EVOLUTION AND RELIGION 



way of salvation. We are beginning to see that the 

 plans for a permanent settlement of our troubles for- 

 mulated by however large and complex an associa- 

 tion of mediocre men and women, fortified by any 

 amount of statistics and diagrammatic curves of aver- 

 ages, will necessarily be cursed by mediocrity. We 

 need a Moses to lead us out of the bondage of the 

 machine. A recent writer forcibly pictures our bewil- 

 dered state: "There has never been a time, and pray 

 Heaven there never will come a time, when a great 

 man cannot do more than a great machine, when it 

 will not be worth more to humanity to breed up able, 

 true men than to build up organizations. A machine 

 can have great force; a crowd is very powerful, but 

 machines and crowds do no miracles. A man who has 

 a touch of genius in him can do what passes sight and 

 reason; it is men who are taken up to Valhalla to live 

 with gods, not nations or courts or leagues. 'The more 

 I see of mankind,' wrote Addison sincerely to Hali- 

 fax, 'the more I learn to value extraordinary men. 



J 5ja 



The system of ethics founded by Spencer is merely 

 the endeavour to know physical law in order that we 

 may conform to our environment. Its result was to be 

 a society which would give the greatest possible free- 

 dom for the self-expression of the individual and the 

 most equable fulfilment of temporal desires. Such a 

 system of ethics was too vague to become a religion, 



8 The Villager, 1923. 



C 377 3 



