152 WHAT EVOLUTION IS 



That man has descended from an 

 ape-like stock no reasonable person 

 can doubt. He shows this affiliation 

 in his body and in his activities in a 

 thousand ways, and yet more than 

 most animals, he has peculiarities of 

 his own. When we look at civiliza- 

 tion as represented in the complex life 

 of cities and of nations with all their 

 commercial interrelations, with their 

 humane institutions such as asylums 

 and hospitals, and with their oppor- 

 tunities for intellectual, aesthetic, and 

 spiritual growth, it seems as if an 

 attempt to base this enormous struc- 

 ture on an evolutionary foundation, 

 with Lamarckism, Darwinism, and 

 the like as driving forces, is futility 

 in the extreme. Who for a moment 

 would attempt to account for the 

 Divine Comedy as a product of evolu- 

 tion? And yet, if evolution means 

 anything, it means exactly this. Some- 



