Evolution of Society. TJ:> 



tion philosophy has to perform is to explain to us the cause 

 or causes of this apparent check in human progress among 



the most advanced peoples. The primary question that 

 arises in this connection is: Whether those who have been 

 of what we consider the highest and best form of human 

 society, have been deprived of any portion of their neces- 

 sary equipment for their work during that two thousand 

 years ? 



According to Evolution the most important part of the 

 animal organism is the sensorium. Little or no animal ev- 

 olution could have taken place without its aid. Mr. Spen- 

 cer says society lias no sensorium, and it would seem that 

 we need search no further to find the cause of arrested so- 

 cietary evolution. 



The human intellect is, according to Evolution, the crown- 

 ing human possession. Something more than two thousand 

 years ago, among the Greeks, it reached, so far as we know, 

 its highest elevation, but subsequently lost its position, and 

 has not yet regained it. During most of that period, in 

 the civilization to which we belong, the intellect has been 

 under a ban, and in discredit. The power that declared and 

 has enforced that ban is the so-called Christian Church. 



Evolution has cheerfully submitted to the most searching 

 criticism, doubtless with great benefit; and in view of the 

 advantage secured to those who would remove the motes 

 from the eyes of others by submitting to the removal of 

 the beams from their own eyes, the defenders of the Chris- 

 tian church ought to welcome like criticism. 



The substantial harmony of Revelation and Science, as 

 explained by Evolution, has been already suggested. There 

 is too little space left in which to marshal the features in 

 which this harmony is found. Both imply one God, or one 

 Supreme Power from whom all things proceed, to whom all 

 obedience is due, with eternal life, seonio life, life from age 

 to age, survival, and the inheritance of the earth, as the 

 common reward, return, or consequence of that obedience. 



The account we have of Creation, as an early statement 

 of the origin of things, might be directly and logically im- 

 plied by Evolution as necessary and inevitable, in view of 

 the primitive conditions of the human understanding. Evo- 

 lution finds some of its own fundamental principles of 

 society anticipated in the Decalogue ; in the Jewish ceremo- 

 nial law as the necessary means of control for a stiff-necked 



