THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXI, Issue 10258, 29 January 1894, Page 6

THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.

A CHANGED WORLD. [BY W.G.P.] No. V. The bitter controversy that rang round the “ Origin of Species” during the third quarter of the century must be fresh in the memory of most men of middle lifd. Never before had the friends of scientific’ truth had to withstand such a storm of I injury and insult. Never before had patient and long-suffering science achieved a more signal victory or inflicted so crushing a defeat on the pattizans of_ bigotry and superstition. Spencer, Darwin, Wallace, Huxley—one can count up on the' fingers the little band that battled so heroically for that idea of evolution that wos to rise above acorn and mockery and hatred, and create a new epoch in philo-. sophy. And now, after a few decades, we look out on what is veritably a changed world. In 1850 the practically universal belief was that all kinds of animals and plants bad been specially manufactured. Scientists, j as- well as theologians, took the story of Adam in the Garden of Eden as an actual : history of facts.. The imagination of man ran back easily ,to the days when the lion bounded in the Flavian amphitheatre, and he. was assured that - four or five such intervals would bring him to the origin of created things. The chronology of a few obscure Hebrew writers was accepted without a murmur. The magnificent triumphs of Hellenic philosophy, the loro of the'Persian and j Hindu looming out unsteadily from the I twilight of fable, claimed only a passing glance. Science and learning was crippled j by the trammels of dogmatic super-na-turalism as effectually as the voice of the people was stifled by a selfish ruling class. To-day the deserts of Egypt and the arid plains of Persia have yielded up the secrets of their dead past. They have revealed a civilisation as perfect as the Greek or Latin, existing at a time when the Hebrew race was yet steeped in primitive barbarism. Geology traces back the history of life on earth through hundreds of thousands of years. The old crude notions of special creation are as extinct as the moa. Thera does not exist a single scientific man who will be found to support it. Evolution is the accepted, creed, not only of every biologist, but of every person whose education makes him conversant with the facts, and competent to judge. And more than this. Religion, ever the arch-enemy of progress, has been fain to grudgingly accept the truth forced upon it by Science. When once the value of the new idea was fully recognised it spread like wildfire. The philologist took it, and showed | how languages like English and Greek and Sanskrit gradually grew up from primitive speech. The moralist took it, and showed how out of the rough wants of the savage slowly rose a code of ethics and morality. The student .of religion took it, and it led him to the rude hut where, in the olden days, lay the dead-savage chief, bemoaned by his kith and kin till weariness conquered grief; it showed how in broken sleep dreams came, and the mourners saw the dead as he had lived, and believed him verily alive, and hastened to appease him with an offering of fruit and meal; showed him, ,in fact, the birth of worship and the dread of shadow-land, and the making of the gods. Then it led him onward through the maze of myth and ritual and showed him how every type of faith was connected .with (grew out of) other and simpler ones that had; gone before. It showed him how, later on, systems of ethics get curiously mingled with ceremony and priestcraft. It sifted and sorted for him the jargon of the creeds and left him in the end here and there a pearl of greatest price. The * historian took it and made a new science of history. He began to see that nations are born, flourish, and decay, very much in the same way and for the same reasons as do men and women. The whole fabric of the coming social democracy is built upon it. The salvation of society lies in the knowledge that conscious evolution must rescue the groaning and travailing earth from the flood of human blood and tears that threatens to overwhelm it. Strange is it not that the boasted Lord of creation is its most helpless slave! Strange " that a full formed man is not only worth nothing to the world, but the world could afford him a good round sum would he simply engage to go and hang himself.” Strange where should be all the fruit of knowledge and wisdom we see only a blind raving, a passionate appetite for life, ail the dicta of science, all the warnings of prudence thrown to the dogs. The whole machinery of nature is set to preserve the healthy and the strong. Social man in his wisdom does his best to turn the world into a hugs hospital for incurables and an asylum for the insane. Well might Carlyle cry out on the Church fallen speechless and a State shrunk into a police office straitened to get its pay. But when once the meaning of evolution is grasped all this must change. The Church staggers under the awful doctrine she preaches—that human misery is an invention of Divine Providence. Well may we exclaim, “ Laissez faire —leave us alone of your guidance; such light is darker than darkness 3 -„eat your wages and sleep.” But to science comes the task of proving that human suffering is born of human ignorance. Looking back to the lessons of the past, the Evolutionist understands that man himself creates the evils that destroy him; that man in very truth is master of his fate: the future destiny of the race rests with him alone. Progress and development make the inexorable, immutable law of being; but while nature working blindly in the dark gains her object by myriad sacrifices, man working with that intelligence which is the final product of nature’s strivings can march forward without struggle, without sorrow, without sacrifice. He can replace the selection of unrestricted competition by the selection of reason. For the first time in the history of the world men are beginning to realise that the destruction of the masses of their fellows is not God’s way of making life possible for the fortunate few. Bat on the contrary science points the way to the happiness and comfort of nil. But that " all ” must be the product of reasoning selection, not the heaped-up putrid cldbris of unlimited license. " Know thyself ” was the first dictum of philosophy. _ ” Control thyself” is the last warning of science. The magnificent. conception of evolution has burst • with dazzling radiance on the scientist; it has given anew meaning to the code of the moralist. It has revealed a larger hope to the economist. But what has it done for the philosopher, for the searcher-out of the secret mystery of things ? It has swept away at once and for ever every vestige of the old mechanical theory of the universe that made all things that are exist for man alone, and he the end of all. It has revealed instead a vast rhythm of Being, flooding with its melody the uttermost oceans of space, echoing to and fro along the ringing groves of time far out into the Infinite past and future. Here and there it baa given a brief glimpse of the inscrutable powers of nature, that down in the depths, eternally eluding human vigilance, work on with never a respite. And its best gift of all is the humility of wisdom; of a truth nothing ia, but everything is being and becoming. The old order changefch, yielding place to new. The stars appear as a mere* flight of fireflies, tempest-tossed through space. Life Feerus an unsubstantial shadow, thrown transiently on the stuff of being. Yet, though science can give no answer to the eternal whence? and whither? by pointing to the universal reign of law, she gives new strength to the still, small voice that whispers perfect confidence in the sanity and wisdom of all existing things. We feel that there has never, been, a happening in nature that has not served as a stepping stone to higher things; not for a moment can we doubt that the eternal goal of all is good.