166 THE WHENCE AND THE WHITHER OF MAN 



and now and then temporarily turned by eddies. I 

 seeni to look out upon a chaos of apparently conflict- 

 ing forces. But all the time the wind and tide are 

 sweeping me homeward. Now the wind, which some- 

 times indeed does shift, and the great tidal wave are 

 steadily bearing me in a certain direction, though 

 wave and eddy and gust may often make this appear 

 doubtful to me. So, underneath all waves and eddies 

 of environment, there is a great tidal wave, bearing 

 man steadily onward ; and I gain a certain amount of 

 valid knowledge of environment from the direction in 

 which it is bearing me. 



Let us change the illustration. Man survives as all 

 his ancestors have survived before him, through con- 

 formity to environment. Environment has therefore 

 during ages past been continually making impressions 

 upon him. And he can draw valid inferences con- 

 cerning the one power, which must underlie the ap- 

 parent host of forces of environment, from the im- 

 pressions which these have left upon the structure of 

 his mind and character. By studying himself he 

 gains valid knowledge of what is deepest in environ- 

 ment. For man is the most completely and closely 

 conformed thereto of all living beings. 



But man is a religious being. This is a fact which 

 demands explanation just as much as bone and mus- 

 cle. Now no evolutionist would believe that the eye 

 could ever have developed without the stimulus of 

 light acting upon the cells of the skin. Place the ani- 

 mal in darkness and the eye becomes rudimentary and 

 disappears. Could a visual organ for seeing moral 

 and religious truth have ever originated in the mind 

 of man had there been no corresponding pulsation 



