INVOLUTION AND MANKIND. 3OI 



the people with separate nationalities. The results of environ- 

 ment on the mind are reflected in literature and the press, especi- 

 ally as relatively few members of any nation acquaint themselves 

 with the literature and current thought of any country other 

 than their own. It has been well stated that 



although the physical and mental qualities that are acquired by an indi- 

 vidual are not transmitted to his descendants tnit have to be acquired 

 afresh in each generation, every new acquisition by a literature is 

 inherited. The new generation begins at the stage in which its predecessor 

 left off; every wave of emotion, of sentiment, 01 ideal that traversed the 

 former generation is stored in literature. . . . Literature is a new 

 organ <if a nation, transcending the individual life, being shaped and 

 growing from generation to generation, and forming a permanent mental 

 environment of the most powerful kind.* 



^lan differs from the brute creation in that he has become 

 possessed of a peculiar quality known as consciousness, or a sense 

 of freedom. The great philosopher, Immanuel Kant, in 1790 

 stated : 



Two things fill my mind with ever-renewed wonder and awe the more 

 often and deeper I dwell on them — the starry vault above me, and the 

 moral law within me. 



The moral law of Kant has been distorted by the peoples of the 

 Central Empires into . a doctrine of self-exaltation and self- 

 responsibility only, regardless of the rights of others. By the 

 adoption of such pernicious, distorted doctrine " Germany rushes 

 on to what must be either her own doom, or the doom of the 

 human race."f 



The Rel.vtionship of Evolution to Modern Social 



f^roblems. 



Remembering that the present is the child of the past and 

 the parent of the future, I would earnestly plead for attention to 

 certain vital biological principles that are in danger df being over- 

 looked at the present time. As has already been said, man is 

 separated from animals by his possession of consciousness, which, 

 if allowed to decay, will inevitably lead to his degradation in the 

 scale of life, and perhaps even to his ultimate extinction. 



One of the great manifestations of consciousness is the 

 recognition of the " not-self," and this involves recognition of 

 individual responsibility on tb.e part of each of us towards others. 

 The lack of recognition of this sense df responsibility is obvious 

 in our modern world, tainted as it is by the worship of material 

 prosperity, and where shirking of responsibility is flagrantly 

 common. Progress is not always identical with increased crea- 

 ture comforts. So far from many feeling that there is a pur- 

 posefulness in their lives, an end to be attained, an inheritance to 

 pass on. the summation of their ideals is expressed in the phrase 

 " having a good time," and that chiefly in the material sense. 

 That the "good time" is at the expense of others, and consists 



* Chalmers Mitchell, '' Evolution and the War," pp. 89, 90. 

 ^ A remark justified by the request for an Armistice, which was signed 

 on Nov. nth, 1918. 



