272 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



Evolution was, in effect, a mental emancipation from 

 an imaginary immutable world order. It released man 

 from the dominion of a fixed idea, and revealed him to 

 himself, not as the degenerate paralytic offspring of a 

 fallen angel, the imprisoned scourge of an implacable 

 and incompetent experimenter like himself, but as a 

 living growing part of a living growing universe ; prod- 

 uct of the sun and soil, blood relative and next of kin 

 to his meanest servants. This revelation, at first so stag- 

 gering and repulsive to his childish imagination, ulti- 

 mately inspired him with its real significance, and gave 

 to his newly-won manhood, and to his new concept of 

 animism, a new dignity. It was a rousing challenge to 

 the dawning consciousness of his physical and intellec- 

 tual powers; and under its influence the dominion of 

 age-old myths, and fables, and superstition, passed rap- 

 idly away. The long night of baseless terror and gro- 

 tesque imaginings was past and a new day was dawn- 

 ing. His multitudinous enemies vanished with the 

 dark, and in the new light appeared as friends and co- 

 workers. Man was at last conscious of his real self; 

 conscious of his unity with his fellow creatures, and 

 conscious of his creative mission. He heard nature 

 speaking to him in friendly tones, and at last realized 

 -that her gestures were not threats, but invitations to 

 creative acts. The students and lovers of nature, walk- 

 ing with nature in the field, the hospital, workshop, and 

 laboratory, were no longer, in their own estimation, or 

 in that of their fellows, social outcasts, or harmless 

 lunatics, or sacrilegious sorcerers and workers of witch- 

 craft, or magic, in dens of secret iniquity, but self-re- 

 specting and respected ministers of a new order; new 

 instruments of nature, seeking, not indeed to conquer 



