“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

The theory, then, is a way of organizing experience, a suggestive hypothesis. It is indeed no more than a point of view. It has colored man’s societies and cultures since its inception. It has dominated economical systems. In that regard, for example, James was quite correct: certain religious societies interpreted the theme so that it read “evolution of the soul”; but there is no soul in Darwinian theory and hereditary, and certainly none in the environment.

In deepest terms the world had an outside only. It was empty inside. The soul or any remnant of it vanished, so that all of the action had to occur in an arena where competition ruled. Life was not trusted. You could be betrayed by your genes. There was no purpose in nature except its own mechanical reproduction. The individual had no importance, once it served its part in reproduction.

Nature took the place of the devil in an insidious sleight-of-hand that initially Darwin himself never expected. He wanted to show that God was not responsible for the world’s cruelties. Darwin loved nature in all of its aspects, yet he could not reconcile its beauties and splendors with the course of its events. He could not bear to see a cat play with a mouse, without blaming God who would permit such cruelty. He tried to wipe God’s hands clean, as he understood the nature of God through his early beliefs—but in so doing he wiped the soul from the face of nature.