THE PAST EVOLUTION OF MAN 65 



ciation in one sentence more improper or lacking 

 in a sense of proportion than the assertion that a 

 falling apple and a flying star — a pippin and an 

 Arcturus — both move in virtue of the one law of 

 gravitation. 



Nevertheless, the question of man's origin is too 

 grave and too instant for us to expect that it can 

 be approached in the truly philosophic temper, save 

 by dint of some mental preparation. This Darwin, 

 as we have seen, was not above recognising ; and 

 so he refrained from discussing the question of 

 man's origin in that first treatise which was startling 

 enough without any chapters that concerned them- 

 selves with this matter. To-day, however, our 

 mental environment permits most of us — if not, 

 indeed, all of the younger generation — to face this 

 question in a spirit worthy of our own assertions 

 as to man's dignity. We are coining to see that 

 no rehearsal of the base degrees by which we did 

 ascend can in any way lessen the worth of what 

 is truly worthy in man and human life. 



It is now admitted by all biologists and, indeed, 

 by all fair-minded and competent thinkers, whether 

 specially qualified to deal with such questions or 

 no, that the human body, at any rate, is a product 

 of " aeonian evolution." Here and there a biologist, 

 such as Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace, denies that 

 the same may be said of the non-material part 

 of man ; and this denial is necessarily echoed by 

 the theologians, and also by the adherents of that 

 metaphysical theory which is known as idealism — 

 the theory which maintains that the human con- 

 sciousness is antecedent, in order of causation, to 



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