Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/114

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.
THE LIMITS OF EVOLUTION
53

with surprise, then, at seeing official teachers of the Christian Religion so strangely oblivious of real bearings as to accept — yes, sometimes proclaim — an evolution unlimited with respect to man as consistent with their faith. Plain in the doctrinal firmament of every Christian, clear like the sun in the sky, should shine the warning: Unless there is a real man underived from Nature, unless there is a spiritual or rational man independent of the natural man and legislatively sovereign over entire Nature, then the Eternal is not a person, there is no God, and our faith is vain.

Doubtless, as I have already said, planting the contrast between Christianity and evolutional philosophy in this firm way, in itself settles nothing as to which of the two is true. Indeed, responding to the impression so strongly made by later science, one might well say that the onus probandi had been shifted, and that the true form of the pressing question should be, Is Christianity consistent with evolution? But the truth can never be settled until issues are rigorously defined. And if our inquiry in this essay has a solid result, it establishes the fact that evolution cannot have the universal sweep essential to a sufficient principle of philosophy. The professed Philosophy of Evolution is not an adult philosophy, but rather a philosophy that in the course of growth has suffered an arrest of