812 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



Again on pp. 42-43 he says: "The distinguishhig feature 

 of any theory which can properly be termed a ReHgion is that 

 it should refer to the ultimate source, or sources of things; 

 and that it should suppose this source to be of an objective, 

 intelligent, and personal nature. To apply the term religion 

 to any other theory is merely to abuse it." Here, strangely 

 enough, Romanes is unconsciously but thoroughly abusing 

 the term religion, for he is giving it a circumscribed range that 

 it does not possess, as we have shown on p. 684. For, in the 

 gradual evolution of religion, we have no more right to say 

 that the most primitive bushman is devoid of religion when 

 he invests a stick or a stone with fetish virtues, in which the 

 idea of a great personal God are entirely wanting, than we 

 would have in saying that a primitive methodist is devoid 

 of it because he rejects the altars, the ritual, the confessional, 

 the archbishop, the transsubstantiation that his high church 

 coreligionist believes in. The higher cogitic or moral and 

 the spiritic or religious mind is one that is intensely proen- 

 vironing a best resultant line of action that shall link man in 

 most satisfying relation to his family, his neighbor everywhere, 

 the world with all its forces, and the universe with its forces. 

 In biological evolution such has been man's pathway, and in 

 pursuing it along many turnings and doublings, amid many 

 "wills o' the wisps" and deceptions, he has reached, in the 

 higher and purer Christian truths and axioms of conduct, 

 a i^latform of noblest proenvironal aspiration that, if he has 

 the courage and repressive power to follow it, will build up 

 him and his fellows into "Society as an Organism." 



In virtue of the above evidence we would reiterate that 

 the "perfect" man is he who most perfectly builds up, balances, 

 and utilizes the material bases, the protoplasmatin, the chro- 

 matin, the neuratin, and hypothetical spiritin, and the ener- 

 gizing biotic, cognitic, cogitic, and spiritic currents that traverse 

 these, so as to reach most beneficial and satisfying relation 

 to all the forces of the universe by which he is surrounded, 

 from the family circle outward to the noblest possible proen- 

 vironal conception of a great World Power. 



