THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



Man's position in nature may truly be classed as 

 unique ; his existence is miraculous. So far as we can 

 observe, his body is composed of the common inor- 

 ganic materials, he is subject to the same biological 

 laws which apply to a vast number of other organic 

 bodies; but he possesses a third nature, self-conscious- 

 ness which he has found nowhere else in the universe. 

 By self-consciousness, I mean the actions which we 

 class as moral. We are convinced that our actions 

 alone can be judged by the attributes of good or evil. 

 Many attempts have been made to prove that we are 

 constrained by law, that our acts and thoughts are as 

 unconscious as those of automata; suGh attempts have 

 failed to convince. We seem to be in a world of facts 

 and laws which are not subject to any change but we 

 also seem able to rearrange the objective world so 

 long as we respect certain rules of the game. We have 

 also discovered many facts and laws of our subjective 

 world as certain as those of the objective world : while 

 we can never be sure that our interpretation of the 

 objective world is true because its data are known to 

 us through our sensations, we can be certain that our 

 subjective world is in itself real. So Descartes was 

 willing to group all animals as automata but in man 

 he placed a soul, and Huxley saw in man the end of 

 natural selection because his self-consciousness per- 

 mitted him to create an artificial world of good and 

 evil. 



We have discovered a body of facts and laws for 



C 358 3 



