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Science and Sentiment 
 
 OTHER PAPERS, CHIEFLY PHILOSOPHICAL 
 
 BY 
 
 NOAH PORTER, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 PRESIDENT OP YALE COLLEGE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 
 
 1882 
 
Copyright by 
 
 CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS. 
 
 1882. 
 
 JTranklin $rr»js: 
 
 RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY, 
 BOSTON. 
 

 Efjfe Uolume fe DetiicateiJ 
 
 TO 
 
 THE REV. WILLIAM WATSON ANDREWS, 
 
 AND 
 
 PROFESSOR LYMAN HOTCHKISS ATWATER, D.D., LL.D., 
 
 COMPANIONS OF THE AUTHOR'S EARLIEST 
 PHILOSOPHICAL STUDIES, 
 
 AND 
 
 FRIENDS OF HIS LIFE. 
 
 211 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 The papers which compose this volume have been already 
 
 given to the public, either as lectures or critical essays. 
 
 They are philosophical in their themes, but not severely 
 
 philosophical in their mode of treatment. Most of these 
 
 themes are of present and active interest to the minds of 
 
 thoughtful men, and are likely to occupy their attention for 
 
 the future. By the advice of some of his friends, the Author 
 
 has collected them for republication, as, in some sort, "tracts 
 
 for the times.' ' 
 
 N. P. 
 
 Yale College, July, 1882. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 FAGS 
 
 I. SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. A POPULAR ESSAY 
 
 ON A RECONDITE THEME 11 
 
 II. THE SCIENCES OF NATURE VERSUS THE 
 SCIENCE OF MAN. A PLEA FOR THE SCI- 
 ENCE OF MAN 38 
 
 IH. WHAT WE MEAN BY CHRISTIAN PHILOSO- 
 PHY 77 
 
 IV. THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL, 96 
 
 V. JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER . . 127 
 
 VI. JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN . . 159 
 
 VH. PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S LAST DELIVERANCE . 192 
 
 VHI. PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OR, THE 
 APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 
 A PHILOSOPHICAL MEDITATION ... 222 
 
 IX. FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. A PHILOSOPHICAL 
 
 STUDY FOR NON-PHILOSOPHICAL READERS, 260 
 
 X. PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION OF HUME'S 
 
 PHILOSOPHY 293 
 
 7 
 
8 CONTENTS. 
 
 FAGE 
 
 XI. THE NEWEST ATHEISM: ITS ENFANT TEll- 
 
 BIBLE 331 
 
 XII. HERBERT SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY: 
 
 A CRITICAL ESSAY 375 
 
 XIII. THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL 412 
 
 XIV. THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH . . . . . ,452 
 
SCIENCE AID SENTIMENT. 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 A POPULAR ESSAY ON A RECONDITE THEME. 
 
 Much has of late been said and written concerning 
 a supposed necessary antagonism between Science and 
 Sentiment, or Sentimentalism (as it is often called). A 
 few examples will best illustrate this antagonism as it 
 is understood by those who recognize and accept it. 
 
 A stranger comes to my door, and asks relief. It is 
 the impulse of Sentiment to give him the relief for 
 which he asks, and which he seems to need. But Sci- 
 ence reminds me that long experience has established 
 the principle that relief given in this way in the long- 
 run does more harm than good; that no truly scientific 
 man, much less a truly scientific woman, would think 
 of doing such a thing. Yielding to the direction of 
 Science, I send the stranger to the alms-house, or to the 
 secretary of some relief association. 
 
 Sentiment, we are told, in the old times, encouraged 
 the poor and sick folk to gather about the church-doors, 
 or lie along the wayside, that they might move the pity, 
 and receive the alms, of their fellow-men. Science has 
 taught society to gather them • into asylums and hos- 
 pitals, where healing and relief may be dispensed with 
 wise judiciousness, with neither waste nor fraud, nor 
 encouragement to idleness or imposture. 
 
