EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



overlaid with hundreds of trivial notions respect- 

 ing dogma and ritual that his perception of the 

 great central truths is obscure. These great 

 central truths, indeed, need to be clothed in a 

 dress of little rites and superstitions, in order to 

 take hold of his dull and untrained intelligence. 

 But, in proportion as men become more civi- 

 lized, and learn to think more accurately, and to 

 take wider views of life, just so do they come 

 to value the essential truths of religion more 

 highly, while they attach less and less importance 

 to superficial details. 



Having thus seen what is meant by the es- 

 sential truths of religion, it is very easy to see 

 what the attitude of the doctrine of evolution is 

 toward these essential truths. It asserts and re- 

 iterates them both ; and it asserts them not as 

 dogmas handed down to us by priestly tradition, 

 not as mysterious intuitive convictions of which 

 we can render no intelligible account to our- 

 selves, but as scientific truths concerning the 

 innermost constitution of the universe, truths 

 that have been disclosed by observation and re- 

 flection, like other scientific truths, and that ac- 

 cordingly harmonize naturally and easily with 

 the whole body of our knowledge. The doctrine 

 of evolution asserts, as the widest and deepest 

 truth which the study of nature can disclose to 

 us, that there exists a Power to which no limit 

 in time or space is conceivable, and that all the 

 274 



