THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



force. Although the natural law is the only law, yet 

 the beauty and orderliness of the world prove the ex- 

 istence of God. Then arises the unavoidable difficulty 

 of making matter, at the same time, inert and active. 

 After endless and profitless circumlocutions the Stoics 

 reconcile the two antinomies by identifying God with 

 the active force. The result is a pure pantheism in 

 which matter is vitalized because God has implanted 

 in it from the beginning a ratio sefninalis^ or rational 

 seed.^"" Having once made a start, the cosmos develops 

 according to natural law in succession of time. If the 

 Stoics, and to a less degree the Epicureans, had known 

 of fossils sufficiently to have imagined a science of 

 palaeontology, there is little doubt they would have 

 been true evolutionists, but the possibility of muta- 

 tion from one species to another never even presented 

 itself to their minds. ^^ 



Beginning with a purely animistic viewpoint, the 

 Greeks developed and elucidated what are, in my 

 opinion, the four possible types of thought which 

 have persisted to the present day. First is the school 



25 This vivification of matter has been persistent in philosophy. 

 Starting with the logoi spermatikoi, or ratio seminalis, of the Stoics, 

 we find it in the logos of St. John, and today it is probably to be 

 identified with the evolution creatrice of Bergson and the entelechy 

 or perfecting principle of Driesch. It has its counterpart in science 

 in the postulate of Newton that matter is inert but at the same time 

 attracts through space all other matter. We shall probably never 

 weary of trying to reconcile these two ideas of what may be called 

 the static and the kinetic dualism of nature by rational means. It 

 would promote peace of mind if we should simply admit that the 

 problem is insoluble. 



26 For this survey of the doctrines of the Stoics and Epicureans I 

 am greatly indebted to t)berweg-Prachter's History of Philosophy 

 and to my brother, Paul Elmer More. 



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