Insensibly And Inevitably I Had Become An Evolutionist, Albeit Never Wholly Satisfied With Natural Selection As The Only And Sufficient Explanation Of The Change In The Forms Of Life.

And again, insensibly and inevitably, the new doctrine has led to modifications of the old religious ideas and eventually to a new and simplified philosophy of life.

A good enough one so far as this life is concerned, but unhappily it takes no account of another, a second and perdurable life without change of personality.

This subject has been much in men's minds during the past two or three dreadful years, often reminding me of that shock I received as a boy of fourteen at the old gaucho's bitter story of his soul; I have also again been reminded of the theory in which that younger and greatly- loved brother of mine was able to find comfort. He had become deeply religious, and after much reading in Herbert Spencer and other modern philosophers and evolutionists, he told me he thought it was idle for Christians to fight against the argument of the materialists that the mind is a function of the brain. Undoubtedly it was that, and our mental faculties perished with the brain; but we had a soul that was imperishable as well. _He knew it_, which meant that he too was a mystic, and being wholly preoccupied with religion, his mystical faculty found its use and exercise there. At all events, his notion served to lift him over _his_ difficulties and to get him out of _his_ mangrove swamp - a way perhaps less impossible than the one recently pointed out by William James.

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