n's acquiring immortal life, than in his acquiring the
erect posture and articulate speech." [4]

{230}

And the reasonableness of this view grows the clearer to us the more we
realise the purposive character of the evolutionary process. The
unmistakeable purpose of that process is the production of the higher
from the lower; all through the ages the vast design works itself out
in a ceaseless ascending movement, the theme expanding, its meaning
becoming more apparent. Then, when a certain point in this development
has been reached, evolution takes a direction such as no one could have
forecast: "its operation upon the physical frame is diverted to the
mind, the centre of interest transferred from the outward organism to
the inner forces of which it is the vehicle"--and man becomes a living
soul. Since, then, it has taken all these myriad ages, all this
immense expenditure of planning and energy, to produce what is
incontestably the crowning work of creation on this globe, must we not
say that this was the issue towards which the whole process was set in
motion from the very beginning? And if this is so, are we to think
that at the end, when its carefully, patiently wrought-out purpose has
been attained, this process suddenly turns irrational, and hands over
its last and highest product to destruction? As has been well said,
"To suppose that what has been evolved at such cost will suddenly
collapse, is to suppose that the whole scheme of things is
self-stultifying"; and for such a supposition we {231} see not only no
necessity, but no shadow of warrant.

The question is reduced to this: are man's highest spiritual qualities,
into the production of which all this creative energy has gone, to
disappear with the rest? Has all this work been done for nothing? Is
it all ephemeral, all a bubble that bursts, a vision that fades? Are
we to regard the Creator's work as like that of a child, who builds
houses out of blocks, just for the pleasure of knocking them down? For
aught that science can tell us, it may be so, but I can see no good
reason for believing any such thing . . . The more thoroughly we
comprehend that process of evolution by which things have come to be
what they are, the more we are likely to feel that to deny the
everlasting persistence of the spiritual element in man is to rob the
whole process of its meaning. It goes far towards putting us to
permanent intellectual confusion, and I do not see