THE PHILOSOPHY OF EVOLUTION 9 



in the whole. But, fortunately, all the vices, foibles, and 

 passions of human nature tend in quite the opposite direc- 

 tion. Caprice and whim and partiality do not need to be 

 encouraged. We run but little risk of exchanging these 

 congenital defects for rigid method and relentless logic. 

 Again, there is no reason why students who add interest to 

 their labours by the inspiration of this idea an idea which 

 infuses life into every matter of inquiry should therefore 

 lose their faculty of judgment. He must be singularly stupid 

 who does not perceive the immeasurable distance between 

 Greene and Shakespeare, Shakespeare and Davenant, because 

 he has demonstrated that Greene was necessary to the evolu- 

 tion of Shakespeare, and that Davenant was his inevitable 

 successor. Such a man, if he writes a dull book under the 

 influence of Evolutionary ideas, would assuredly have written 

 a still duller one without them. 



I pass now to that more difficult and delicate portion of 

 my theme which concerns the higher region of religion, 

 metaphysic, and morality. That remoulding and recasting 

 process, which is for ever going forward in the intellectual 

 no less than the corporeal organism, has been committed, 

 for this century at least, to the custody of what is roughly 

 termed Science. 



The tendency of scientific ideas, in so far as these are 

 remoulding thought in those high regions, is to spiritualise 

 religion, to dissipate the materialistic associations which 

 environ theology in its mythological stages, and to emanci- 

 pate the individual from egotism in the presence of that 

 universal Being of which he is a part, and to the manifesta- 

 tion of which he contributes. 



When Cleanthes, the Stoic, wrote the prayer which I will 

 presently translate, he projected a religion commensurate 

 with modern Science. ' Lead Thou me, Zeus,' he prayed, 

 ' and thou world's Law, whithersoever I am by you appointed 

 to go ; for I will follow unreluctant ; and yet should I refuse, 



