PREFACE xiii 



that through his coming to possess reason, life in his 

 person has become self-conscious, and evolution is 

 handed over to him as trustee and director. * Nature ' 

 will no longer do the work unaided. Nature — if 

 by that we mean blind and non-conscious forces — 

 has, marvellously, produced man and consciousness ; 

 they must carry on the task to new results which 

 she alone can never reach. 



Mr. Trotter, in his delightful book on the Herd- 

 instinct, draws a distinction between the stable-minded 

 or resistive and the unstable-minded or adaptive, and 

 points out how the destinies of society have usually 

 been entrusted to the former — whence spring our 

 persecutions of prophets and our neglect of innovating 

 genius. This will continue so long as the accepted 

 belief of the majority is that there exists a Provid- 

 ence who has assigned every one his proper place, or 

 even (oddest whim 1) ordained the present type of 

 society ; so long as they rely more on authority 

 than experience, look to the past more than to the 

 fixture, to revelation instead of reason, to an arbitrary 

 Governor instead of to a discoverable order. 



The general conceptions of the universe which a 

 man or a civilization entertains come in large part 

 to determine his or its actions. There are only two 

 general and embracing conceptions of the sort (though 

 any number which are not general, and fail because 



