________________
PRACTICE OF KARMA YOGA
(3) Afterwards he ordinarily takes birth here again as man.
b. The Western Theory of Evolution is Unsound.
Thus evolution and involution can be, strictly speaking, potulated only of the thinker. While so, some of the Western philosophers propound a theory that there is gradual progress from the mineral condition to the vegetable, from the vegetable to the animal, and from the animal to the human, and call it the theory of evolution. In the first place no religion of the world supports such a theory, and, as Benjamin Kidd in his Social Evolution says: “The tendency of the doctrine of evolution has been generally considered to be on the whole antireligious.” They say that evolution is going on in the universe; but what it is that is evolving they have nothing to say about. They observe different natures, bodies and objects in the universe occupying different positions in some respects and seeing that one is more 'advanced' than another, they make regular scales noting the different degrees of advancement. But they do not say that what is now found in the more advanced state of being must, in its essence, have been in existence formerly and must have been then in a less advanced condition. In other words, they do not say that the underlying entity which bears a more advanced form or exhibits a higher state or condition today is the same that formerly appeared
192
