With these preliminary remarks I now submit a catechism, whereof the clauses are intended to be consistent with the teachings of Science in its widest sense, as well as with those of Literature and Philosophy, and to lead up to the substance or substratum of a religious creed.
I
THE ASCENT OF MAN
Q. What are you?
A. I am a being alive and conscious upon this earth; a descendant of ancestors who rose by gradual processes from lower forms of animal life, and with struggle and suffering became man.
CLAUSE I
This answer does not pretend to exhaust the nature of man; another aspect is dealt with in Clause XII. It is usual to impart the latter mode of statement first; but premature dwelling on the more mystical aspect of human nature, with ignorance or neglect of the biological facts actually ascertained concerning it, only gives rise to troubled thought in the future when the material facts become known—often in crude or garbled form—and leads to scepticism.
The clause as it stands is a large and comprehensive statement, that will need much time for its elucidation and adequate comprehension. Its separate terms may be considered thus:—
Earth.—Children can gradually be assisted to realise the earth as an enormous globe of matter, with vast continents and oceans on its surface and with a clinging atmosphere, the whole moving very rapidly (nineteen miles each second) through space, and constituting one of a number of other planets all revolving round the sun. They may also be led to realise that from the distance of a million miles it would appear as an object in the sky rather like the moon; that from a greater distance it would look like any of the other planets; while from a vastly greater distance neither it nor any other planet is large or luminous enough to be visible—nothing but the sun would then be seen, looking like a star. It is occasionally helpful to realise that the earth, with all its imperfections, is one of the heavenly bodies.