320 THE ETHICAL KINSHIP 



live littleness of his world by discovering that 

 the earth, which had up to that time been sup- 

 posed to be the centre and capital of cosmos, is 

 in reality a satellite of the sun. This heliocentric 

 discovery was hard on human conceit, for it was the 

 first broad hint man had thus far received of his true 

 dimensions. The doctrine of evolution has had, 

 and is having, and is destined to continue to have, 

 a similarly correcting effect on the naturally narrow 

 conceptions of men. It tends to fry the conceit 

 out of us. It has been impossible since Darwin 

 for any sane and honest man to go around brag- 

 ging about having been ' made in the image of his 

 maker,' or to successfully lay claim to a more 

 honourable origin than the rest of the creatures of 

 the earth. And if men had accepted the logical 

 consequences of Darwin's teachings, the world 

 would not to-day a half-century after his reve- 

 lation be filled with practices which find their 

 only support and justification in out-of-date 

 traditions. But logical consequences, as Huxley 

 observes, are the official scarecrows of that large 

 and prolific class of defectives usually known as 

 fools. The doctrine of evolution is accepted in 

 one form or another by practically all who think. 

 It is taught even in school primers. But while 

 the biology of evolution is scarcely any longer 

 questioned, the psychology and ethics of the Dar- 

 winian revelation, though following from the same 

 premises, and almost as inevitably, are yet to be 

 generally realised. Darwin's revelation, like every 

 other revelation that has come to the world, is 



