The subject of evolution is one that has engaged the attention of man throughout all history. Man is ever trying to discover the primary origin of himself and what he calls his environment. And why has this been? why does it still continue an absorbing question? Is it not because it involves the element of primary causation, action, formation? This ultimate must be the primary living Principle of all being, and this living Principle must be Life itself. It is rapidly appearing to thinking minds that life cannot spring from no life; or, to put it even stronger, no life cannot be the basis or source of life. To urge that life is the product of no life is just as preposterous as the proposition that something is evolved from nothing. That fundamental causation, or the root of things, is nothing, or that it can be the opposite in nature of what it produces, is contrary to all human experience and reason. Man discovers about him two seeming powers, qualities, and laws, each directly opposed to the other. These antagonistic forces seem to make the rounds of time in endless contention; the creative and destructive so-called elements being engaged in a ceaseless warfare for supremacy.
To know something of the living, constructive, and formative basis of things has ever been a profoundly animating desire in the heart of man. We are ever looking for force to overcome inertia, for strength to master weakness, and for good to subdue evil. We also see that the antidote for sin is the development of righteousness. We are ever searching for truth to annihilate error. In all ages the world has been trying to ascertain what this thing is that is called life. If Life, whatever it may be, has within itself the element of death, then mortality is an inherent quality of Life. And if this could be true, then the proposition that Life is immortal would carry with it the absurdity that mortality is immortal; for every inherent quality of Life must coexist with it. If Life has a mortal element, then Life itself must perish with this element. It therefore irresistibly follows that Life has no mortal quality but is forever separate and distinct from mortality, or else that Life has beginning and ending. If Life had beginning, what began it? Its existence need not he proved; it is unalterably established. The human mind cannot conceive of two greater opposites than Life and death. The rational thought cannot hold in consciousness as a fact that twice two is four, and also that twice three is four. If one of these statements be true, that which contradicts it cannot be true. So likewise, if Life is the fact of being, then that which in every possible quality opposes and contradicts it cannot, in the final analysis also be a fact of being. The false supposition that qualities diametrically opposite can be real and inherent factors of consciousness shocks reason and would lock hope in endless doom. The understanding that, a quality of Mind being real its antipode is unreal, is a corner-stone in all clear thinking, and if the immortal Principle we call Life can be understood, so that we may know what it is, and how to apply its law for the destruction of whatever seems to war against it, then indeed is the highway of true progress found. This thought means more than is seen on the surface. It means the search for, and development in consciousness of that constructive and preservative force we call good, which alone is able to neutralize and silence that destructive quality we rightly call evil. In this search is found the progress which the human mind is ever seeking with increasing zeal. It is a glad search for Life itself and all that Life includes, and is it any wonder that it should engage the rapt attention of all scholars and thinkers?
It may be here asked. Why the human search for Life in the past has been so void of results? Why is it that the scientific world, so-called, still declares Life to be an unknown quantity? If Life cannot be wrapped in the folds of death, and does not include the poisoned sting of mortality, then indeed it cannot be found in elements, forms, or things which seem to unite such opposite and heterogeneous qualities as life and death, good and evil. Every form of matter and every so-called material law seemingly includes these two opposing elements, and death in this realm always claims the victory. A single error in mathematical work whether as to premise, rule, or calculation, reduces every conclusion to the doom of error. Note this, that the greatest human minds are making the greatest efforts to find Life, and the greater the mind the greater has been and still is the effort. Wherever there is consciousness we find sight, hearing, feeling, thinking, also a perception of form, identity, individuality, and action. These qualities always accompany normal human consciousness. Quite regardless of the bulk or quality of matter, if mind be lacking, all these qualities are also lacking. Does not this clearly prove that these qualities belong to Mind and its reflection, and not to matter? Life bereft of these qualities would be but the myth of oblivion. The tree is said to have life. This will depend entirely upon what is meant by "life." The late Henry Drummond said, "Knowing is life." Jesus, the greatest light of all the ages, declared that to know God and Jesus Christ whom He had sent is eternal life. From this true standard of Life and its reflection the material concept of a tree has no life because it does not "know." Is it not possible, yea, even probable, that the long' and fruitless search for Life has hitherto been made in the wrong direction? The search for a thing where it is not would be as fruitless at the end of a million years as at the end of a minute. The late statement that electricity is primary substance, basis of life, must be as fleeting as every other material theory; for no conscious atom or moral quality has ever been seen or felt in electricity or any of its manifestations, and it does not give a solitary gleam of promise that it contains or can produce either.
