NATURAL SELECTION AND ENVIRONMENT 167 



and thrill of a corresponding reality in environment? 

 Is not the one development just as improbable or in- 

 conceivable as the other ? 



And this is the reason that, when man awakened to 

 himself and his own powers, he knew that there was 

 and must be a God. "Pass over the earth," says 

 Plutarch ; " you may discover cities without walls, 

 without literature, without monarchs, without palaces 

 and wealth ; where the theatre and the school are not 

 known ; but no man ever saw a city without temples 

 and gods, where prayers and oaths and oracles and 

 sacrifices were not used for obtaining pardon or avert- 

 ing evil." Given man and environment as they are, 

 and a belief in God is a necessary result. But you 

 may ask, if we are to worship a personal God, why 

 might not a conscious and religious hydra, with equal 

 right, worship an infinite stomach, and the annelid a 

 god of mere brute force ? 



There stands in Florence a magnificent statue by 

 Michel Angelo. A human figure is only partially 

 hewn out of the stone. He never finished it. If you 

 could have seen the master hewing the chips with 

 hasty, impatient blows from the shapeless block, 

 you would have been tempted to say that he 

 was but a stonecutter, and but a hasty workman 

 at that. Even now we do not know exactly what 

 form and expression he would have given to the 

 still unfinished head. But no one can examine it 

 and hesitate to pronounce it a grand work of a 

 master-mind. In any manifestly incomplete work 

 you must judge the purpose and character and powers 

 of the workman or artist by its highest possibilities, 

 just so far as you have any reason to believe that 



