Evolution is claimed by its advocates to be the greatest intellectual discovery of the past century, and, by some, the greatest thought that ever entered the mind of man. In the words of its greatest philosopher, Herbert Spencer, "It spans the universe and solves the widest range of its problems, which reach outward through boundless space, and back through illimitable time, resolving the deepest problems of life, mind, society, history and civilization." It has woven into one great philosophy the history of the material universe, the entire organic creation, man and all his faculties, the whole course of human history and the origin and progress of all religion.
