INTEODUCTION 



xix 



development, but he is helped in this by the thoughts 

 of former generations. With the moral comes also 

 the religious development. Beginning at first with 

 very low and perhaps unworthy motives of self- 

 advancement, it has gradually led up to an endeavour 

 to understand and to do the will of God. 



Biological evolution is due to mind, which 

 is resident in protoplasm. Physical or inorganic 

 evolution is due to gravitation, which tends to 

 bring all matter together; and, as matter has not 

 yet been brought together, there must have been a 

 beginning, when gravitation did not exist. But, 

 although gravitation is the proximate cause of 

 physical evolution, there is evidently mind behind 

 it, because the problem has been thought out. 

 Consequently, physical evolution must also be due to 

 mind acting on the matter of which the Universe 

 is composed. But this universal mind does not seem 

 to be resident in matter, because matter obeys fixed 

 laws, and because physical evolution is coming to an 

 end, and cannot, so far as we can see, be renewed 

 except by a change in these fixed laws. Terrestrial 

 mind is not subject to inexorable law. Of course 

 the matter with which it is associated, and which 

 it manipulates, is subject to physical laws which 

 must be obeyed ; but mind itself, as exhibited in 

 living protoplasm, is subject to no laws except those 

 which it has imposed upon itself called reflexes or 

 reflex actions from which, in most cases, it can 

 emancipate itself. 



We find a single break in this long series of cause 

 and effect ; and that is the introduction of living 



