28 Evolution and Religion 



with his struggle for existence against the more danger- 

 ous of his animal foes. You have seen how man's 

 social instincts, his emotions of love and sympathy, 

 interfered with his personal, individual struggle for 

 life. Is there any necessary connection between the 

 two phenomena? The emotions of man, like the 

 reasoning powers of man, seem to have been developed 

 through struggle and sacrifice. Human love, although 

 the mainspring of most of man's lasting hopes and joys, 

 appears likewise to be the source of most of man's 

 abiding fears and sorrows. Apparently we cannot 

 have one without the other. They are part of the 

 warp and woof of life. Born among the weakest of 

 all animals, with a prolonged period of infancy, race 

 infancy as well as individual infancy, man is compelled 

 by the very conditions of his long period of compara- 

 tive helplessness to combine for mutual help against 

 the enemies of his life, in family, tribe, and nation. 

 Hence arises the sentiment of dependence on others, 

 of protection over others, of race solidarity, of sym- 

 pathy, of love; qualities which, as you have seen, 

 eventually give him the mastery over the lower animals 

 with their inferior sense of the same qualities developed 

 through their shorter term of helplessness. But the 

 law of mortality, which smites down the individual and 

 yet spares the family, tribe, nation, or race, keeps 

 forcing itself persistently upon man's attention. It 

 constantly invades this sentiment of love which has 

 been naturally evolved through family, tribal, and 

 national life, thus arresting man's attention to survival 



