So, underneath all waves and eddies of environment, there is a
great tidal wave, bearing man steadily onward; and I gain a certain
amount of valid knowledge of environment from the direction in which
it is bearing me.
Let us change the illustration. Man survives as all his ancestors
have survived before him, through conformity to environment.
Environment has therefore during ages past been continually making
impressions upon him. And he can draw valid inferences concerning
the one power, which must underlie the apparent host of forces of
environment, from the impressions which these have left upon the
structure of his mind and character. By studying himself he gains
valid knowledge of what is deepest in environment. For man is the
most completely and closely conformed thereto of all living beings.
But man _is_ a religious being. This is a fact which demands
explanation just as much as bone and muscle. Now no evolutionist
would believe that the eye could ever have developed without the
stimulus of light acting upon the cells of the skin. Place the
animal in darkness and the eye becomes rudimentary and disappears.
Could a visual organ for seeing moral and religious truth have ever
originated in the mind of man had there been no corresponding
pulsation and thrill of a corresponding reality in environment? Is
not the one development just as improbable or inconceivable as the
other?
And this is the reason that, when man awakened to himself and his
own powers, he knew that there was and must be a God.
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