198 



DISCOVERY 



CH. 



creation, and biologists do not pretend to account for 

 the origin of life, but only to trace the changes it has 

 undergone and the conditions which produce them. 

 Increased knowledge of the older rocks has not shown 

 that we are nearer the fulfilment of the biologist's 

 dream, and the secret of Pandora's box remains still 

 undiscovered. 



No sane man has ever pretended, since science became a 

 definite body of doctrine, that we know or ever can hope to 

 know or conceive of the possibility of knowing whence the 

 mechanism has come, why it is there, whither it is going, or what 

 may or may not be beyond and beside it which our senses are 

 incapable of appreciating. These things are not " explained " 

 by science and never can be. Sir Ray Lankester. 



We have not yet reached the beginning of life. Though 

 science can trace and interpret the " footprints on the 

 sands of time," it knows not how life began or what 

 was the first created form. Deeper down than the 

 oldest rocks lies the mystery of creation ; deeper also 

 than the development of structural characteristics of 

 organisms may be the origin of mind and intelligence, 

 which do not admit of accurate 'measurement. The 

 process by which man has become a moral and ethical 

 being with a spiritual life may be different from that by 

 which animals and plants have advanced in perfection 

 of organisation. The history of mankind shows, indeed, 

 as Matthew Arnold said, that there is an " enduring 

 Power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness " 

 apart from the principle of cosmic evolution and not 

 measurable by its standards. 



The principle of the struggle for existence and the 

 survival of the fittest must not, therefore, be understood 

 as a sanction for the exertion of brute force in the service 

 of egotism, but as a struggle towards higher planes and 

 the survival of the race. The road along which the 



