FACT OF EVOLUTION TO THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTIONISM 363 



dence. In their evolution, some (but by no means all) have given 

 birth to the concept of gods as supernatural beings . . . they are 

 destined to disappear in competition with other, truer and more 

 embracing thought organizations.''^ 



To him, scientific evolution not only necessitates a new phi- 

 losophy, it inaugurates a new prophetic vision, a new religious 

 hypothesis to replace both the old hypotheses of supernatural- 

 ism and materialism (Marxian Communism) . He develops his 

 thought: 



I submit that the discoveries of physiologj% general biology and 

 psychology not only make possible, but necessitate, a naturalistic 

 hypothesis (for religion) , in which there is no room for the super- 

 natural, and the spiritual forces at work in the cosmos are seen as a 

 part of nature just as much as the material forces. What is more, 

 these spiritual forces are one particular product of mental activity 

 in the broad sense, and mental activity in general is seen to have 

 increased the intensity and importance during the course of cosmic 

 time. Our basic hypothesis is thus not merely naturalistic as op- 

 posed to supernaturalist, but monistic as opposed to dualistic, and 

 evolutionary as opposed to static.''- 



One cannot read the proposal of a new faith called " evo- 

 lutionary humanism " in Huxley's Religion Without Revela- 

 tion without sensing strongly the rhetorical attributes which 

 have accrued to a once scientific dimension of the " fact of 

 evolution." Huxley's extension of evolutionary thinking to 

 the position of a vision of the meaning of all reality is serious 

 because it is done in the name of science. Yet this highly ideo- 

 logical and personalized explanation of the universe by cosmic 

 history is filled with obvious gloss of analogy, metaphor and 

 equivocation. It is extremely subjective, and, in the religious 

 sense, apologetical. Time is the synthetic factor and the whole 

 burden of his evolutionary philosophy is rhetorically aimed at 

 commanding the conviction of the reader in the name and by 

 the authority of science. 



It should not be thought that the rhetorical philosophies of 



'^ EAD, m, 252-53. 



"" Religion Without Revelation (New York, 1957) p. 187. 



