Q a 



(i2 RAYMOND J. NOGAR 



its history; mankind is not merely its history; a person is not 

 merely his biography. The cosmos and its natures have his- 

 tories; mankind has a history; a person has a biography.®'' Since 

 the " fact of evolution " can never be more than a partially 

 decipherable series of contingent events, it can never be uni- 

 versalized into a philosophical principle giving ultimate insight 

 and interpretation of the cosmos in which we live or our per- 

 sonal being by which we live. Philosophies of evolutionism, or, 

 better, ideologies of evolutionism, may appear to be valid infer- 

 ences from scientific evolution, but, upon close inspection the 

 appearance is an illusion. 



Conclusion: The Rhetoric of Evolutionism 



The evolution of life is no long a theory; it is a fact and the basis 

 of all our thinking. (Italics added.) ®° 



By its rhetorical excesses, false philosophy of evolutionism 

 can readily be detected. In the statement just quoted, Huxley 

 sounds the dominant note of the final phase of evolutionary 

 thinking in America, especially prevalent during the past 

 decade. Taking the " fact of evolution " beyond extrapolation 

 and even beyond the mere philosophy of evolutionism, he 

 gives a scientific theory the qualities of a faith with a pro- 

 phetic mystique. This is no longer science or philosophy; it is a 

 rhetorical formulation of evolutionism into an easily recogniz- 

 able personal apologetic. Huxley proclaimed this " new evolu- 

 tionary vision " in his Convocation address at the Darwin Cen- 

 tennial Celebration: 



In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either 

 need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created; it 

 evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including 

 our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did 

 religion. Religions are organs of psychosocial man concerned with 

 human destiny and with experiences of sacredness and transcen- 



89 , 



C. De Koninck, " The Nature of Man and His Historical Being," Laval 

 Theologique et Philosophique, V (1949), 271. 

 »» Huxley, EAD, HI, 111. 



