24 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



tury. It still continued in power at the opening 

 of the twentieth century, but a strong reaction had 

 already begun to set in on the part of scientific 

 men, while the popular pendulum was swinging to 

 the opposite extreme of an equally unscientific 

 spiritism. 



Characteristic of the period of materialistic 

 evolution was the almost superstitious veneration 

 paid to learned names. An adversary might be 

 cowed into silence, an audience could be spell- 

 bound with admiration or led to any length of 

 absurdity, by the mere enumeration, in the 

 speaker's favor, of these petty divinities of learn- 

 ing. Equally characteristic was their own delight 

 in speaking with assumed infallibility upon any 

 subject no matter how completely out of their ken. 

 The biologist strutted about in the mantle of the 

 metaphysician, and the clever inventor pronounced 

 sententiously upon the immortality of the soul. 



I am Sir Oracle, 

 And, when I ope my lips, let no dog bark! 



Such was the warning solemnly given a credu- 

 lous public. The obvious humor of the situation 

 never for once dawned upon the actors themselves 

 or their rapt admirers. It was all a delicious 

 melodrama, save for its tragic aspects, a historico- 

 tragico-comedy, as Polonius might say. 



Long before the World War had broken out 

 the number of scientists who looked upon the com- 

 mon evolutionary origin of all plant and animal 



