time: the refreshing river 



stern theology all but fallen into disuse. The difference between the 

 living and the dead in souls is so unproved by casual observation, so 

 impalpable in itself, so startling as a doctrine, that schools of culture 

 have ridiculed or denied that grim distinction. Nevertheless it must 

 be retained. 'He that hath not the Son hath not Life.' " 



At first sight this reads like some voice from the 17th century, and 

 it would indeed have been a mistake to revive any Calvinistic rejection 

 of the weaker brethren. But must we not admit the part which heroic 

 virtue plays in human evolution? Must we not pay homage to that 

 "additional characteristic" which enables some men to help onwards 

 their fellows? For the kind of personality we have in mind, only the 

 Chinese word Chun-f{e (^ •^) is adequate, for it means all at once, 

 the learned scholar, the true gentleman, the great-souled man (/xeyaAo- 

 ipvxos) of Aristotle, the hero of natural or spiritual war, the magnani- 

 mous lover of the people. There are many who spring to the mind in 

 this connection in their various ways — Sir Thomas More, the martyr of 

 mediaeval internationalism; John Lilburne and Thomas Rainborough, 

 fighting intellectuals of the English Revolution; Louis Pasteur, type 

 of the scientific benefactors to humanity; Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin, 

 philosopher and revolutionary leader of the people, visionary of the 

 machine in the service of man; John Cornford, the young historian 

 who thought it worth while to exchange a lifetime of study for the 

 grave of a soldier of the International Brigade in Spain. 



It is an interesting commentary on time's changes in thought to 

 read the account of Henry Drummond in the Dictionary of National 

 Biography. In 1894 he published some American lectures under the 

 title "The Ascent of Man."^ On this one of his biographers wrote, 

 somewhat condescendingly, "Drummond's adroitness in rehandling 

 old arguments was truly remarkable, but his general thesis that the 

 struggle for life gradually became altruistic in character, or a 'struggle 

 for the life of others,' and that 'the object of evolution is love' 

 was very severely criticised by men of science, while some of his 

 attempts to qualify the apparent harshness of the scheme of natural 

 selection, by such phrases as 'With exceptions, the fight is a fair 

 fight; as a rule there is no hate in it, but only hunger,' or, 'It is better 

 to be eaten than not to be at all," must appear to be perilously near 

 the grotesque." Grotesque, no doubt, to his contemporaries, but as 

 we look to-day at the long aeons of rise in level of biological and 

 social organisation, what else can the trend of evolution be except 



^ (London, 1894.) 



34 



