Evolution is a good example of that modern intelligence which,
if it destroys anything, destroys itself. Evolution is either
an innocent scientific description of how certain earthly things
came about; or, if it is anything more than this, it is an attack
upon thought itself. If evolution destroys anything, it does not
destroy religion but rationalism. If evolution simply means that
a positive thing called an ape turned very slowly into a positive
thing called a man, then it is stingless for the most orthodox;
for a personal God might just as well do things slowly as quickly,
especially if, like the Christian God, he were outside time.
But if it means anything more, it means that there is no such
thing as an ape to change, and no such thing as a man for him
to change into. It means that there is no such thing as a thing.
At best, there is only one thing, and that is a flux of everything
and anything. This is an attack not upon the faith, but upon
the mind; you cannot think if there are no things to think about.
You cannot think if you are not separate from the subject of thought.
Descartes said, "I think; therefore I am." The philosophic evolutionist
reverses and negatives the epigram. He says, "I am not; therefore I
cannot think."

Then there is the opposite attack on thought: that urged by
Mr. H.G.Wells when he insists that every separate thing is "unique,"
and there are no categories at all. This also is merely destructive.
Thinking means connecting things, and stops if they cannot be connected.
It need hardly be said that this scepticism forbidding thought
necessarily forbids speech; a man cannot open his mouth without
contradicting it. Thus when Mr. Wells says (as he did somewhere),
"All chairs are quite different," he utters not merely a misstatement,
but a contradiction in terms. If all chairs were quite different,