 Sentiment would dictate that a prompt and generous 
 relief should be supplied to all who are in distress, 
 
 11 
 
12 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 especially if guiltless of crime, and that, to such per- 
 sons, alms-houses and homes for the friendless should be 
 made comfortable if not attractive houses of solace 
 and rest. Science lifts up her voice against lavish and 
 indiscriminate public charity, and refers us to the au- 
 thoritative principles in respect to the cure and relief 
 of pauperism and misfortune which she has matured 
 from the verified experience of many generations. 
 
 Sentiment would impel the parent to give his child 
 whatever he cries for ; but Science, which in this case we 
 call common sense, tells him that this is certain to spoil 
 the child. Sentiment would incline a father to give his 
 son a large outfit, or indefinite credit, when he comes of 
 age ; but the wisdom of both reflection and experience 
 teaches that it is better for the son and the community 
 that he be largely thrown upon his own resources. 
 
 Sentiment would impel two young persons to marry 
 as soon as they take a liking to one another, regardless 
 of age, adaptation, health, or the means of subsistence. 
 Science rudely steps in between them, sternly forbids 
 the banns, and reads a solemn lecture to the parties 
 upon the sin against society and humanity of contract- 
 ing an early or an improvident marriage. 
 
 Sentiment asks for unlimited credit and the indefinite 
 deferring of pay-day. Science affirms, that unless credit 
 is restricted, and payment is enforced, both lender and 
 borrower will be ruined. 
 
 Sentiment charms the heart of the people by saying 
 that indefinitely deferred promises to pay, by the best 
 government in the world, ought to be and therefore is 
 the best money in the world. Science cuts short its 
 harangues by the argument, that, if this were true, all 
 the world would be eager to take this money at a 
 premium. 
 
 Sentiment demands free trade on the one side, because 
 

 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 13 
 
 every man desires to buy in the cheapest market, and 
 protection on the other, because home industry ought to 
 be encouraged. Science rejects such arguments, and 
 calls the free-trader and the protectionist a sentimental- 
 ist, each, in his turn, for using them. 
 
 Sentiment urges that every man should vote himself 
 a farm as his natural right ; but Science demonstrates, 
 that, if this were allowed, the supply of farms would 
 soon be exhausted, and the farms themselves would not 
 be worth the cost of a vote — except of refusal. 
 
 Sentiment claims that the profits of labor and capital 
 should be divided by law ; but Science contends, that, if 
 the demands of Sentiment were allowed, there would be 
 scanty profits to be divided ; that capital would vanish 
 like a mist, and labor would beg for employment upon 
 any terms. 
 
 Sentiment pleads for equality of condition and advan- 
 tages to all men. Science demonstrates that equality 
 of rights should be conceded, but that equality of con- 
 dition, in respect of wealth, or influence, or knowledge, 
 or honor, or culture, is neither possible nor desirable 
 under any conceivable circumstances, and that the men 
 who expect or promise it are either deluded dreamers 
 or knavish deceivers. 
 
 Sentiment feels, or feels certain, that women ought to 
 vote, and makes eloquent appeals to man's chivalrous 
 sensibilities, as well as to his homage to the right. Sci- 
 ence knows by her dry light that government is alto- 
 gether a practical matter, which does not concern itself 
 with sentimentalities of any sort, but simply with the 
 wisest adaptations to a limited number of attainable 
 ends. 
 
 Sentiment is outraged at the wrongs of the inferior 
 or depressed races, and protests with passionate appeals 
 against their forcible subjection to the rule of the races 
 
14 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 which are orderly, industrious, cultivated, and Chris- 
 tian. It declaims about the wrongs of the Indian, the 
 African, and the Irish. But Science coldly reasons, that, 
 in the struggle for existence, the weakest nations must 
 inevitably go to the wall ; that it is inevitable that the 
 intelligent should compel the ignorant, the civilized 
 should displace the savage, and the Christian and re- 
 fined should subject the lawless and rude to obedience 
 and civilization, and do this, if necessary, by violent 
 methods, — by wholesale massacres and bloody lessons 
 which centuries of horror and hate shall not forget. 
 So Carlyle and Froude justify the measures which have 
 desolated Ireland. So does the modern scientific his- 
 torian approve as wise, because necessary, the policy of 
 England in the East Indies. So the instructed stu- 
 dent is taught to accept as the inevitable conditions 
 of progress many of the gigantic crimes which nations 
 have perpetrated against nations. 
 
