The Foundations of Culture 
207 
But the biologist would suggest that most of these heavenly 
influences have reached the child life through the medium of an 
indirection, like rain from above upon the biological soil from 
which that child life has sprung. 
In short, if the doctrine of evolution has any value at all in 
the study of human origins (and we must conclude that it has), 
then it must be frankly and honestly accepted just as far as 
known fact demands. It must be pushed to its limit or it breaks 
down utterly; for its fundamental principle is the law of conti- 
nuity of process in nature. The interruption of the process at 
any point breaks the chain and leaves in our hand only the use- 
less fragments of discredited theories. And if evolution be one 
of the basal cosmic laws, as I believe it is, it is inconceivable that 
it should break down at the finish. 
One of the saddest chapters in the history of human thought is 
the story of the half century of conflict between theological 
intolerance and scientific narrowness following the publication 
of Darwin’s Origin of Species, This era is happily past and there 
remains now merely the task of the articulation of all knowledge 
from whatever sources derived, into a unitary scheme of things. 
Many of our ablest naturalists have been unable to see beyond 
the limits of their own fields of endeavor. Even Mr. Huxley, in 
the ripest years of his life, was inclined to draw a sharp contrast 
between what he called the cosmic process and the elements of 
social and ethical progress. He says, The cosmos works through 
the lower nature of man, not for righteousness, but against it.” 
And again, ^^The ethical progress of society depends, not on 
imitating the cosmic process, still less in running away from it, 
but in combating it.” 
Doubtless much harm has been done to sound science by ill- 
advised attempts to derive all higher social and ethical institu- 
tions directly from ^^ape and tiger methods” of evolution. But 
this ^^gladiatorial theory of existence” is not the whole of the 
cosmic process, as Huxley seems to imply. ^^The history of civili- 
zation,” he says, ^Metails the steps by which men have succeeded 
in building up an artificial world within the cosmos.” This is a 
very remarkable statement to come from the greatest champion 
of modern evolutionary theory; for by what right does he separate 
human civilization from the rest of the cosmos? This civilization 
has grown up, not apart from the process of nature, but within it, 
