PROGRESS SHOWN IN EVOLUTION
to think scientifically to suspend judgment on such questions in the absence of evidence.
What is definitely true is that the forces which we can actually detect operating in the evolution of plants and lower animals are automatic and non-conscious; whereas those operating on the human level, as we can again obviously verify for ourselves, are in part conscious and include ideals of truth, beauty, and morality. We may even say that the forces of evolution conspire to act as “a power, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness.”
Our business on this planet, then, is not to worry our heads about the possible forces which may exist behind those which we know, but to strive to mould the known material forces of dead and living matter in accord with the spiritual ideals of value which we possess.
REFERENCES
- Dendy, A. Outlines of Evolutionary Biology. London, 1923.
- Lull, R. S. Organic Evolution. New York, 1917.
- Huxley, J. S. Essays of a Biologist. London, 1923.
- Osborn, H. F. Origin and Evolution of Life. New York and London, 1918.
“Is it not the most sublime, the most stimulating conception that has ever entered human thought, this conception of progress, this new idea absolutely unknown in ancient times, a progress of which we are a part, and in which we are ourselves consciously playing a role of supreme importance?”—Robert Millikan.
"I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”—Sir Isaac Newton.
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