822 Causes and Course of Organic Evolution 



houses, vineyards, ])ictiires, jewels, and rare books flit before 

 the mind, serves gently but perfectly to put to rest all higher 

 j)roenvironal aspirations of a spiritic kind. 



But now we reach that highest platform, that noblest, most 

 expanded, and ever stimulating proenvironal vista, which draws 

 out all the other energies in best proportion and is itself stimu- 

 lated to reach out, but in doing this perceives that greater 

 perfection is still beyond, toward which new effort must be 

 directed. 



For the spiritic energy that has called forth in man the re- 

 ligious sense, and the highest effort to reach out to and appre- 

 hend a final Power, an infinite directive source of energy and 

 progressive evolution, has least been appreciated in its scien- 

 tific relation, but has most stimulated man to acts of sympathy, 

 human love, forbearance, consecrated unity of noble action 

 that has steadily conquered the degrading and inhuman in 

 man, and is today advancing to final, even if slow, victory. 

 Romanes in this connection strikes a splendid note— even 

 though we believe that he started from a mistaken basis — 

 when he says: "Consider the happiness of religious — and 

 chiefly of the highest religious, i. e.. Christian — belief. It is 

 a matter of fact that, besides being most intense, it is most 

 enduring, growing, and never staled by custom. In short, 

 according to the universal testimony of those who have it, 

 it differs from all other happiness not only in degree but in 

 kind. Those w^ho have it can usually testify to what they 

 used to be without it. It has no relation to intellectual status. 

 It is a thing by itself and supreme." Here is an as])iring out- 

 look toward "the perfect man," that starts a proenvironal 

 longing for its early and wide adoption. 



"The perfect man" has been the desire of the ages. Paul 

 gives us in sane, exact scientific manner his definition of such. 

 But, surrounded as Paul was in most of his assemblies and in 

 his daily walks by groups and by individuals in every stage 

 of evolution from rudest barbarism to Christian monotheism, 

 he at times failed to see the beauty of his own descriptions. 

 So he was attracted somewhat by the ascetics at one time. 



