The Outlook for June 21, in reviewing a work on "The Philosophy of Religion," by Professor Royce, of Harvard, says that Professor Royce has made "the most consistent and substantial contribution of any writer of our time to the philosophy of religion." He is an evolutionist, and he attempts to show "how the non-human [395] came to evolve the human type." As this process is one of the mysteries of the evolution theory, and as this professor, who is a Ph. D. and an LL. D. of Aberdeen, and who, according to The Outlook, has made the greatest contribution to this species of philosophy, undertakes to solve this mystery, we must expect his solution to be clear, and to be well supported by facts. The reader will please to prepare himself for it, and then read it in the following paragraph:

      The process of the evolution of new forms of consciousness in nature is throughout of the same general type as that which we observe when we follow the evolution of new sorts of plants, of ideas and of selfhood in our own life. . . . This whole process is analogous in structure and in result to the recurrent process of the conscious will that has found what it has to do in its learning of new arts through trial and error, under the conditions of rigid selection established by the environment. I begin existence in the organic world as a tentative variation within its conscious life, and with my survival conditioned on conforming to the established habits of nature.

      If any man, after reading this, pretends not to understand "how the non-human came to evolve the human type," we shall have to seat him on the dunce-block. Take an illustration: The tadpole began existence in the organic world as a tentative variation within its conscious life, and with his survival conditioned upon conforming to the established habits of nature; and that explains how he turned to a frog.

[SEBC 395-396]