CHAPTER 22 



WHAT OF IT? AN OPEN 



LETTER TO STUDENTS 



Those of you who specialize in science will find it hard to 

 understand religion unless you feel, as Voltaire did, that the harmony of the 

 spheres reveals a cosmic mind, and unless you realize, as Rousseau did, that 

 man does not live by intellect alone. We are such microscopic particles in so 

 immense a universe that none of us is in a position to understand the world, 

 much less to dogmatize about it. Let us be careful how we pit our pitiful gen- 

 eralizations against the infinite variety, scope and subtlety of the world. 



WILL DURANT* 



This chapter will be devoted to a brief discussion of the bearing of evolu- 

 tion on some other facets of our intellectual lives — particularly on religion. 

 Such a discussion does not constitute an integral part of a scientific 

 treatise on evolution. If this book were being written for scientists, or 

 primarily for advanced students of biology, this last chapter would not be 

 included. But I realize that for many of my readers this book will constitute 

 the only formal excursion into evolutionary literature, and that for them 

 evolution is of most interest as it relates to other aspects of their lives. Of 

 these other aspects religion is the one usually considered most affected by 

 "behef in" evolution. Experience has taught me that when a scientist fol- 

 lows his natural inclination to treat evolution objectively, without refer- 

 ence to such matters as religion, his silence on the subject is frequently 

 misinterpreted as indifference or hostility to religion. Accordingly, after 

 long consideration, I have decided to doff the cloak of scientific objectivity, 

 to sit down at your elbow, so to speak, and to talk over with you some of 



* From a commencement address; quoted from Tlie Reader's Digest, lA (June, 

 1959), 94-96. 



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