XV 
DARWINISM APPLIED TO MAN 
477 
rest of nature, are but products of the blind eternal forces of 
the universe, and believing also that the time must come when 
the sun will lose his heat and all life on the earth necessarily 
cease—have to contemplate a not very distant future in which 
all this glorious earth—which for untold millions of years has 
been slowly developing forms of life and beauty to culminate 
at last in man—shall be as if it had never existed ; who are 
compelled to suppose that all the slow growths of our race 
struggling towards a higher life, all the agony of martyrs, all 
the groans of victims, all the evil and misery and undeserved 
suffering of the ages, all the struggles for freedom, all the 
efforts towards justice, all the aspirations for virtue and the 
wellbeing of humanity, shall absolutely vanish, and, “ like the 
baseless fabric of a vision, leave not a wrack behind.” 
As contrasted with this hojjeless and soul-deadening belief, 
we, who accept the existence of a spiritual world, can look 
upon the universe as a grand consistent whole adapted in all 
its parts to the development of spiritual beings capable of 
indefinite life and perfectibility. To us, the whole purpose, 
the only raison d’etre of the world—with all its complexities 
of physical structure, with its grand geological progress, the 
slow evolution of the vegetable and animal kingdoms, and 
the ultimate appearance of man—was the development of the 
human spirit in association with the human body. From the 
fact that the spirit of man—the man himself —is so developed, 
we may well believe that this is the only, or at least the best, 
Avay for its development; and we may even see in what is 
usually termed “ evil ” on the earth, one of the most efficient 
means of its growth. For we know that the noblest 
faculties of man are strengthened and perfected by struggle 
and effort; it is by unceasing warfare against physical evils 
and in the midst of difficulty and danger that energy, 
courage, self-reliance, and industry have become the common 
qualities of the northern races; it is by the battle with 
moral evil in all its hydra-headed forms, that the still 
nobler qualities of justice and mercy and humanity and self- 
sacrifice have been steadily increasing in the world. Beings 
thus trained and strengthened by their surroundings, and 
possessing latent faculties capable of such noble development, 
are surely destined for a higher and more permanent exist- 
