gher forms? Does
not the same reasoning hold true, only with added force? I firmly
believe that we should all unhesitatingly answer, yes, could we but
be assured that all men would everywhere and always believe that we,
men, were the results of an immediate creative act.

But why do we so strenuously object to the application to ourselves
of the theory of evolution? One or two reasons are easily seen. We
have all of us a great deal of innate snobbery, we would rather have
been born great than to have won greatness by the most heroic
struggle. But is man any less a man for having arisen from something
lower, and being in a fair way to become something higher? Certainly
not, unless I am less a man for having once been a baby. It is only
when I am unusually cross and irritable that I object to being
reminded of my infancy. But a young child does not like to be
reminded of it. He is afraid that some one will take him for a baby
still. And the snob is always desperately afraid that some one will
fail to notice what a high-born gentleman he is.

Now man can relapse into something lower than a brute; the only
genuine brute is a degenerate man. And we all recognize the strength
of tendencies urging us downward. Is not this the often unrecognized
kern of our eagerness for some mark or stamp that shall prove to all
that we are no apes, but men? It is not the pure gold that needs the
"guinea stamp." If we are men, and as we become men, we shall cease
to fear the theory of evolution. Now this is not the only, or
perhaps the greatest, objection which men feel or speak against the
theory. But I must believe that it has more weight with us than we
are willing to admit.

But some say that the theory of immediate creation and immutability
of species is the more natural and has always been accepted, while
the theory of evolution is new and very likely to be as short-lived
as many another theory which has for a time fascinated men only to
be forgotten or ridiculed.

But the idea of evolution is as old as Hindu philosophy. The old
Ionic natural philosophers were all evolutionists. So Aristophanes,
quoting from these or Hesiod concerning the origin of things, says:
"Chaos was and Night, and Erebus black, and wide Tartarus. No earth,
nor air nor sky was yet; when, in the vast bosom of Erebus (or
chaotic darkness) winged Night brought forth first of all the egg,
from which in after revolving periods sprang Eros (Love) the much
desired,