AFTERWORD 353 



retain some taste for fine scenery, but it does not cause me 

 the exquisite delight which it formerly did. . . . My mind 

 seems to have become a kind of machine for grinding general 

 laws out of large collections of facts; ... if I had to live 

 my life again, I would have made it a rule to read some 

 poetry and listen to some music at least every week; for per- 

 haps the parts of my brain now atrophied would have been 

 kept alive through use. The loss of these tastes is a loss of 

 happiness, and may possibly be injurious to the intellect, and 

 more probably to the moral character by enfeebling the emo- 

 tional part of our nature." {Op. cit., vol. I, pp. 81, 82.) 



Evolution, we repeat, has brought us materialistic monism, 

 in whose barren soil nor faith, nor idealism, nor morality, nor 

 poesy, nor art, nor any of the finer things of life can thrive. 

 To its dystelic and atomistic view, Nature has ceased to be 

 the vicar of God, and material things are no longer sacra- 

 mental symbols of eternal verities. It denies all design in 

 Nature, and dismembers all beauty into meaningless fragments. 

 It is so deeply engrossed in the contemplation of parts, that it 

 has forgotten that there is any such thing as a whole. The 

 rose and the bird-of-paradise are not ineffable messages from 

 God to man; they are but accidental aggregates of colloidal 

 molecules fortuitously assembled in the perpetual, yet aimless, 

 flux of evolving matter. 



From the standpoint of the moral and sociological conse- 

 quences, however, the gravest count against evolution is the 

 seeming support which this theory has given to the monistic 

 conception of an animalistic man. Darwin's doctrine on the 

 bestial origin of man brought no other gain to natural science 

 than the addition of one more unverified and unverifiable hy- 

 pothesis to its already extensive stock of unfounded specula- 

 tions. It did, however, work irreparable harm to millions of un- 

 learned and credulous persons, whose childlike confidence the 

 unscrupulous expounders of this doctrine have not hesitated 

 to abuse. The exaggerations and misrepresentations of the 

 latter met with an all too ready credence on the part of those 



