It will be appropriate hereafter to refer to the doctrine of evolution as a means of accounting for the existence of the human mind. At present it is only necessary to say that I understand it to be maintained as the hypothesis which has the highest attainable amount of evidence in its favor, that distinct species of animals are not a creation but a growth; and also that the mind of man is not a special creation of a spiritual existence, but a result of a long process by which organized matter has slowly worked itself from matter into intellect. Wherever, for instance, these scientists may place the non-human primate, out of which man has been evolved by what is called natural selection, and whether they do or do not assume that he was a creation of an intelligent will, they do not, as I understand, claim that the primate was endowed with what we call intellect; so that at some time there was a low form of animal life without intellect, but intellect became evolved in the long course of countless ages, by the process of natural selection, through the improving conditions and better organization of that low animal which had no intellect. In other words, we have what the scientist calls the non-human primate, a low form of animal without intellect, but capable of so improving its own physical organization as to create for itself and within itself that essence which we recognize as the human mind. Here, then, there is certainly a theory, an hypothesis, which may be and must be contrasted with the idea that the mind of man is a spiritual essence created by the volition of some other being having the power to create such existences, and put into a temporary union with a physical organization, by the establishment of a mysterious connection which makes the body the instrument of the soul so long as the connection exists. If I have stated correctly the theory which assigns the origin of the human mind to the process of evolution, I have assuredly not set up a man of straw. I stand confronted with an hypothesis which directly encounters the idea that the human intellect is a creation, in the sense of a direct, intelligent, conscious, and purposed production of a special character, as the human mind and hand, in the production of whatever is permitted to finite capacities, purposely creates some new and independent object of its wishes, its desires, or its wants. The human mind, says the scientist, was not created by a spiritual being as a spiritual existence independent of matter, but it grew out of matter, that was at first so organized that it did not manifest what we call intellect, but that could so improve its own organization as to evolve out of matter what we know as mind.