THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



but he is not by implication a materialist; nor is the 

 biologist of necessity a materialist, even though he 

 may study nothing but mechanism in the material 

 fabric and the bodily activities of the organism^ It is 

 not merely that in dust we had our first beginnings, 

 and that to dust we shall at last return. Our bodies 

 are dust all the while, as is the grass that withers and 

 the flower that fades; and the laws by which our 

 bodies are governed are the laws by which earth and 

 dust are ruled. . . . But there is a something that is 

 not dust at all, though as in all things else it is found 

 therein; something that is the Order of the Cosmos 

 and the Beauty of the World; that lives in all things 

 living, and dwells in the mind and soul of man; some- 

 thing not fulfilled in physics, which vivifies the dust 

 and makes the dry bones live. You may call it what 

 you please, but it is always the same. You may call it 

 Entelechy, you may call it the Harmony of the 

 World ; you may call it the Elan vital^ you may call 

 it the Breath of Life. Or, you may call it, as it is 

 called in the Story-book of Creation and in the hearts 

 of men — you may call it the Spirit of God."^* 



This discussion of life as mechanism has been ex- 

 tended to a great length, probably to the point of 

 weariness to the reader, but it is the goal to which 

 biological theories of evolution inevitably tend and 

 it is only by proving that there is no scientific proof 

 for this doctrine that evolution as a basis for a science 



^•^ Life and Finite Individuality, p. 54. 



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