292 EVOLUTION AND MAN S PLACE IN NATURE 



unravelled and described, through observation of lower 

 forms of life, whether those which have disappeared 

 or those still continuing. The scientific explanation 

 is inadequate. The debasement witnessed in man is 

 impossible in animal life, impossible except when 

 intelligence magnifies animal .passion, and ministers 

 to animal indulgence. There is not a trace here of 

 the normal organic life, any more than there is a trace 

 of the dignity of manhood. The two natures, the 

 intelligent as well as the animal, appear even on man s 

 lowest level, but the better nature has become subject 

 to the worse, and this has been induced by a course of 

 self-chosen indulgence. 



Let us here assign to scientific testimony the utmost 

 that can be claimed. In stating at the outset the 

 evidence for evolution, 1 we gave from Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer a quotation which may well be reconsidered 

 in this relation. Organisms may vary not only in 

 respect of their structures, but in respect of their 

 tendencies to do this or the other in all kinds of ways, 

 many or most of the ways at variance with welfare. 

 Every one will see that, variation being granted, it 

 must always imply risk of deterioration as well as 

 promise of advance. These possibilities go together. 

 They are, indeed, suggested in the doctrine of survival 

 of the fittest, which implies deterioration of indi 

 viduals, and even of some races, leading, it may be, to 

 their disappearance. This belongs to the plan visible 

 in Nature, appearing there as a condition of progress. 

 But this seems to fail in supplying analogy to the 

 moral evils appearing in human life. In order that 

 some definite conclusion may be reached here, it is 



1 See p. 5. 



