EVOLUTION— ITS MEANING 



is the feeling of being at home in God's World. Whatever 

 our conception of God the attitude remains. God's World 

 is to us no alien land. It is our home and it has been the 

 home of our ancestors for aeons immeasurable, so that our 

 life is fairly adjusted to it in all its details. And the more 

 thoroughly and widely we become acquainted with its 

 make-up the less sympathy we can feel with those who would 

 "remould it nearer to the heart's desire.'* 



Science is verified knowledge. Little by little, through 

 processes of induction, we establish a basis of fact which, 

 when stated in terms of human experience, becomes truth. 

 No human truth, however, is absolutely without error. Yet 

 though all truth must remain in some degree incomplete, 

 given time it gains both momentum and accuracy. With 

 such progress, error and false deduction fall off on every 

 side, usually without any possibility of revival. 



The history of science is marked by constant collision 

 between tradition and discovery. In the majority of men, 

 ideas are controlled by custom or by desire; hence arises 

 the process, almost inescapable, called by Dr. Conklin "think- 

 ing wishly." Our observations and experiments may be 

 quite objective; our thought, perhaps, is never altogether 

 so. Anthropomorphic tendencies spread through our 

 philosophy and through all the minor affairs of life and form 

 a constant obstruction to the spread of knowledge. 



Yet despite all this, and despite all forms of human 

 credulity, science has forced the civilized world to acknowl- 

 edge a good many things not hoped for and often not 

 desired. We now understand, for instance, that the stars 

 are not pinholes in the celestial floor, through which rain 

 drips upon us; that the sunset is not lighted by the red flames 

 of hell into which the sun daily sinks; that planets are not 

 carried back and forth by angels; that light and heat both 

 come from the sun; that the earth is not the immovable 



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