MATERIALISTIC EVOLUTION 2$ 



miring age, are even now potential in the fires of 

 the sun. Out of lifeless matter they had develop- 

 ed in common with the toad and reptile, by no 

 other power than material evolution. Without 

 any intervention of purpose or intelligence, man 

 had evolved, out of the blazing cloud of warring 

 atoms and through the welter of a miry world, 

 first as a primal cell, then as a structureless jelly, 

 and so through eon after eon of evolution, until 

 he attained his present stature of body and won- 

 derful development of mind. 



"Life is but an arrangement of matter, so as 

 to live," wrote Edward Clodd, a popular purveyor 

 of atheistic lore, "mind is but an arrangement, so 

 as to think. The chemic lump arrives at the plant 

 and grows; arrives at the quadruped and walks; 

 arrives at man and thinks." This, in gross 

 language, was the new creed, impossible of proof 

 as its defenders were obliged to admit, yet for 

 which an absolute submission of reason was de- 

 manded. To differ from it was heresy. To 

 question it was ignorance. To accept any other 

 dogma, though based upon the most convincing 

 evidences of credibility, was superstition. To 

 dare appear in print without subscribing to each 

 of its leading articles was certain to result in 

 scientific ostracism. The reign of materialistic 

 evolution, extending over scientific circles, schools 

 and popular literature, was in brief the worst and 

 most disastrous autocracy of the nineteenth cen- 



