DARWIN'S INFLUENCE UPON PHILOSOPHY 91 



and woof. There is not, I think, an instance of any large idea about 

 the world being independently generated by religion. However much 

 the ideas that rose up like armed men against Darwinism owed their 

 intensity to religious associations, their origin and meaning are to be 

 sought elsewhere. 



II 



Few words in our language foreshorten intellectual history as does 

 the word species. The Greeks in initiating the intellectual life of 

 Europe, were impressed by characteristic traits of the life of plants 

 and animals; so impressed indeed that they made these traits the 

 key to defining nature and to explaining mind and society. And 

 truly life is so wonderful that a seemingly successful reading of its 

 mystery might well lead men to believe that the key to the secrets of 

 heaven and earth was in their hands. The Greek rendering of this 

 mystery, the Greek formulation of the aim and standard of knowledge, 

 was in the course of time embodied in the word species and controlled 

 philosophy for two thousand years. To understand the intellectual 

 face-about expressed in the phrase " Origin of Species," we must, then, 

 understand the long dominant idea against which it was a protest. 



Consider how men were impressed by the facts of life. Their eyes 

 fell upon certain things slight in bulk, and frail in structure. To every 

 appearance, these perceived things were inert and passive. Suddenly, 

 under certain circumstances, these things — henceforth known as seeds 

 or eggs or germs — begin to change, to change rapidly in size, form 

 and qualities. Eapid and extensive changes occur, however, in many 

 things — as when wood is touched by fire. But the changes" in the 

 living thing are orderly; they are cumulative; they tend constantly in 

 one direction; they do not, like other changes, destroy or consume, or 

 pass fruitless into wandering flux; they realize and fulfil. Each 

 successive stage, no matter how unlike its predecessor, preserves its 

 net effect and also prepares the way for a fuller activity on the part of 

 its successor. In living beings changes do not happen as they seem 

 to elsewhere, any which way ; the earlier changes are regulated in view 

 of later results. This progressive organization does not cease till 

 there is achieved a true final term, a reAos, a completed, perfected end. 

 This final form exercises in turn a plenitude of functions, not the 

 least noteworthy of which is production of germs like those from 

 which it took its own origin, germs capable of the same cycle of self- 

 fulfilling activity. 



But the whole miraculous tale is not yet told. The same drama is 

 enacted to the same destiny in countless myriads of individuals' so 

 sundered in time, so severed in space, that they have no opportunity for 

 mutual consultation and no means of interaction. As an old writer 



