Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/115

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54
ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY

development. The result of our inquiry here, in making this plain, goes far toward settling the issue between such philosophy and the Christian belief in personality. Does it not in fact settle it against evolutionism, and in favour of the older and higher view? Fulfilled philosophy vindicates our faith in the Personality of the Eternal Ideal, in the reality of God, by vindicating the reality of man the Mind, and exhibiting his legislative relation to Nature and thence to evolution. It thus secures a stable footing for freedom, and for immortality with worth, and thereby for the existence of the Living God who is Love indeed, because the Inspirer of an endless progress in moral freedom.

Let men of science keep the method of science within the limits of science; let their readers, at all events, beware to do so. Within these limits there is complete compatibility of science with religion, and forever will be. Let science say its untrammelled say upon man the physical, the physiological, or the experimentally psychological; upon man the body and man the sensory consciousness, — these are all doubtless under the law of evolution issuing from man the Rational Soul. But let not science contrive its own destruction by venturing to lay profane hands, vain for explanation, on that sacred human nature which is its very spring and authorising source. And let religion stay itself on the sover-