Evolution : popular lectures before the Brooklyn Ethical Association.

Date:
1893
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Evolution : popular lectures before the Brooklyn Ethical Association. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    PREFACE. Evolution : The word is in every mouth. A vague, often an incorrect conception of its meaning in the field of biology and with reference to the origin of Man, has reached the popular mind, and stirred it to further investigation and inquiry. Even in its biological aspects, the doctrine of Evolution is seen to touch the great problems of religion and philosophy — of origin and destiny. But it is beginning to be understood that not alone as an explana- tion of the method whereby living forms have been produced and developed is this doctrine alive with human interest and pregnant with important influences upon human thought and human wel- fare. Evolution, reaching backward, takes hold upon the great cosmic problems of the birth and growth of worlds, the nature of Matter and Spirit, the relation of the phenomenal Universe to its efficient Cause. Reaching forward, it touches and illuminates the pressing problems of ethics and sociology, offering to the careful student wise instruction for his guidance in all the practical affairs of life. Evolution, it is said, is not a philosophy, it is not a religion — “ it is only a method.” But it is a universal method ; the discov- ery and formulation of its law as applied to all the processes of in- organic, organic, social and intellectual development, constitutes the widest generalization of science. It cannot be otherwise, therefore, than that its acceptance should necessitate a reconsid- eration of the fundamental problems of philosophy and religion, as well as a reconstruction of our notions in regard to the perma- nence of species and the origin of human life. As tersely defined by Professor Le Conte, “Evolution is continuous, progressive change, according to certain laws, and by means of resident forces.” In the place of miracle it posits law ; instead of creation ex nihilo, it affirms an orderly development resulting from the action of eter- nally-existent forces ; for the old conception of a mechanical uni- verse set in motion by a non-resident Creator, it substitutes that of a vital universe, the “resident forces” of which are symbols of a Power that is at once immanent and transcendent,—revealed in all its relations to our human consciousness, but by the very