Love, the Law of Life

I do not know who first believed in the theory of evolution. It was probably not Darwin, or Wallace, or Mendel. In accepting evolution we accept more than the mere theories of variation, selection, and the survival of the fittest. Belief in evolution is faith in the progressive entrance into an ever-expanding freedom— from seed to shoot, bud to flower, from anthropoid to human, from man to son of God. What a courageous faith! The belief that there is a direct line of evolution from amceba to man is a more daring and romantic faith than the belief in the myth of a Creator making something out of nothing.

I will not inquire how the amceba became man. If it is said it became man through the process of Nature, the explanation is simple: the amceba is cleverer than a bungling god. Or if it is said that it developed by chance, then there never was such orderly chance. Or, again, if.it is said that it developed mechanically, then no device ever equaled this performance of finding the way through complicated difficulties and taking part in the activity of the life of freedom. There is not a more courageous faith than this! The simple, present-day theories all arose from belief in evolution; but believing the miracle of one developing the strength of ten, of lifeless matter evolving up to human freedom, is believing the greatest of all miracles.

Although there are those who doubt the Virgin Birth and the Resurrection, there is none among scientists who doubts the complicated miracle of the amceba becoming man. Modern scientific faith is too strong to doubt it.

Belief in evolution is a bolder faith than Abraham’s belief in the Promised Land. His land was the lean country of Palestine; the Promised Land of evolution is growth from electron to Divinity. The doctrine of evolution carries to completion the revelation which begins in Genesis. Modern science has done away with the first conception of God, and has constructed the ultimate God.

But wherein is the difference between the first and the final God?

What is it that in the beginning can be non-existent, and in the end existent? If one thinks of the whole cosmos as an art, a creation, it is possible to answer the question. Is the cosmos, then, itself an art? Who is the artist, and what does he create? If there be those who hold that God, by the principle of evolution, causes man to develop from electrons, and for His own glory is creating within the individual a new God, then they may hold that He is ‘exerting Himself to no purpose. It might be thought rather superfluous for God to create a God. Or, in the end, it may be thought that the cosmos is God’s diversion, or God’s looking-glass— that God is reflecting His image for His own sake; and that the process of reflecting His image (regarded as evolutionary history) has required an excessively long period of time.

Nevertheless, faith in evolution is without doubt the greatest faith since Abraham. Its history enumerates blessings and points out the signs of development. It is convinced that though stones may not become sons to Abraham, electrons can become sons of God. The theory of evolution is the most optimistic, the most salutary, the brightest, of faiths. Through Nature, as we say, it has taught us of an almighty inner-existent Power. It believes that through the working of the inner Power, in some indeterminate time, the clay itself is transformed into the image of God. It means, theoretically, belief that the God who is from the beginning becomes the final God. But no, the evolutionists would be offended at sucha statement. Yet the theory of evolution is intrinsically a complete faith.

As evidence, evolution forgives every sin, every error, every failure; and because it believes that the imperfect becomes perfect, that ugliness is changed to beauty, error to truth, darkness to light, it just as clearly teaches the authenticity of salvation as does the Father of Christ.

Belief in retrogression is not characteristic of the theory of evolution, for evolution believes fundamen- ~ tally in progress and development. How full of hope this faith is! Though this faith must travel the road of suffering in the struggle for existence, evolution guarantees a Paradise after the suffering is past. Its method of explanation differs, but it validates the hopes of Christianity.

Whence, then, came this faith? Why has this firm belief in cosmic evolution been given to men?

Biology interprets the changes during the past in the world of Nature, and has determined that there is progress. But does the evolution of the past really become the evolution of the present? And when did the idea of progress appear?

I believe that the idea of progress must be acquired experientially. The law of growth given in experience first gained firm belief in the nineteenth century period of invention. Thus the idea of progress is subjective effort reflected objectively. When man begins to glimpse the first rays of the dawning hope of progress, he for the first time becomes assured that there is evolution in the cosmos; but when this hope is wanting, he thinks of the changes tending toward complexity in the cosmic structure merely as fetters binding mankind. The idea of progress, then, originates from inner conviction of the power of growth. This conviction of growth means faith in the inner life. In other words, belief in objective evolutionary principles indicates faith in inner life. In brief, the terms evolution and God point toward the same entity. Only, it is inappropriate to employ the terms of subjective experience in the working vocabulary of objective science. The man who says he believes in evolution but not in God, de- ~ ceives himself; for it is a matter of difference in terms, not of variation in essence.

H. G. Wells declares that he does not know whether or not there is a God in the universe, but that he can believe in a “finite God” of salvation within the soul. The principle of evolution may be said to be faith in this ‘‘finite God.” But this talk of a “finite God”’ is rather an argument of self-interest. Our judgments of value require absolute determination in the finite; and life supplies the endorsement. Inner life is, for me, eternally absolute.

