MODERN EVOLUTION. 



245 



note that animals, other than men, and even inani- 

 mate objects, have spirits which differ not at all in 

 kind from those of men." 



The importance of the evidence gathered by an- 

 thropology in support of man's inclusion in the gen- 

 eral theory of evolution is ever becoming more mani- 

 fest. For it has brought witness to continuity in or- 

 ganic development at the point where a break has 

 been assumed, and driven home the fact that if 

 Evolution operates anywhere, it operates everywhere. 

 And operates, too, in such a way that every part co- 

 operates in the discharge of a universal process. 

 Hence it meets the divisions which mark opposition 

 to it by the transcendent power of unity. 



Until the past half-century, man excepted him- 

 self, save in crude and superficial fashion, from that 

 investigation which, for long periods, he has made 

 into the earth beneath him and the heavens above 

 him. This tardy inquiry into the history of his own 

 kind, and its place in the order and succession of life, 

 as well as its relation to the lower animals, between 

 whom and itself, as has been shown, the barbaric 

 mind sees much in common, is due, so far as Chris- 

 tendom is concerned (and the like cause applies, 

 mutatis mutandis, in non-Christian civilized communi- 

 ties), to the subjection of the intellect to pre-con- 

 ceived theories based on the authority accorded to 

 ancient legends about man. These legends, invested 

 with the sanctity with which time endows the past, 

 finally became integral parts of sacred literatures, to 



