Excerpt from Studies in Philosophy and Literature

In revising them, I have recast each article less or more. Many paragraphs have been omitted; others rewritten; and allusions to matters of trivial interest erased. As I have said in the tenth essay, "Our provincial controversies pass and are forgotten. Happily the features which disfigure them are soon buried in oblivion. But the eternal problems remain, and must confront our children"s children."

The first Essay in the series, - which was an inaugural address, delivered to the students of Moral Philosophy in St. Andrews, - and part of the third essay contain a discussion of the theory of Evolution. As this is the most definite philosophical idea underlying the methods and processes of Science, and as its advocates claim for it the merit, not only of accounting for the modifications of organic structure, but also of explaining the origin of our intellectual and moral nature - and, I may add, as opposition to its efficacy in the latter sphere is so much misunderstood - one or two additional paragraphs on the subject may be inserted, in this brief prefatory note.

I do not deny the evolution of intellectual and moral ideas. I only deny that their evolution can explain their origin. Every valid theory of derivation must start with the assumption of a derivative Source, or it performs the feat of educing something out of nothing, nay, of developing everything out of nonentity. It may surely rank as an axiom that whatever is subsequently evolved, must have been originally involved.

Our intellectual and moral nature bears the most evident traces of evolution.

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