Today evolution stands, and the assurance that it will stand rests on the recognition of evolution deep within the ego. The ego is the treasure vault of evolution. Further evolution and change depend largely upon the individual’s fresh determinations. If evolution continues, the ego ought to become better; and the man who cannot believe that he is growing better is not qualified to believe in evolution. That is, conscience is the continuation of evolution. The long story of evolution has been kept under subjection, secret within the conscience. As the foetus in the body of the mother repeats the evolution of millions of years, so the conscience in a brief interval recapitulates the inner evolution of eons. Conscience is the sword point of evolution. Thus, where men can believe that by their own strength the world can become just a bit better, there evolutionary history begins to be made. After evolution is thus inwardly accepted, it receives outer certification. The ancients knew nothing of objective natural history, but they knew the story of conscience emergent within the ego. The history of conscience has been recorded most solemnly by the Hebrew people, and this history is today transmitted to us in the Bible.

From within the cosmos come bursting the buds of goodness and conscience. Such is the teaching of the chronicles of the Bible. Wherefore, the folk of old, who knew nothing of evolution, escaped pessimism because they believed in the forces of goodness and conscience working within the individual. They were evolutionists without knowing evolutionary doctrine. In a word, “God”’ signifies this power of evolution operating through consicence. Conscience and God are not to be confused; conscience is relative, while the power of evolution is absolute, operating through both the objective and the subjective. Belief in the power of evolution is uniquely experienced in the conscience function, which has the capacity for consciously knowing the good; for conscience is a function, not a force. God is power. God is absolute. Conscience is simply the individual’s equipment functioning. Through the operation of conscience man is first able to approach the reality of free self-existence. That is, conscience is the sole process for leading man to God. In conscience alone God is perfectly revealed. Summing up, then, the sole Power which can bring man closer to the realm of free self-existence is thought of as God. Other forces set up as deities are valueless. In man it is conscience alone that draws him toward self-existence. Wherefore, it is right that in conscience God be adored.

The man who negates conscience denies the existence of God, and the man who says there is no God denies creation. Without creation there is no evolution. He who affirms evolution will necessarily affirm God; for the one God is evolutionary power intrinsic. In truth, except for the progress of the Good within the ego, there is in the cosmos no apparatus for measuring evolution. Apart from the evolution of personality, that is, apart from God, the setting up of abstract deities is mere stupid sport. There are those who would negate personality and retain evolution. They are the folk who imagine that the cosmos is constructed independently of the ego. They forget that within the ego the very axis of the cosmos is exposed. Yea, let it be known that the Good operating in the ego through conscience is the final step in evolution. Apart from the Good there is no evolution in the true sense. Approach to the realm of freedom has been made just because every living thing from amceba to man has accumulated the Good.

The possibility of evolution which reveals the Good becomes, for the soul within, the representation of God. God is evolution itself at work within the ego. To regard evolution as an attribute of God may to some men appear profane; but if God is thought of as Creator, how can it be thought blameworthy to regard evolution, the continuer of creation, as of the very nature of God?

Evolution, as opposed to creation, demands inherent continuity, while creation implies a transcendent intervention. But this is merely a logical distinction. In reality, there is no difference between evolution and creation. In evolution as well there are elements of value-creation accompanying the progress of values. However, in the theory of evolution inherent variability is regarded as a power, while in the theory of creation the canon of transcendence receives strong emphasis. Yet in the composition of values both of these are requisite. Values take their starting point in higher reality, and signify inherent variation and growth, and we discover that in personality these dual elements are unified. Personality, that mysterious inner reality, — unites the two poles of permanence and variation, and joins together growth and law, experience and memory, inner existence and transcendence. Personality is the crown of cosmic evolution.

This mysterious inner reality has the method and the joy of revealing the personality within the self.

Because of the marvelous mystery of reality, the miracle of evolution is to be accepted without explanation. Why does the God of self-gratification, the God of absolute free self-existence, manifest himself in an imperfect world? This question I must be excused from answering, because that isa mystery. People may not have the time for such metaphysical arguments, but our metaphysics does not discuss the system of the cosmos apart from the structure of conscience.

The structure of conscience teaches the reality of personality as the conclusion and crown of evolution. In its marvelous reality we discover the source of all the mysteries in the universe, and therein we learn the fact that what was in the beginning is in the end.

Personality is able to re-manifest the self to itself. For the personality, evolution is the creation of the content of self—the creation of the self within the self. He who ignores evolution viewed as the Good dynamic within the inner personality, and thinks that external evolution alone is the fundamental law of the cosmos, thinks of the miracle of the first God being refined and becoming the final God. The religious philosophy of Hartmann terms this the deliverance of God from the cosmos.

But I have not the courage to make positive statements regarding this mystery. Let me remember only that within the mystery of the personality which we possess we have the ability to think concerning this creation of the content of the self. Only through the discovery in personality of the secret of evolution may I strike to the bottom of all philosophy.

Folk who do not expect to discover in the ego the crater of evolution, exhibit irrationality somewhere. Hartmann’s great inconsistency lay in his attempt to slaughter the self and construct only naturallaw. The law of evolution is discovered only in the ego as location of the Good, and only as the ego is connected with the law of evolution is its relation to the cosmos possible of comprehension.