 Sentiment would settle all questions of social and 
 political economy, of exchange and property, of law 
 and government, of human rights and duties, by pas- 
 sionate and final appeals to what it calls the instincts 
 and feelings. Science would set aside the feelings alto- 
 gether, and found its conclusions solely on reasonings 
 and calculations in respect to the practical workings of 
 laws and institutions. Upon all these subjects, Senti- 
 ment enforces its feelings by eloquent appeals, and not 
 infrequently shrieks and denounces with frantic excite- 
 ment. Science analyzes and reasons with cool and 
 sometimes provoking serenity, and adheres to its con- 
 clusions with dogged and tenacious confidence. 
 
 I have taken my examples thus far from the field of 
 political economy and social science, because it is in 
 this field that the opposition between Science and Senti- 
 ment has been most frequently and sharply made. 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 15 
 
 Indeed, if I am not mistaken, the appellation " Senti- 
 mentalist " was first applied, by the devotees of political 
 economy and of political science, in the way of gentle but 
 slightly supercilious reproach. The term has now become 
 a stock word in these circles, and, if not a cant term, is 
 very convenient, at times, in the place of an argument. 
 
 A few examples from other quarters may show that 
 the contrast between Science and Sentiment has been 
 made in other fields of speculation no less important 
 than Political Science. 
 
 In Physiology, Science urges that all the analogies 
 point to the conclusion that life is but another name for 
 the co-ordinated functions of a material structure, and 
 that what we call the conscious and sensitive spirit is 
 but a higher form of organized matter. It cannot deny 
 the inference, which it may not care or may not dare to 
 utter, that what men call the soul ceases to exist with 
 the body, whether it be the body of a living animal or 
 a living man. 
 
 Sentiment shrieks with horror at this revolting con- 
 clusion. It asserts its longing after an immortal life, 
 and its instinctive abhorrence of the extinction of man's 
 being. It reaches out its arms to embrace the loved 
 and lost, and it fancies that it feels their loving embraces 
 in return. 
 
 Science bids Sentiment be still with its nonsense and 
 protests, and gravely and grimly proceeds to analyze 
 and expound the arcana of life and spirit after some 
 ultimate formula of three or more capital letters with 
 very high indices. 
 
 Another kind of science — we hardly know how to 
 name it — substitutes the immortality of the species, so 
 far as the last edict allows it to believe in a permanent 
 species at all, for the immortality of the individual. It 
 substitutes the unending progress of humanity for the 
 
16 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 continued life of the individual man. When Sentiment 
 is chilled and unsatisfied, Science re-assures her with a 
 splendid personification of the race as never dying, or 
 as gathering into its immortal existence all the dis- 
 ciplined thought and noble emotion of all the heroic 
 and self-sacrificing lives of the past. This imposing 
 abstraction of the schools it arrays in the gorgeous 
 drapery of high-sounding words, and, setting it up in 
 a flowery bower of showy imagery, it tries to pass off 
 the hideous skeleton for a living and breathing exist- 
 ence. Sentiment recoils with abhorrence from the 
 ghastly counterfeit, and wails in secret over its lost 
 immortality, and refuses to be comforted. 
 
 The Evolutionist makes a loftier flight. He not only 
 tells us what the spirit is, but how it came to exist, 
 with every thing besides. Starting with the singular 
 transformations of the dovecote and the capricious mix- 
 tures of the cabbage-garden, rushing back to sugges- 
 tions of star-dust and the nebulae, stopping here and 
 there to consider the progressive order of the fossils, 
 finding everywhere in the world of life growth proceed- 
 ing from simpler to more complex forms of being, and 
 the constant displacement of the weaker by the stronger, 
 — he accepts the formulated laws of evolution as a liv- 
 ing force, which is competent to solve all the questions 
 of Science concerning the unknown. Or he condescends 
 to accept a blind yet all forecasting energy in a simple 
 yet immensely complex unformulated something, of 
 which nothing more can be defined, than that it is in- 
 definable, or known, than that it must constantly be 
 guessed at, and never guessed aright. 
 
