332 GRAND STRATEGY OF EVOLUTION 



tific inquiry, evolution made that creative power more 

 clearly manifest; and made it more intelligible for it 

 was seen to be more lawful in action. It was also quite 

 generally overlooked that man derives his creative 

 power from some kind of benevolent action, from mu- 

 tual service and Tightness; and that the methods by 

 which he attains his ends are the same as those by which 

 he himself was created. 



II. The Distorted Philosophy of the Biologists 



One of the chief causes of his misunderstanding 

 was the common error of failing to distinguish between 

 evolution, as a universal phenomenon, and the vari- 

 ous attempts to explain some particular phase of evo- 

 lution. 



A period of calm was necessary after the more vio- 

 lent discussions, before even the more sagacious evo- 

 lutionists could clearly perceive that natural selection, 

 the most generally accepted explanation, was not in 

 itself a true creative process, but merely a name for a 

 multitude of interacting agencies by which things al- 

 ready created were selected for preservation. But 

 long after this period of mental reaction, for some un- 

 accountable reason, biologists persistently magnified the 

 goddess of chance and exalted the reign of force. They 

 persistently exaggerated the selfishness and failures, 

 the "wanton destruction" and the tragedies of life, and 

 minimized the gains that were so manifest in a benevo- 

 lent order. The shallow philosophers, statesmen, and 

 sentimentalists were not slow to catch the dominant 

 note, and to join in a noisy chorus, wherein the reiter- 

 ated thought of a warring, hostile nature, "red in tooth 



