Man in the Light of Evolution 



But, unless our study has been fatally wrong 

 and defective, it is evident that the social envi- 

 ronment of every individual contains just as 

 many of these means and elements of progress 

 as he accepts and adopts, and to the extent to 

 which he makes use of them. No government 

 or institution can frame an environment and 

 force it upon the individual. Hence the greatest 

 movements have generally started and gathered 

 power in small circles. The hope of Israel lay, 

 not in the army of Saul, but with David and his 

 companions in the Cave of Adullam. The voice 

 which was to move the world came, as Dr. Mar- 

 tineau has said, from an upper chamber in Jeru- 

 salem. When Athenian schools of philosophy 

 had sunk in senility, a Jew was writing letters to 

 a few common people of Corinth and Ephesus 

 U^hlch were to be read through millennia. A 

 carpenter, working through a dozen fishermen, 

 conquered Rome and revolutionized the world. 



We might venture to call it a law of history 

 that the improvement of environment or sur- 

 roundings starts with a life. This life spreads 

 by contagion from man to man, and thus society 

 is leavened. Hence we return to our starting 

 point that we frame our best environment by liv- 



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