a spiritual side as well
as a material side are among the most eminent and distinguished of the
modern world. If evolution has produced the starry heavens from the
material side it has likewise evolved the human souls of our world and
others from the spiritual side. It is no more difficult to understand
the one than the other.

From the scientific viewpoint the old popular belief in the creation of
the earth and the race by an act suddenly accomplished is, of course,
preposterous. If we could know nothing back of the present moment and
were called upon to account for the world as we see it--with its cities,
its ships and railways, its cultivated fields and parks--many people who
still believe in instantaneous creation of the soul would save
themselves much mental exertion by declaring that God had made it all as
it stands for the use and entertainment of man. But we know that it is
utterly absurd to think of the world leaping into existence
instantaneously--nothing existing one day and all trains running on time
between ready-made cities the next, carrying ready-made people about. It
sounds ridiculous only because we are putting it in material terms, but
in very truth it is less ludicrous than thinking of the instantaneous
creation of the creators of cities and railways.

The idea that we are a sudden creation is only possible because of the
very vague ideas of what human souls are. The chief difficulty with the
popular notion that a human soul is as new as the body it inhabits is
that it is a vague and indefinite conception of life, and the moment we
begin to think seriously about it the weakness of the idea becomes
apparent. Such a notion has no relationship to the processes of
reasoning. How can one reason with a man who believes it possible for a
soul to spring into existence from the void? What is the use in
reasoning about the "whys and wherefores" when it settles the whole
matter to say: "God did it"?

One thing that prevents us from believing not only that millions of
souls were created in the twinkling of an eye, but also that the world
as it now is was likewise suddenly created, is that we happen to know
quite definitely the history of the world a little way into the past,
and that history affirms that the earth and all life on it is the
product of slow evolutionary growth.

The evolution of the soul places the realm of religion on a scientific
basis. Not only the origin of the soul but its development an