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On the walls there are maps, crowded with Japanese ideographs; a few large charts representing zoological facts in the light of evolutional science; and an immense frame filled with little black lacquered wooden tablets, so neatly fitted together that the entire surface is uniform as that of a blackboard.
I presume that just as, and just because men have minds AND bodies, an evolutional history in the ordinary sense and a mental history in a sense not commonly considered, so there will always be two, or perhaps three, parties among psychologists and men of science, and each one, in so far as it is limited in its vision, may be considered as abnormal, if one will.
But we will now proceed to consider the duration of vegetable species, for the purpose of showing that the evolutional changes they are undergoing, if any, must cover infinitely vaster periods of time than we have any data for determining, to say nothing of the unverified theories the evolutionists have been spinning for us.
Others there are who are impelled by their own evolutional process to seek the development in themselves of these psychic powers; and to these a word of warning seems necessary, so that at the risk of appearing didactic I must essay the task. To some it may seem unwelcome, to others redundant and supererogatory.
These periods are called "World-Cycles," and each World-Cycle is divided into four "Immensities," but we need not here consider the details of the doctrine. It is only the fundamental idea of a evolutional rhythm that is really interesting.
The particular movement or evolutional feature in question of course shares this characterization with the rest of the later social development, in so far as this social development shows evidence of a reversion to the spiritual attitude that characterizes the earlier, undifferentiated stage of economic revolution.
They claim that this generic substance is endowed with the property or power of producing life de novo, or, as Professor Bastian puts it, of "unfolding new-born specks of living matter" which subsequently undergo certain evolutional changes; but whether they die in their experimental flasks, or rise into higher and more potentially endowed forms of life, it is difficult for those following their diagnoses to determine.
But if all our alpine flora have traveled from one evolutional centre, or have been "created but once in time and place," how have they managed to cross the thermal equator and spread themselves out over all the alpine regions of the globe? We call upon Mr. Darwin and Professor Gray to rise and explain.
The evolutional history of ancestor-worship has been very much the same in all countries; and that of the Japanese cult offers remarkable evidence in support of Herbert Spencer's exposition of the law of religious development. To comprehend this general law, we must, however, go back to the origin of religious beliefs.
Now it is important to observe that, in either cult, the mortuary tablet actually suggests a miniature tombstone which is a fact of some evolutional interest, though the evolution itself should be Chinese rather than Japanese.
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