EVOLUTION THE MASTER-KEY 



the moral anarchy which is supposed to be a neces- 

 sary consequence of its acceptance, has yet to be 

 observed. 



Furthermore, it is emphatically the evolutionary 

 treatment of the will, and the searching light it 

 has thrown on the springs of conduct, that has 

 rescued the whole subject from the verbal morass 

 of so many generations and has placed it upon 

 the rock of positive facts. 



Let us now look at some of the questions in- 

 volved. 



In the first place, the post - Spencerian writer 

 cannot treat of man's will as if it had sprung, 

 like Minerva, fully armed from the head of Jove. 

 For now exactly half a century such a method 

 of treatment has been obsolete. Neither will nor 

 any other aspect of mind can be treated as if the 

 adult Caucasian consciousness were an immediate 

 creation, of whose genesis the first and last word 

 has been said in a reference to a Creator or a First 

 Cause. Your will and mine are evolved in us as 

 individuals from the will of the child, from the 

 springs of action in infancy and before it. Further- 

 more, your will is a product of racial as well as 

 of individual evolution. It does not now suffice 

 to declare, with Descartes, that the lower animals 

 are automata: else the qualifying word "human" 

 in the title of this chapter were superfluous. The 

 "ape and tiger," not yet dead in us, had conscious- 

 ness and volition ; nor can ours be explained with- 

 out reference to theirs. Thus, whereas prior to the 

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