CHAPTER III 



MATERIALISTIC EFOLUTION 



THE popular materialistic creed, most 

 widespread during the latter part of the 

 nineteenth century, can be thus briefly 

 summarized: In the beginning was matter. To 

 this was added in some occult and forever inex- 

 plicable manner, force, which eventuated in mo- 

 tion. Hence materialistic evolution. Hence the 

 world without God. The Creator was no longer 

 needed. The lights of heaven were extinguished. 



Haeckelian Monism was but an extension of 

 this creed. 



All, therefore, that had ever existed, would or 

 could exist, was to be considered merely as a 

 changing form of matter. From nebula to man, 

 from the lowest clod to the highest genius, from 

 the basest and most criminal passion to the ten- 

 derest emotion of a mother's love, from the turn- 

 ing of a worm to the rapture of a saint, all was 

 purely a physical and chemical process. 



"The human mind itself," wrote Tyndall, 

 "emotion, will, intellect, and all their phenomena, 

 were once latent in a fiery cloud." Plato, Shake- 

 speare, Newton, Raphael, he declared to an ad- 



