HUMANITY IN GEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE 555 



improvement of their nervous mechanism. Sensation and reaction were 

 limited to physical and material phenomena, and so were ultimately 

 subject to the inexorable rules that propelled their possessors from birth 

 to death. 



But the nervous mechanism of mankind can transcend the sensuality 

 of the animal brain. It is perhaps not too extravagant to claim that the 

 faculty of imagination is an acquisition as far advanced beyond that of 

 sensitiveness as life is beyond non-life. When an abstract conception 

 was formulated for the first time, a man was born, and a marvellous 

 new quality introduced into the world. For imagination, though 

 expressed through the medium of material and ephemeral apparatus, can 

 break the bonds of physical restraint, finding freedom and immortality 

 among the eternal verities. Imagination is the gateway to wisdom, and 

 an antidote to cleverness. 



The growth of the imaginative faculty has produced, or perhaps can 

 produce, a remarkable revolution ; for its most obvious result has been 

 a complete inversion of the technique of life. The quality of a man is 

 measured by his recognition and exposition of such qualities as honesty, 

 sympathy and unselfishness, rather than by his skill in ruthless self- 

 aggrandisement. Truth, chivalry and kindness are inconsistent with 

 the struggle for existence ; but they are recognised as desirable attributes 

 even by those under-developed minds that class them as impracticable 

 ideals. A ' realist,' who boasts that he ' faces facts,' denies his humanity 

 and takes pride in beastliness ; an ' idealist,' who faces noble thoughts, 

 is a man. 



The human race is very young, and few of its members have as yet 

 shown enough precocity to visualise, let alone to attain, the ideal that is 

 humanity. To mankind in the mass a real man is a sort of ' foreign 

 devil,' to be treated as animals treat aliens in their preserves. Prophets 

 are stoned by their generation, even though they are sentimentally 

 canonised by the next. Philosophers are ' such stuff as dreams are made 

 on,' and therefore unintelligible and irritating to animals, however clever. 

 But men can learn ; their capacity for appreciating wisdom shows that 

 its acquisition is not beyond their powers. And wisdom, which makes 

 men human, is better than the rubies of material success that may leave 

 him bestial. 



The contrast between the attitude of imaginative insight and that of 

 animal instinct is nowhere more clearly seen than in the realm of ethics 

 and morality. Every action that savours of the struggle for existence 

 is a sin, and every effort in the reverse direction is a virtue. There 

 could be no clearer illustration of the power of the imagination to see 

 beyond knowledge than the pronouncement that ' the wages of sin is 

 death,' made centuries before the laws of evolution were suspected. 



The exponents of religion, in spite of the Laodicean spirit of com- 

 promise that lessens their effectiveness, give more than lip-service to 

 the creed that man should be different from the other animals. A 

 multitude of organisations directly or indirectly sponsored by the 

 Churches attempt to translate this pious belief into practical service. 

 Science, especially in its medical branches, caters for all sorts and condi- 

 tions of men with selfless devotion. Some enactments of legislation 



