I FUNDAMENTAL CONCEPTS 9 



not only the primacy of matter but also that life or mind 

 sprang from it and were dependent on it in any real sense. 

 In fact they denied the principle of Evolution as under- 

 mining all the spiritual and moral values of life. Both 

 sides, materialists and spiritualists alike, were under the 

 influence of the hard physical concepts of cause and effect 

 which played such a great part in the science of the 

 nineteenth century. There could be nothing more in the 

 effect than there was already in the cause; and if matter 

 caused the soul, there could be nothing more in the soul 

 than there already was in matter. In other words, the soul 

 was merely an apparent and no real substantial advance 

 on matter. The abstract validity of this argument was 

 never questioned and was thoroughly believed in by both 

 sides. Hence those who affirmed the theory of Evolution 

 logically tended to be materialists, and those who were 

 spiritualists were logically forced to deny Evolution. 



Without their knowing it the great battle raged, not over 

 the facts of Evolution, but over a metaphysical theory of 

 causation in which they both believed and were both wrong. 

 Such is the irony of history. To-day we pick the poppies on 

 the old bloody battlefield of Evolution, and can afford to be 

 fair to both sides. The essential terms have changed their 

 meaning for us. We believe in Evolution, but it is no more 

 the mechanical Evolution of a generation or two ago, but a 

 creative Evolution. We believe in the growth which is 

 really such and becomes ever more and more in the process. 

 We believe in Genesis which by its very nature is epigenesis. 

 For us there is no such thing as static Evolution, a becoming 

 which does not become but in its apparent permutations 

 ever remains the same. The absolute equation of cause 

 and effect, which was a dogma implicitly believed in by 

 the men of that day, does not hold for us, as I shall later 

 on explain. The temperature has changed, the view-point 

 has shifted, and to-day thoughtful men and women are 

 sincere and convinced Evolutionists, without troubling 

 themselves over the dead and forgotten issue of materialism 

 versus spiritualism. We accept the theory of descent, of 



