Mabch 17, 1911] 



SCIENCE 



439 



and vitalism will probably appear not only 

 harsh but ridiculous at first sight. The 

 idea, it will be said, that many of the very 

 foremost biologists of this hour are kin- 

 dred, doetrinally, to magicians and occul- 

 tists, is too absurd to merit consideration. 

 To those who would dispose of the idea in 

 this summary fashion because of a certain 

 sense of injustice or of hurt pride, I would 

 earnestly put the question, Are we truly 

 evolutionists or are we not ? 



I am convinced that many of us, even 

 biologists, who have never hesitated to ac- 

 cept evolution, do not see and feel its 

 mighty importance when it comes to hu- 

 man traits that are particular and per- 

 sonal. Biologists more perhaps than other 

 class need the regenerating touch of Berg- 

 son's "L 'Evolution Creatrice. " We need 

 to recognize as we never have that evolu- 

 tion means indeed something new coming 

 on every moment; and that since the new 

 grows out of the old it can be neither 

 wholly different from nor wholly alike that 

 from which it came. We need further to 

 see the vital meaning of the extreme prob- 

 ability in the light of myriad facts now 

 constituting our biological knowledge that 

 evolution is truly a universal principle; 

 that is, that there is not a trait, physical or 

 spiritual, of ours, that is wholly finished off 

 and at a standstill. We are every one of 

 us in every atom of our existence and at 

 every instant on the move to some extent, 

 up or down, forward or backward. 



Where did aU our science — not merely 

 as to its formulation but as to its physical 

 and psychical substratum, come from? 

 Only a few thousand years ago our race 

 not only did not possess a great body of 

 knowledge of the world, but it was not 

 scientific, as we now understand the term, 

 either in mode of observing and thinking 

 or in desire. Did our talent for science 

 come to us as a gift from heaven, or has it 



grown by slow degrees from hundreds of 

 impulses and influences spread over thou- 

 sands upon thousands of years and over 

 many lands and seas? 



The theoretical answer to the question is 

 on the lips of every one in an audience like 

 this. Our talents came by the way of 

 gradual growth, of evolution. Practically, 

 though, we treat our knowledge much as 

 did our forebears who believed their gifts 

 came direct from heaven. Alongside this 

 question let us ask another: What has be- 

 come of all the mysticism, the fetishism, 

 the magic, the animism, the divination, and 

 the rest, so characteristic of every race and 

 class of men outside of civilization ? Is it 

 reasonable, in the light of what we know 

 about the course and laws of evolution to 

 suppose that those psychical or other quali- 

 ties that made our ancestors for generation 

 after generation mystics should have left 

 no trace in peoples under civilization ex- 

 cepting in the comparatively few profes- 

 sional mediums, clairvoyants and persons 

 noted for their ignorance and superstition ? 

 Could we reasonably expect any modern 

 whatever to be wholly cut off from any 

 trait that was universal and of simply tre- 

 mendous import in all his early ancestors? 



I insist that there is a mighty vein of 

 what makes mystics in the nature of every 

 normal man and woman no matter how 

 elevated a level of culture, of intellectual 

 development he has reached. I insist fur- 

 ther that we have not the slightest ground 

 in facts at our command for supposing this 

 element in man's nature can be eradicated 

 and leave him civilized. The truth is that 

 just so far as man feels or has sentiment, 

 imagination, fancy, at all, by just so much 

 is he mystically inclined. It is his intel- 

 lect, his reason, alone that saves him from 

 being a mystic indeed; and just as sure as 

 any element of pure fancifulness gets into 

 the essentials of a scientific, that is gen- 



