6 INTRODUCTORY 



But the proofs are too strong for us. The straiter 

 Darwinists would have us believe that the varia- 

 tions which have brought about this marvellous 

 development have been guided by no directing 

 impulse, have not even been stimulated by 

 environment or experience, but are spontaneous 

 random fluctuations which, when useful, have been 

 preserved by the struggle for life. This theory is 

 non-proven, and we may disbelieve it if we please. 

 But as a process, and without implication as to 

 causes, evolution holds the ground as an explana- 

 tion of the origin of man, and of the animals that 

 are below him. We must remember that, from 

 the physical point of view, the gulf between man 

 and the monkey is after all not so wide as that 

 between the monkey and the squirrel. 



Great as is the contrast between man and the 

 brutes, more striking still is man's inconsistency 

 with his natural surroundings. He has grown up 

 in a world that is unmoral, wasteful, and cruel a 

 world in which life feeds upon lite, in which myriads 

 are born without chance of survival, in which 

 justice and mercy are trampled down by the 

 fierceness of the struggle for existence. He has 

 taken some colour from his surroundings : he has 

 learnt his lesson in cruelty and selfishness nay, 

 in some respects he seems more bloodthirsty than 

 the brutes, for of them few kill their own kind 

 except under the spur of hunger. But, in other 

 moods, he exhibits the strangest paradoxes. He 

 rises from the feet of Nature in protest against 

 her teaching. In an arena of brutish struggling 

 he holds up ideals of self-denial, kindliness, justice, 

 and mercy : he gathers notions of Art from the 

 world's kaleidoscopic exhibition of forms and 

 colours ; against Nature herself he appeals to 

 supernatural forces which he seems dimly to 

 descry through the darkness of her forests, 



