PHILOSOPHICAL ASPECTS OF EVOLUTION 



same token an animal has something not found in a plant — 

 namely, sense-knowledge, and a human being has superadded 

 to all this his intellectual knowledge. Intellectual knowledge 

 and life are thus considered extras, special features added to 

 material structures, which in themselves already existed as 

 complete entities. 



As a result of this way of thinking, we make a clear-cut 

 distinction between a non-living object and a living being. 

 Non-living and living are contradictory terms. Something is 

 living or it is non-living; it is living when it is in possession of 

 that extra which we call life, otherwise it is non-living. There 

 is no third possibility. The extra feature, life is present or not. 



The same kind of clear-cut distinction is made between man 

 and animal. Man is an animal which is in possession of 

 something very special — reason, a spiritual faculty. This 

 spiritual faculty is considered as totally different from anything 

 else found in matter. When asked what we mean by spiritual, 

 we are inclined to answer that spiritual means non-material, 

 whereas material means non-spiritual. Material and spiritual 

 are, therefore, considered contradictory terms in the same 

 manner as living and non-living. 



I would not go so far as to say that this way of logically 

 handling such terms as living and non-living, material and 

 spiritual, is entirely wrong. On the contrary, there are too 

 many sound reasons for it, but this does not mean that there 

 is nothing wrong with it. 



Let us begin with the distinction between material and 

 spiritual. First of all, it may be remarked that there is a 

 peculiar inconsistency between the way we experience the 

 presence of the spiritual and the way we evaluate that 

 experience in the logical order. We experience the spiritual 

 exclusively in man, that is to say in a material structure and 

 not in any dualistic way. The spiritual faculties of man are 

 strongly interwoven with his material structure. 



Whatever reasons we may have for opposing matter and 

 spirit, they should never seduce us to oppose them in such 

 a way that their actual unity in man becomes impossible. 

 There is some truth in the saying that if man had not existed, 

 philosophers would have declared his existence impossible. It 

 shows the danger of reflection going wrong. There are, of 



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