 Sentiment is bewildered, and filled with dismay. It 
 stretches out its arms after a person infinitely great, 
 before whom it may wonder and worship. It longs for 
 sympathizing goodness, which it may both love and 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 17 
 
 trust. But Science sneers at Sentiment, if its gravity 
 ever allows it to do so unseemly a thing, or chides its 
 fond and foolish moanings, and bids it content itself 
 with admiring the latest brilliant theory, or worshipping 
 the writer of the last philosophic romance, entitled " A 
 New Theory of The Unknown and Unknowable." 
 
 What, pray, has Sentiment to do with Science, 
 when Sentiment itself, according to the " last conquered 
 stand-point of Science," is nothing but a transient tre- 
 mor of the brain-cells, a rosy blush suffusing for an in- 
 stant the surfaces of super-refined molecules, a rose-leaf 
 hanging slightly on the stem evolved from some simpler 
 germ, as frail as it is beautiful ? — 
 
 " Or, like the snow upon the river, 
 A moment white, then gone forever." 
 
 What right has such a fleeting phenomenon as this to 
 plead against the sublime and accepted conclusions of 
 Science, when, in the name of demonstrated truth, she 
 avers that she requires no God to explain the universe, 
 or, if she does, she cannot know him ? 
 
 Science studies the past history of the universe, and, 
 turning over the record of countless ages, fancies it has 
 come to the starting-point, and cries out, with solemn 
 gravity, "In the beginning there was no intelligent 
 Creator." 
 
 She searches the universe now existing, hither and 
 thither and yon, till, wearied with her wanderings, she 
 returns from the outmost verge with the report, " I have 
 found no God ! " — nothing, at least, but an unknowable 
 and unlovable somewhat, before which we may guess 
 and wonder. Sentiment, reproachfully but hopelessly, 
 responds, — 
 
 "O star-eyed Science! hast thou wandered there 
 To waft us home this message of despair ?" 
 
18 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 Science says that it is unphilosophical to pray, that 
 no respectably educated man nowadays thinks of doing 
 such a thing ; for it is impossible that the requests of 
 man should effect the slightest change in the phenome- 
 na of the physical or the moral universe. Sentiment 
 replies, If a man will learn to pray, let him go to sea ; 
 for when there, in either helplessness or fear, he may 
 cry for help, and perhaps will even believe, that, in an- 
 swer to his cries, a deliverer has appeared walking upon 
 the waves. 
 
 Last of all, and in sheer desperation, Sentiment 
 appeals to the conscience, and plants itself upon duty 
 as commanding and enforcing its love and trust. But 
 Science contends, and thinks it has proved, that duty is 
 the product of opinion and feeling, and is an entity of 
 very unstable equilibrium, — say of the changing moods 
 of sympathy and law, — that what is right for one man 
 and one generation is wrong for another ; that duty is 
 itself a growth, which is continually outgrowing its 
 former self, and has no permanent and solemn authority 
 over the homage and love of man as man. 
 
 Such is the position of Science and Sentiment with 
 respect to one another, in the view of many of the 
 adherents of each. Science, on the one hand, is sus- 
 picious of Sentiment, and Sentiment, on the other, 
 abhors Science. Science denounces what it calls "sen- 
 timentalism," and Sentiment is repelled by definition 
 and experiment. The two regard each other as natural 
 and eternal enemies. It would seem that this attitude 
 of suspicion and hostility must be unnatural, and that 
 some method may be discovered by which the strife 
 may be adjusted. 
 
 Some would terminate it by an armed neutrality of 
 the parties. They assume that the two are incommen- 
 surable quantities, — forces, which, in their nature, are 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 19 
 
 mutually repellent. Their counsel to each one of the 
 parties is simply to let the other alone. 
 
