inadequate to explain the phenomena of life. But, as he points out,
there is much which is true and helpful in the theory of selection
even in regard to human life. "In all quarters there is a widespread
inclination to go back to the simplest possible beginnings, which
exhibit man closely related to the animal world, to trace back the
upward movement not to an inner impulse, but to a gradual forward
thrust produced by outward necessities, and to understand it as a mere
adaptation to environment and the conditions of life. It seems to be a
mere question of natural existence, of victory in the struggle against
rivals."[5] But he is not satisfied that such an explanation covers the
[p.27] phenomena of consciousness. If there were no more than this at
work in the higher forms of life, the things of value--the things which
have meant so much in the upward development of humanity--would be
reduced to mere adjuncts of physical existence. If mental and moral
values mean no more than this, they are simply annihilated. But the
values of life are something quite other than any physical manifestation;
and however much they are conditioned by physical changes it is
inconceivable that what is purely physical should be the sole cause of
them. Man would never have risen so far above Nature, and become able to
be conscious of his own personality and of the meaning of the world, had
there not been present from the very beginning some spiritual potency
which could receive the impressions of the external world and bind them
together into some kind of connected Whole. This connected Whole may be
no more in the beginning than a potency without any content, and its
roots may be discerned in the world below man; but without such a
potency, different in its nature from physical things, the whole meaning
of the evolution of mind and spirit is utterly unintelligible. But what
can this potency mean but something which includes within itself the
germ of that which later comes out in the form of the values which have
been gained in the life of the individual and of the race?