Page:The age of Justinian and Theodora (Volume 1).djvu/311

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itself throughout endless time into more highly differentiated forms by its incessant appetite for material acquisition and sensuous stimulation in its environment.^[1]

Whilst the records of ages assiduously collated from every quarter of the globe exhibit the irrepressible folly of undisciplined human thought and the immeasurable credulity of ignorance, the boundless expansion of our intellectual horizon compels us to reject as irrational, the belief in an almighty and intelligent Father, who regards with equanimity the disruption of worlds, but is capable of being delighted by a choir of fulsome praise emanating from their ephemeral inhabitants.^[2] From the earliest times the infertile efforts to*

↑ That the effective origin of evolution consists in will capable of responding to a stimulus, being an essential attribute of matter, is a conclusion to which we are led necessarily by a consideration of the subject. When an amoeba protrudes a process, incited from within or without by some desire, it is already on the way to evolve itself into a higher form; and when a hygienist essays to preserve or prolong life by his studies in bacteriology, etc., in his immeasurably higher sphere, he literally does no more. The earlier evolutionists, Huxley, for example, were inclined to hold that the potency of cosmic evolution became evanescent progressively with the elaboration of purposive intelligence and social institutions, but such a view is manifestly erroneous, and would not now, I presume, be maintained by any contemporary scientists.
↑ Our means of astronomical research are not sufficiently definite to enable us to explain conclusively the appearance of previously unobserved stars (e.g. Nova Persii, 1903), but there is good reason to suppose that these new lights sometimes signal to us the catastrophe of millions of beings more or less similar to ourselves. We are, however, well acquainted with the convulsions of nature, which often bring swift destruction to thousands of those dwelling on this small globe; for instance, the Mont Pelée eruption of 1903, which claimed some 40,000 victims. It might indeed be imagined from the occurrence of such disasters that animated nature is merely a kind of surface disease of the earth, which undergoes a spontaneous cure from time to time by means of earthquakes, floods, volcanic action, etc. Certainly, if we are the only result of the activities

[1] That the effective origin of evolution consists in will capable of responding to a stimulus, being an essential attribute of matter, is a conclusion to which we are led necessarily by a consideration of the subject. When an amoeba protrudes a process, incited from within or without by some desire, it is already on the way to evolve itself into a higher form; and when a hygienist essays to preserve or prolong life by his studies in bacteriology, etc., in his immeasurably higher sphere, he literally does no more. The earlier evolutionists, Huxley, for example, were inclined to hold that the potency of cosmic evolution became evanescent progressively with the elaboration of purposive intelligence and social institutions, but such a view is manifestly erroneous, and would not now, I presume, be maintained by any contemporary scientists.

[2] Our means of astronomical research are not sufficiently definite to enable us to explain conclusively the appearance of previously unobserved stars (e.g. Nova Persii, 1903), but there is good reason to suppose that these new lights sometimes signal to us the catastrophe of millions of beings more or less similar to ourselves. We are, however, well acquainted with the convulsions of nature, which often bring swift destruction to thousands of those dwelling on this small globe; for instance, the Mont Pelée eruption of 1903, which claimed some 40,000 victims. It might indeed be imagined from the occurrence of such disasters that animated nature is merely a kind of surface disease of the earth, which undergoes a spontaneous cure from time to time by means of earthquakes, floods, volcanic action, etc. Certainly, if we are the only result of the activities

[1]

[2]