iv MODERN EVOLUTION 161 



deducible from the theory of Evolution is fatal to 

 belief in the supernatural. When we say the super- 

 natural, we mean that great body of assumptions out 

 of which are constructed all theologies, the essential 

 element in these being the intimate relation between 

 spiritual beings, of whom certain qualities are predi- 

 cated, and man. These beings have no longer any 

 place in the effective belief of intelligent and unpre- 

 judiced men, because they are found to have no 

 correspondence with the ascertained operations of 

 nature. 



2. Herbert Spencer 



Contact with many ' sorts and conditions of men ' 

 brings home the need of ceaselessly dinning into 

 their ears the fact that Darwin s theory deals only 

 with the evolution of plants and animals from a 

 common ancestry. It is not concerned with the origin 

 of life itself ] nor with those conditions preceding life 

 which are covered by the general term> Inorganic 

 Evolution. Neither does Darwin's theory deal with 

 the co-ordinated actions of individuals in social groups 

 to whose manifold orders and developments Mr. 

 Spencer lias given the term Super-organic Evolution. 



We have seen that speculation about the universe 

 had its rise in Ionia. After centuries of discourage- 

 ment, prohibition, and, sometimes, actual persecution, 

 it was revived, to advance without further serious 

 arrest, some three hundred years ago. A survey of 

 the history of philosophies of the origin of the cosmos 

 from the time of the renascence of enquiry, shows 

 that the great Immanuel Kant has not had his due. 

 As remarked already, he appears to have been the 



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