THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA 



a process of evolution, during no less than seven 

 teen years, ere it reached a form insusceptible, 

 during its author s lifetime, of further modification. 

 But to regard the present form as final would be, 

 as we have already seen, to deny its truth. For 

 evolution teaches us that there is no such thing 

 as finality; and we may console ourselves, if this 

 seems to make hopeless the intellectual destiny 

 of mankind, by attempting to imagine the barren 

 ness of the mental life in a time conceivable but 

 happily impossible when nothing is in dispute, 

 nothing unexplained, all art and thought at a 

 stand-still. The prospect is as drear as that of the 

 conventional heaven, which would be a very hell 

 to any but the veriest fool. 



Ere we look further at the slow growth of the 

 idea of evolution, as embodied in the famous 

 formula, it may be profitable to raise the previous 

 question, Are there any other than lying formu 

 las? Or, if not directly untrue, are not formulas 

 in general almost as bad in their incompleteness, 

 or ridiculous pretentiousness, or both? Formulas 

 there have been since men began to think; and 

 so, also, doubtless, what Carlyle calls formulism. 

 No one will question that formulas, theoretical, 

 philosophic, political, have repeatedly exercised a 

 most baneful influence over the lives and thoughts 

 of men. If not without utility at some time, yet 

 no formula was ever yet that did not outlive its 

 usefulness. Furthermore, does any form of words 

 really serve men s minds? or may it more reasona- 



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