shown by arguments which I believe to be unanswerable, and to which Mr. Huxley does not even allude in this address, that that "fullness of life," which is the final evolutionary test of genuine advancement in mental capacity; individual character, and progressive social amelioration, is directly proportionate to the relative amount of subjective satisfactions in sentient organisms, and that all progress is conditioned upon the