THE EVOLUTION OF THE IDEA 



mouth of lago in the opera &quot;Otello&quot;; for they 

 teach truly that what a man believes as to human 

 destiny and the supreme questions, so is he. 



It follows that each man s philosophy, whether 

 premeditated or implicit, conscious or uncon 

 scious, is the prime fact about him; and what is 

 true of an individual is true of a race or a civiliza 

 tion or an era. If, then, the contention be valid 

 that only upon the bed-rock of scientific fact can 

 philosophy be built, then we must conclude that 

 the main function of science is none other than, 

 in the long run, the formation of man s creed- 

 and, therefore, the control of his actions and their 

 incalculable outcome. 



The first fact, then, to note concerning the gen 

 esis of the evolutionary philosophy is that it is 

 built, whether well or ill, at any rate upon science. 

 And it may be asserted, with expectation but not 

 with fear of contradiction, that the contemporary 

 and future thinkers who are now modifying and 

 will ever continue to modify the details of this 

 so well-grounded philosophy must themselves pro 

 ceed from a firm footing upon scientific truth. 



In other words, the genesis of the idea of evo 

 lution is not to be found in any intuition. Though 

 subsequently worked out deductively, the law of 

 evolution is essentially and typically an induction 

 a generalization based upon the sum of fac 

 known to its author. In very many instances, 

 the views held fifty years ago were irreconcilab] 

 with the doctrine of universal evolution. Many, 



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