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The Observed Order of Events
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spiritual sense, on account of its proved readiness to accept illusions as
realities, warn us against deductive theories of conduct. Putting these,
then, at least for the moment, to one side, we find ourselves face to face
with two great and indisputable facts that everywhere force themselves on
the attention and compel consideration. The one is that the whole of the
living world moves steadily and continuously towards the evolution of
races that are progressively more and more adapted to their complicated
mutual needs and to their external circumstances. The other is that the
process of evolution has been hitherto apparently carried out with, what
we should reckon in our ways of carrying out projects, great waste of
opportunity and of life, and with little if any consideration for individual
mischance. Measured by our criterion of intelligence and mercy, which
consists in the achievement of result without waste of time or opportunity,
without unnecessary pain, and with equitable allowance for pure mistake,
the process of evolution on this earth, so far as we can judge, has been
carried out neither with intelligence nor ruth, but entirely through the
routine of various sequences, commonly called “laws,” established or
necessitated we know not how.
An incalculable amount of lower life has been certainly passed through
before that human organisation was attained, of which we and our
generation are for the time the holders and transmitters. This is no mean
heritage, and I think it should be considered as a sacred trust, for, together
with man, intelligence of a, sufficiently high order to produce great results
appears, so far as we can infer from the varied records of the prehistoric
past, to have first dawned upon the tenantry of the earth. Man has already
shown his large power in the modifications he has made on the surface of
the globe, and in the distribution of plants and animals. He has cleared
such vast regions of forest that his work that way in North America alone,
during the past half century, would be visable to an observer as far off as
the moon. He has dug and drained; he has exterminated plants and
animals that were mischievous to him; he has domesticated those that
serve his purpose, and transplanted them to great distances from their
native places. Now that this new animal, man, finds himself somehow in
existence, endowed
