Paul Elmer More

Aristocracy and Justice Paul Elmer More

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1915. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... PREFACE To Henry Holt, Esq. Dear Holt, -- It is fitting that I should dedicate to you these essays on the stress and tragedy of modern times, since most of them were written for the Unpopular Review of which you are the editor and informing spirit. How much they have profited by your kindly revision we will keep a secret between us. And I know that you are in general, if not complete, agreement with the ideas here expressed, or they would not have found a place in the magazine which you are conducting for a definite purpose. Only in one matter our correspondence, and more particularly our long talks at the Century in those late hours when other men have gone to their homes in fear for the morrow, have brought out a seemingly radical difference of opinion. How often you have asked me why I showed such hostility to the word evolution! To this question I am trying in this brief preface to give an answer. In the first place, then, I am not at all hostile to evolution as a scientific law which states the facts of nature. Whether the evidence is sufficient to warrant our belief in the gradual transformation of species through long periods of time from the simplest form of cellular life to the complicated structure of the human body, I do not pretend of myself to decide. Men of science seem to think that we are justified in such a belief, and I am not so foolish as to meddle where I have no business. Nor is my dislike in any way directed against the virile ideas which you profess to derive from your study of Spencer, and which look for progress from the exercise of reason and will. But there is a philosophy commonly associated with evolution in which I hold that the student of literature and life has quite as much right to judge as has the special student of biology. F...