Page:The Yellow Book - 02.djvu/30

22 that it was due to a kind of chemical ferment in the mind, unsuspected till it showed entirely new growths and developments. And even now, you know, I am not quite comfortable with evolution as the word for this sudden spiritual advance into what you call common kindness and more learned persons call altruism. It does not satisfy me, 'evolution.'"

"But you can say why it doesn't, perhaps."

"Nothing, more, I suppose, than the familiar association of 'evolution' with slow degrees and gradual processes. Evolution seems to speak the natural coming-out of certain developments from certain organisms under certain conditions. The change comes, and you see it coming; and you can look back and trace its advance. But here? The human mind has been the same for ages; subject to the same teaching; open to the same persuasions and dissuasions; as quick to see and as keen to think as it is now; and all the while it has been staring on the same cruel scenes of misery and privation: no, but very often worse. And then, presto! there comes a sudden growth of fraternal sentiment all over this field of the human mind; and such a growth that if it goes on, if it goes on straight and well, it will transform the whole world. Transform its economies?—it will change its very aspect. Towns, streets, houses will show the difference; while as to man himself, it will make him another being. For this is neither a physical nor a mere intellectual advance. As for that, indeed, perhaps the intellectual advance hasn't very much farther to go on its own lines, which are independent of morality, or of goodness as I prefer to say: the simple word! Well, do you care if evolution has pretty nearly done with intellect? Would you mind if intellect never made a greater shine? Will your heart break if it never ascends to a higher plane than it has reached already?" Rh