[To the Editor of the Srgcreiroa.] Sm,—The letter of "
F. T. D." on the above subject takes me back to the 'sixties, when I. with thousands of my fellows was branded as an atheist for. accepting Darwin's theory of
evolution. It is true the theory holds that, as living organisms of body, brain and thought, we are dissolved on death. But
was not this held by St. Paul ? Did he not hold that we die in the flesh and rise as spiritual bodies ? Where, from the beginning to the end, of all Darwin's great works does he touch on the question of the soul in man ? Science neither denies nor affirms the fact : it, rightly, ignores it or, at the most, regards it as a (necessary ?) conception.
The question raised as to the soul in man of the cave dweller, the primeval savage or the African pigmy is weakly put. Much stronger would have been the question if based on the fact that each human being is but an evolution in complexity of form and specialization of function of a mere material germ with no experience at all 1 But did experience evolve ? Then what was its genesis ? It is asked at what point did the soul come into existence ? I am quite ready to answer that ques- thin when " F. T. D.," as a scientific man, informs me when energy, the atom, the proton, the nucleus; or the negative electrons came into existence. Personally I agree with Kant, that on such subjects we are faced by necessary ignorance. At the same time it is, logically, a fact that if the soul exists it has nothing to do with beginning or end. For, if existing, it is free from Space—Time, and logically -no question of beginning and ending can arise unless Space—Time be regarded
as a reality. • Pigmies or Isaac Newtons, rocks; stones and trees, though all inter-related in • some unknown way, are, as manifest, objects in Space—Time. They come, exist for a time, then perish ! They are all passing things as manifestations in the evolution of- our world. Religion is in full agreement with this. Religion does not hold there is anything of immortality in the pigmy as a pigmy or in Isaac Newton as Isaac Newton, regarded as- living organism of Space—Time. It is to the soul in man that religion gives immortality. And, whatever the soul may be, it is not conditioned in Space—Time.
I do not think that rr",don (pace dogmatic forms) holds man to be a specially gifted ceation in immediate touch with a spiritual world : • all nature is in immediate touch with a spiritual world, and Nature is but a manifestation in Space— Time of the spiritual which is not conditioned in Space—Time. Bradley, in his great work, Appearance and Reality (p. 552), marks that " Outside of spirit, there is not, and cannot be, any reality," and we cannot condition the spiritual in Space— Time.
Spinoza may be right, but tthink Kant primes that science itself must begin its investigation by conceptions (postulates), and that one of these conceptions must be a conception of the
soul in man. •-
. . . . . . .
However strongly the theory of evolution may militate against dogmatic forms. of religion it supports religion itself. It supports the conception of a soul in man.—I am, Sir, &c., . . • F. C. CONSTABLE.
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