Lest this should be called loose assertion, it is perhaps desirable,
though dull, to run rapidly through the chief modern fashions of thought
which have this effect of stopping thought itself. Materialism and the
view of everything as a personal illusion have some such effect; for if
the mind is mechanical, thought cannot be very exciting, and if the
cosmos is unreal, there is nothing to think about. But in these cases
the effect is indirect and doubtful. In some cases it is direct and
clear; notably in the case of what is generally called evolution.

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.