364 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



guides to action. But in new conditions neither con- 

 ventionality nor impulse nor desire will suffice. He 

 must know what is about him in order that he may know 

 what he is doing. He must know what he is doing in 

 order to do anything effectively. Ignorant action is 

 more dangerous than no action at all. The " sealed 

 orders " under which live the lower animals and our 

 " brother organisms the plants " are in a measure inade- 

 quate for man. With the power of movement and the 

 " knowledge of good and evil," he has no choice but to 

 accept the conditions. He must shape 

 his own life. He must mould his ideals 

 into actuality. And thus it comes that 

 there is " no alleviation for the sufferings of man ex- 

 cept through absolute veracity of thought and action, 

 and the resolute facing of the world as it is." 



And thus it comes also that it is well for man not 



" to pretend to know or to believe what he really does 



not know or believe." We may play at 



Subordination philosophy, if we have pleasure in doing 



of impulses. * " _ , . 



so. We may find intellectual strength 



through exercise of the mind, even on its own products. 

 But we must guide our lives by science. The appetites, 

 impulses, passions, illusions, if you choose, which have 

 proved safe in the past development of life, science 

 would not destroy. But they must be subordinate to 

 the will and the intellect. And this subordination of 

 the lower to the higher motives in life is the vital fact 

 of human evolution, as it has been the ideal of those 

 who in the name of religion have striven worthily for 

 man's spiritual advancement. 



As knowledge is in its essence only a guide to ac- 

 tion, and as knowledge, being human, can be approxi- 

 mate only, not reality, but a movement toward reality, 

 we are brought to the famous words of Lessing : 