 Somewhat, though not exactly in this strain, writes 
 one who claims to be foremost in science, — so far 
 advanced, indeed, that he claims the right to speak with 
 authority for the friends of science, and to those whom 
 he counts as its foes. 
 
 " Men of science have but one desire, — to know the 
 truth : they have but one fear, — to believe a lie ; and 
 if they know the strength of science, and rely upon it 
 with unswerving trust, they also know the limits beyond 
 which science ceases to be strong. They best know 
 that questions offer themselves to thought which sci- 
 ence, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency to 
 solve. They keep such questions open, and will not 
 tolerate any unnecessary limitation of the horizon of 
 their souls. They have as little fellowship with the 
 atheist, who says there is no God, as with the theist 
 who knows the mind of God." "Two things," says 
 Immanuel Kant, " fill me with awe, — the starry heavens 
 and the sense of responsibility in man. And in the 
 hours of health and strength and sanity, when the 
 stroke of action has ceased, and the pause of reflection 
 has set in, the scientific investigator finds himself over- 
 shadowed by the same awe. Breaking contact with the 
 hampering details of earth, it associates him with the 
 power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but 
 which he can neither analyze nor comprehend." 
 
 u But then it comes to pass," writes the same elo- 
 quent Professor Tyndall, in his address at Belfast, " that, 
 over and above his understanding, there are many things 
 appertaining to man, whose respective rights are quite 
 as strong as those of the understanding itself." " There 
 are such things woven into the texture of man as the 
 feeling of awe, reverence, wonder; the love of the 
 
20 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 beautiful, physical, and moral in nature, poetry, and art. 
 There is that deep-set feeling which has incorporated 
 itself in the religions of the world. To yield this senti- 
 ment reasonable satisfaction is the problem of problems 
 at the present hour ; and, grotesque in relation to sci- 
 entific culture as many of the religions of the world 
 have been and are, it will be well to recognize them as 
 the forms of a force mischievous, if permitted to intrude 
 on the region of knowledge over which it holds no 
 command, but capable of being guided to noble issues 
 in the region of emotion, which is its proper sphere." 
 
 These elements, he remarks in another place, " are 
 not opposed, but supplementary ; not mutually exclu- 
 sive, but reconcilable." If the human mind turns to 
 the highest power of feeling as its object, and seeks 
 so to fashion it as to give unity to thought and faith, so 
 long as this is not done " not only without intolerance 
 or bigotry of any kind, but with the enlightened recogni- 
 tion of that ultimate fixity of conception when unattain- 
 able" we may adopt the direction of Goethe, " Fill thy 
 heart with it, and then name it as thou wilt." 
 
 Another writer equally eloquent has spoken recently 
 in a similar strain : " The religious sentiment, like the 
 desire for knowledge, is a phase in the energy of na- 
 ture." " Its domain is, however, apart from the domain 
 of science. The region of knowledge is commanded by 
 the one ; the region of emotion, by the other." All 
 this is established by the great doctrine of cosmic evolu- 
 tion, which has become within the last few years the 
 touchstone of scientific men, even as it has become one 
 of the " conquered stand-points " of science. I shall 
 only say, in way of further preface, that this doctrine 
 no more seems to me than it does to Tyndall to be 
 opposed to the religious nature of man. The religious 
 sentiment, like the desire of knowledge, is a phase of 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 21 
 
 the energy of nature. We may say of it, as Tyndall 
 has said of science, "Its development is as necessary 
 and as irresistible as the motion of the tides, or the 
 flowing of the Gulf Stream." 
 
