RECENT POETRY AND EMOTIONALIZING OF EVOLUTION 1 3 



are not even concerned with the fact that his optimistic deism may be 

 more comfortable than the unfainting scepticism of Mr. Watson. 

 For us the significant feature is that Mr. PhilHps has taken evolution 

 to his heart, and unshrinkingly withal. He finds therein not merely 

 a reasonable working hypothesis but an accepted manifestation of 

 the ways of God toward man, which he will sing in gladness and 

 hope. 



Thus far I have kept before my eyes the general upward march 

 of evolution; but there are many parts almost as attractive as the 

 whole. One of these, for instance, would be the evolution of reHgion, 

 a subject that immediately sets some of Swinburne's lines ringing in our 

 ears. Others have formed felicitous themes for Mr. Kipling's 

 pen, which is thoroughly up to date, whatever else it may or may 

 not be. 



But having deliberately fenced myself off from these, I may turn 

 to such a topic as the outworking of ancestral influences in our person- 

 alities. The recapitulation of the race's experience in the individual — 

 a theory now rejoicing in the inspiriting description of "onto-phylo- 

 genetic parallelism" — is the larger view, of which heredity from less 

 remote ancestors is a more familiar phase. Through your eyes and 

 mine are looking, not merely you and I, but our thousands of ancestors. 

 From our earliest years we are ourselves by virtue of being our fore- 

 fathers as well ; in later Hf e it is even possible to confuse the results of 

 our individual experiences with the transmitted heritage. Not a few 

 poets have seen the possibilities of the theme; but I am incHned to 

 believe that among recent writers Mr. Phillips has given it the finest 

 expression. "Thoughts in a Meadow, "^ in my respectful judgment, is 

 one of the best things the author of "Marpessa" has yet written; and 

 he has already given us not a few poems for which our literature is 

 really richer. 



The thread runs like this: The never-absent sadness of mortals, 

 felt even in the Maytime meadow, might have been avoided if the 

 soul had wakened on a world just newly created, if it were the first 

 that had breathed. 



» Ibid., pp. 91-93, 1907. 



