8 HOLISM AND EVOLUTION chap. 



thought and attention to these matters there are to-day any 

 [ who seriously question this position. Life is no dove that has 

 flown to our shores from some world beyond this world; mind 

 or soul is not an importation from some other universe. Life 

 and mind are not mere visitants to this world, but not of this 

 world. There is nothing alien in them to the substance of 

 the universe; they are with us and they are of us. The 

 popular view still looks upon the association of life and mind 

 with matter as a sort of symbiosis, as the close living together 

 of three different beings, as the dwelling of life and the soul 

 in the body of matter, just as in the organic world one plant 

 or animal organism will be found normally living with and 

 in another. This popular traditional view comes from the 

 hoary beginnings of human thought and speculation, but it 

 is definitely abandoned by all those who have assimilated 

 the modern view-point of Evolution. For them in some way 

 not yet fully understood, but accepted as an undoubted 

 fact, both life and mind have developed from matter or 

 the physical basis of existence. The acceptance of this fact 

 must have far-reaching consequences for our world-view. 



But before I refer to that aspect of the matter let me point 

 out how this acceptance affects the grave issues over which 

 our fathers fought a continuous battle royal during the latter 

 half of the nineteenth century. The materialists contended 

 for this very point, namely, that life and mind were born of 

 matter. From this they proceeded (quite illegitimately) to 

 infer the primacy and self-sufficiency of matter in the 

 order of the universe, and to reduce life and mind to a 

 subsidiary and subordinate position as mere epiphenomena, 

 as appearances on the surface of the one reality, matter. 

 To use the Platonic figure, to them matter was the lyre, 

 and the soul was the music of that lyre; the lyre was the 

 substantive and abiding reality, and the music a mere pass- 

 ing product. And thus the priority and dominance of mat- 

 ter made of life and the soul merely transient and 

 embarrassed phantoms on the stage of existence. This 

 materialism was most hotly resented and contested by those 

 who held to the spiritual values and realities. They denied 



