principles of common-sense whereby our everyday lives are successfully
guided; and he is very apt to smile at the methods of those people who,
taking hold of the question at the wrong end, begin by arguing about all
manner of fancied consequences. For his knowledge of the history of
human thinking assures him that such methods have through all past time
proved barren of aught save strife, while his own bold yet humble method
is the only one through which truth has ever been elicited. To pursue
unflinchingly the methods of science requires dauntless courage and a
faith that nothing can shake. Such courage and such loyalty to nature
brings its own reward. For when once the formidable theory is really
understood, when once its implications are properly unfolded, it is seen
to have no such logical consequences as were at first ascribed to it. As
with the Copernican astronomy, so with the Darwinian biology, we rise to
a higher view of the workings of God and of the nature of Man than was
ever attainable before. So far from degrading Humanity, or putting it on
a level with the animal world in general, the Darwinian theory shows us
distinctly for the first time how the creation and the perfecting of Man
is the goal toward which Nature's work has all the while been tending.
It enlarges tenfold the significance of human life, places it upon even
a loftier eminence than poets or prophets have imagined, and makes it
seem more than ever the chief object of that creative activity which is
manifested in the physical universe.




III.

On the Earth there will never be a Higher Creature than Man.