EVOLUTION AND SOCIETY 



ganic and the inorganic worlds. In such a grandiose 

 system, the spirit of man, with its element of free- 

 will or choice, shrivelled to insignificance in compar- 

 ison with the inexorable majesty of natural law. 



In brief, we are asked to begin with a picture of the 

 universe as an undifferentiated and homogeneous ag- 

 gregation of atoms subject only to Newton's law of 

 attraction. In sequence of time homogeneity changed 

 to heterogeneity, how or why we cannot even guess, 

 and the universal mass became located in definite 

 parts of space until there came to be the various stel- 

 lar and solar systems. The earth, as an insignificant 

 speck of matter, molten and containing its chemical 

 substances in an undifferentiated mass, gradually 

 cooled and, slowly by chemical processes, formed its 

 present heterogeneous geological structure. When 

 time was ripe, a certain aggregate, or aggregates, of 

 physical molecules occurred which possessed the ele- 

 ments of what we call life, — the organic molecules. 

 Again, by that meaningless law of the homogeneous 

 passing to heterogeneity the organic molecules by ag- 

 gregation and differentiation changed to organized 

 life. By continuing this process the earliest organisms 

 evolved into all the flora and fauna of later times. 

 Somewhere along the line, the chemical molecules 

 found themselves in such a combination that the or- 

 ganism possessed what we call the rudiments of 

 thought or self -consciousness; at the end, we have the 

 universe as it is now. What is to be the future? Only 



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