'Let us eat and drink; for tomorrow we die,' and the poor, 'How long, O
Lord, how long?' But the pitiless reply still is that God helps those
who help themselves. This does not mean that if Man cannot find the
remedy no remedy will be found. The power that produced Man when the
monkey was not up to the mark, can produce a higher creature than Man if
Man does not come up to the mark. What it means is that if Man is to be
saved, Man must save himself. There seems no compelling reason why he
should be saved. He is by no means an ideal creature. At his present
best many of his ways are so unpleasant that they are unmentionable in
polite society, and so painful that he is compelled to pretend that pain
is often a good. Nature holds no brief for the human experiment: it must
stand or fall by its results. If Man will not serve, Nature will try
another experiment.

What hope is there then of human improvement? According to the
Neo-Darwinists, to the Mechanists, no hope whatever, because improvement
can come only through some senseless accident which must, on the
statistical average of accidents, be presently wiped out by some other
equally senseless accident.


CREATIVE EVOLUTION

But this dismal creed does not discourage those who believe that the
impulse that produces evolution is creative. They have observed the
simple fact that the will to do anything can and does, at a certain
pitch of intensity set up by conviction of its necessity, create and
organize new tissue to do it with. To them therefore mankind is by no
means played out yet. If the weight lifter, under the trivial stimulus
of an athletic competition, can 'put up a muscle,' it seems reasonable