THE NATURALNESS OF THE SPIRITUAL WORLD 



for the rationally organised world-state of humanity lies still in the 

 future. 



"Through a long adolescence, then, the One 

 Slept in the sadness of its disconnected 

 Aggressive creatures, as a latent wish 

 The local genius of the rose protected. 

 Or an unconscious irony within 



The independent structure of the fish; ^ 



But flesh grew weaker, stronger grew the Word, 

 Until on earth the Great Exchange occurred." 



Now in emphasising all this Drummond was doing nothing so 

 very original. Herbert Spencer and other sociologists had laid great 

 stress on the continuity of biological with social evolution. Karl Marx 

 and Frederick Engels had adumbrated the idea of levels of organisation 

 in setting the Hegelian dialectic actually within evolving nature. But 

 from inside the christian tradition Drummond was working towards 

 these thinkers. His conviction that the "supernatural" of the theo- 

 logians was, in a sense, supremely "natural," echoed one of the best 

 ideas of the dialectical materialists, namely that materialism had for 

 too long been "misanthropic" or "asceiic" (as Marx had said) and if 

 it were to play its rightful part in future human thought, must do 

 full justice to all the highest aims and strivings of man. 



For Marx, materialism, in becoming dialectical, would include all 

 that the christians had meant by the spiritual world. For Drummond, 

 the spiritual world ought to take its place as the highest, but fully 

 natural, level in the evolutionary series. The sublimities of human 

 altruism must thus be thought of, not as something supernatural or 

 mystical, but as characteristic of the highest grades of natural organisa- 

 tion known to us. From this point of view the gulf which so many 

 have imagined to exist between an atheist labour organiser who gives 

 his life for the people, and a christian saint and martyr is so narrowed 

 as almost to disappear. Mediaeval scholasticism had contained some 

 premonitions of Drummond's line of thought. "Gratia non tollit 

 natura," said Thomas Aquinas, "sed supplet et perficit defectum 

 naturae" — Grace does not abrogate nature, but extends and perfects 

 it. Exactly so does the higher level of organisation supersede the 

 lower. And thus we can understand Drummond's phrase "the natural- 

 ness of the supernatural."^ When that is disclosed, and not till then, 



1 NLSW, p. xxii. 



31 



