158 Contemporary Evolution. 



labour alone would render that impossible. Their influence 

 will only be able to be exercised indirectly by the peaceful 

 process of persuading public opinion. 



Thus it appears to the writer of this essay that the pro- 

 cess of scientific evolution, and the action of the actively 

 anti-Christian section of the community will probably 

 result in the development of a clergy and laity more 

 thoroughly, because more reflectively and self-consciously, 

 Christian and scientific in their physio-philosophical views 

 than the world has yet seen. Some of the most recent 

 developments in physiology, notably that of the nervous 

 centres, and the most modern discoveries in anthropology, 

 are, to say the least, singularly harmonious with the 

 Church's traditional teaching. Such developments and 

 such discoveries may be, and probably are, fatal to crude 

 views popularly considered religious and Christian in this 

 country such, e.g., as reciprocal action of soul and body, 

 and the existence of a primitive civilisation, in the vul- 

 gar acceptation of that phrase. But they harmonise per- 

 fectly with the traditional teaching of theologians concern- 

 ing the anima forma corporis, and homo sylvaticus, and 

 with principles laid down centuries before such discoveries 

 were made. Few religious controversial errors are more 

 common than that of supposing that a Christian doctrine 

 has been refuted, when in fact it is but a post-Cartesian 

 superstition that has been laid low, and thereby the old 

 traditional view has become the more strengthened and 



