94 THE THRESHOLD OF EVOLUTION 



and are as yet only able to interpret them in a very imperfect 

 manner ; but imperfect as this may be, it is already becoming 

 the highest objective of enlightened theological thought that the 

 world has yet attained to. 



It is in this sense that to make my remarks more impres- 

 sive I am constrained occasionally to express sin, murder and 

 cannibalism as virtues, because if the reader is to grasp the 

 true influences of the great lesson, that evolution is a past- 

 master of the ethics of revelation, he must realise that in 

 evolution, as in individual life, it is the sins of youth that 

 make the virtues of old age. Now to return to the age we are 

 reviewing, the age of Adam and Eve, which presumably covers 

 thousands of years, man's next great advancement was when 

 Eve listened to the voice of the tempter, the interpretation of 

 which I take to mean when mankind learned from the mammoth 

 reptiles that there was superior nutriment in meat food, and so 

 became a carnivorous instead of a vegetarian ape, and so unlike 

 the rest of the ape family " ate of the forbidden fruit " and 

 became a cannibal and a murderer to which great advancement 

 in the art of sinning, which was to for ever raise him above 

 the rest of the animal kingdom, he soon added the higher 

 accomplishment of animal murder ; that is to say, the love of 

 killing for excitement instead of necessity. 



Now the Almighty, being the Creator, can justify any 

 act that he considers necessary to carry out his scheme of 

 evolution, and it is only pride on our part to criticise the laws 

 he lays down, one of which is that each evolution must attain 

 perfection in its particular line of advancement before it will 

 be permitted to evolve a more perfect evolution. So we find 

 that the vice of yesterday must be perfected before it can 

 become the virtue of to-morrow. That is why at the age of 

 evolution we are now considering I talk of murder and canni- 

 balism as virtues, because they were the virtues of the age, in 

 just the same way as War, cunning and selfishness and avari- 

 cious greed are the great virtues of the last four days of the 

 Epoch of Hope and have made it possible to evolve Religions, 

 Empires, and Commerce. But these virtues of the past are 

 to be the crimes of to-morrow just as much as murder, robbery 

 and cannibalism are accounted crimes to-day, for when to- 

 morrow comes and we start to evolve a soul we must, as St. 

 Paul says, " discard the old nature, and put on the new man," 



