VI PREFACE 



years ago, when he passed from the protohuman to 

 the human stage, is necessarily repeated in the case 

 of every individual who has been, or who will be, 

 whether he opens his eyes on this earth only to close 

 them in unconsciousness that he has ever breathed, 

 or lives a hundred years. 



Man's belief in his exceptional place in nature is 

 a relic of the anthropocentric theory which assumed 

 that the universe was made for him ; the vast whole 

 being thus subordinated to an infinitesimal part! 

 The new Catechisms and the new Theologies which 

 have stirred the public mind of late, and which seek 

 by verbal legerdemain to adapt facts that cannot be 

 ignored to old hypotheses, are, essentially, founded 

 on that belief. It continues to draw artificial sup- 

 port from the testimony of a few men prominent in 

 the scientific world. Among these, Dr. Alfred Russel 

 Wallace, when appearing as witness in a recent law- 

 suit, reaffirmed his belief in the genuineness of 

 certain phenomena seen at spiritualist gatherings, 

 and, therefore, his belief in another world whence 

 the departed communicate with the living. 



To the arresting forces of delusion and bias are 

 added the hopes and fears which retard the un- 

 qualified application of the doctrine of Evolution to 

 the intellectual and spiritual nature of man. Despite 

 the fact that creeds and dogmas which, barely half 

 a century ago, were regarded as 'of great pith and 

 moment/ are now admitted to be of relative un- 

 importance, and, moreover, are discredited in the 

 judgment of unprejudiced authorities, it will take a 

 very long time to convince the majority that Evolu- 

 tion gives far more than it takes away. Even they 



