JOURNAL AND PROCEEDINGS. 21 
Time demands, however, that we should now call your 
attention to what we have selected as the subject proper of our 
evening’sremarks. It has been truly said that the present phase 
of scientific research is markedly eclectic. The student of 
to-day finds that truth will usually be found on both sides of 
our great scientific and philosophic controversies—that no 
great doctrine is likely to be universally false or universally 
true. Knowing this, the eclectic philosopher does not set 
himself in violent opposition with the claims of opposing sects, 
but rather examines all in order to find some rational ground 
for the reconciliation of their opposing claims. It is with this 
spirit that I would ask you for a few moments to consider 
with me the subject of Evolution and Idealism. 
On the onset permit me to state that I do not purpose to 
enter into any controversy concerning the general facts of 
evolution. As a student of mental philosophy, I must accept 
the general facts which the evolutionary biologist postulates as 
essential to the rational explanation of the facts and principles 
of his own science. Accepting these, however, I still claim 
the right to investigate whether the theory will in itself fur- 
nish an adequate explanation of the nature and origin of life— 
and more particularly of self-conscious life. Let us begin with 
a brief statement of what may be considered the leading prin- 
ciples of evolution, as furnished by the biologist himself. 
Beginning with the individual, the biologist finds that 
individual man passes in embryo through certain stages which 
may actually be found to exist in the animal series. Again in 
psychic or mental development, he finds the infant to begin, 
in prenatal experience, with certain impulses and sensations 
which proceed through perception, memory, imagination and 
volition into self-conscious and spiritual freedom. From this 
the biologist sees by analogy, an explanation for the origin of 
the organic and spiritual man out of the lower types. If the 
individual, so the race may be supposed to have had a similar 
series in its organic and conscious development. 
Accepting the principle as laid down, and granting that 
organisms do not spring into existence without antecedent 
