234 Man's Emergence 



continue this trend, who will continue the work of 

 those — 



Who toiling hard against the stream 

 Saw distant gates of Eden gleam 

 And did not dream it was a dream. 



If we realize what is meant by speaking of man's 

 "emergence," we are saved from the fallacy of taking 

 either a simplicist or a depreciative view of human 

 nature. This is so important that we must be allowed 

 to quote a paragraph from Professor Lloyd Morgan's 

 Gifford Lectures on Emergent Evolution (1922), a 

 very valuable contribution to science and philosophy 

 alike. 



"Emergent evolution works upwards from matter, 

 through life, to consciousness which attains in man its 

 highest reflective or supra-reflective level. It accepts 

 the 'more' at each ascending stage as that which is 

 given, and accepts it to the full. The most subtle ap- 

 preciation of the artist or the poet, the highest aspira- 

 tion of the saint, are no less accepted than the blossom 

 of the water-lily, the crystalline fabric of a snow- 

 flake, or the minute structure of the atom." The 

 theory of "Emergent evolution" urges that the 

 "more" of any given stage, even the highest, involves 

 the "less' of the stages which were precedent to it and 

 continue to co-exist with it. It does not interpret the 

 higher in terms of the lower, "for that would imply 

 denial of the emergence of those new modes of natural 

 relatedness which characterize the higher and make 

 it what it is." Nor does it interpret the lower in terms 



