DARWINISM AND HISTORY.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1036, 27 January 1911, Page 6

DARWINISM AND HISTORY.

-«- — IMPERIALISM AND' NATIONALISM. An address was given by Professor G. C. Heiwerson, M.A., of Aueiaide, at tho recent hcicnco Congress at Sydney in the Great Hall of tne University, It was a large and intensely intereoted audience that heard him, his subject being the mutation theory of evolution in history. Professor ilassou (president) occupied the chair, and Lord Cnclmsiord was amongst tnose present. Tho point of ;the lecturer's discourse' was that while physical evolution is one tiling, evolution of human life and affairs is another and very different thing. Arguing from this basis, he made out nis case iu ; fino oratorical style. The distinctions between animals and plants and man wero clear enough, and account must bo taken of man's, self-consciousness and power of reflection', and his power of regulating his life by reference ,to ideals. Because of these, evolution in human affairs frequently camo by sudden leaps. • In religious revivals 'this..,rwas.marked. As with individuals so with the history of nations, and thus our statesmen had arrived at _. conclusions fundamentally-different from'.those held up to within recent years relative to the conception of Empire. Wo now had an association; of. free Commonwealths, as opposed to one sovereign and several subordinate States. Whatever the machinery ultimately used for uniting the Empire it must bp machinery working in harmony with the rising sense of nationality that prevailed in the Dominions. Hitherto nationality and Empire had been incompatible. But thero had been a fundamental change, and the belief now favoured was that nationality was a necessary stage of the development of Imperial unity. The more closely constitutional history was looked at the nioro fully it was realised that tho current, theory of evolution was inadequato to explain it. In his volumes on "The Evolution ot Religion," Edward Caird, the late master of Balliol 'College, Oxford, had taken a general' survey of the history of mankind, and the argument throughout was that the evolution of man's spiritual life admitted of qualitative as well as quantitative difference, and instead'of there being a steady progression from simple to more'complex forms, he continually .affirmed that the laws which were ap r plicablo 'to one stage of man's spiritual development may not be, and usually wero not, applicable to another and later stage.* Throughout the "Evolution of Religion" it was made quite clear that man was not only a part of the- organic world, but that he had spiritual endowments, which qualified him for citizenship in "a kingdom that is not of, this world." . ■"

Here in all probability was to be found the explanation of that protracted and sometimes bitter controversy between science and religion since the publication of tho "Origin of Species" in 1859. I'ew people would care to deny that the champions of the organic theory of evolution has rendered invaluable service, not only to science, but oven to religion. They had challenged and laid low many a doctrino that was little better than a superstition; they had forced religious men to discriminate- more carefully.between what is metaphorically and what is literally true; iviul they had converted many an ignorant dogmatist into an earnest and reasonable- seeker after truth. But it must not bo imagined that victory hntt been all on one side. By no means. The evidence, of poetry, history, philosophy, and reasoning religion was stronger than it .ever was. in support of tho essential differences. between organic and human life-

It would appear from recent pronouncements that sorao of- the leading thinkers in tho medical and biological -professions were disposed to reckon'with the inlluence of mind over body more frankly and fully than they had done hitherto.'That was the right way to a clearer recognition of the distinction between tho organic and the human world. The further scientists travelled in that direction the more obvious it would become that it was tho mutation rather than the current theory of evolution that was applicable to tho development of human life and affairs. (Applause.)