ACCEPTING THE UNIVERSE 



this any different in the case of man than it is in the 

 case of a tree or a dog? We postulate what we call a 

 soul in man, which we deny to all other forms of life 



— an independent entity which separates from the 

 body and lives after it. But we run into difficulties 

 the moment we do so. In the biologic history of 

 man, when and where did the soul appear? Did the 

 men of the old Stone Age, of whom Professor Os- 

 born writes so graphically and convincingly, have 

 it? Did the Piltdown man, the Neanderthal man, 

 the Java man of Du Bois, have it? Did our ancestral 

 forms still lower down have it? Do babies have it? 

 Do idiots and half-witted persons have it? 



All we can claim for man above the lower orders 

 is higher intelligence, greater brain power, the 

 power of reflection, and the logical process. His dog 

 has perceptive intelligence, but not reflective; 

 animals act from inherited impulse; man from im- 

 pulse, thought, ideation. Man's instinctive impulses 

 are guided or restrained by thought; his emotions 



— anger, love — wait upon thought; his migratory 

 instinct waits as that of the lower animals does not. 

 But when this extra power began, who can say? 

 It had no beginning, it dawned by insensible de- 

 grees, as do all things in Nature. We have only 

 to heighten our conception of Nature and matter 

 to see the difficulties vanish — and the stigma of 

 materialism loses its terrors. 



In these later centuries mankind has steadily 



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