 To these terms of neutrality not a few are ready to 
 accede. They find in them no humiliation. There are 
 not a few men of feeling who are willing to escape the 
 obligation of giving a reason for their feelings, even if 
 they must concede that their feelings cannot be justified 
 by any reason. Not a few answer the supercilious dogmas 
 of science with their own stat pro ratione voluntas. But 
 a policy of neutrality purchased by non-intercourse will 
 never satisfy, and ought not to endure, for the simple 
 reason that the heart can neither love nor trust what 
 the head demonstrates to be untrue. An earnest and 
 thorough man must believe in the reality of what he 
 loves and cares for. It is only in the excitement of the 
 moment that a man can love and hate, and fear and 
 hope what he suspects may be a phantom, or knows that 
 he can only guess at, and must mistake in his guessing. 
 Least of all will a man of science, who by his tastes, 
 his habits, and his life, is a sworn devotee of the truth, 
 be content to play hide-and-seek with his convictions 
 in order to enact the hollow farce of feeling for the 
 sake of feeling. 
 
 These two great forces in every individual man and 
 in human society must look each other in the face: 
 they must respect one another's rights, and join hands 
 in mutual alliance. They cannot go asunder, like Lot 
 and Abraham, with the deliberate purpose to cross each 
 other's track as rarely as possible. 
 
 My own opinion is, that there is no occasion either 
 for a conflict or an armed neutrality between them, 
 but that, being mutually dependent, they should regard 
 one another as natural allies and indispensable friends. 
 
22 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 In support of this view I ask attention to the following 
 considerations : — 
 
 1. Science is the offspring of Sentiment. In wonder, 
 says Plato, all philosophy begins. But wonder only 
 arrests the attention, and holds it for a moment. Curi- 
 osity follows, and impels the soul, as Tyndall says, to 
 look beneath what the senses observe ; that is, to in- 
 terpret the phenomena which startle and delight it. 
 The gratification of this impulse kindles it into an 
 intenser flame. The desire for knowledge becomes as 
 imperious as the thirst for power or the thirst for gold, 
 It is only when this desire is supreme and unalloyed, 
 that Science yields its most abundant fruits. As long 
 as Science is courted for profit, or gain, or ostentation, 
 she averts her face, or gives with frowning looks and a 
 reluctant hand. She requires that her devotee should 
 leave all for her sake. The fact that the passion seems 
 so singular to the observer only illustrates its energy. 
 The strangeness of its manifestations is exemplified in 
 the enthusiastic inventor, the starving scholar, the la- 
 borious analyst, the microscopic observer, the patient 
 encyclopedist, and the tireless explorer. The angers 
 and jealousies and strifes of men of science, like the 
 quarrels of lovers, only betoken the ardor of the senti- 
 ment by which they are moved. 
 
 Science is also stimulated by the love of power. If 
 knowledge is power, the possession of knowledge gives 
 the joy of power. The love of power stimulates Sci- 
 ence, first, by the consciousness that what is known 
 can be wielded as an instrument of great and accumu- 
 lating results, as in the arts which help the hand, the 
 inventions which store up physical energy in enormous 
 reserves, or spend it with cautious and delicate touch. 
 Another species of power is that which the poet, the 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 23 
 
 orator, and the man of forecast, may use for honor and 
 blessing, or for infamy and cursing, to themselves and 
 to others. Science also gratifies the feeling of victory 
 and achievement, such as rewards the mathematician, 
 the inventor, and the experimenter, when either has 
 labored long at his problem, and triumphed at last. 
 It provides for the special satisfaction of seeming to 
 create a portion or the whole of the universe by the 
 reconstructions of a theory, — a satisfaction which may 
 be degraded to the silly conceit that the heavens declare 
 the glory only of Copernicus, or Galileo, or Newton, or 
 which rises to the elevated homage of Kepler and Agassiz. 
 O God ! I think Thy thoughts after Thee. 
 
 Another sentiment which stimulates to science is the 
 desire to impart its gains. This desire blends with the 
 impulses of power, of sympathy, and benevolence. All 
 that we need to know of it, or to notice here, is that 
 it is a real and potent sentiment, and gives efficient 
 help to the desire to acquire knowledge. 
 
 Other forces might be named which awaken, and im- 
 pel to scientific activity; but, whatever they are, they 
 all fall under the category of sentiment. Whether 
 these sentiments do not involve convictions and truths 
 which Science is bound to respect and assent to, we do 
 not ask at this place. Conceding that they are simply 
 emotions, Science cannot separate itself from any of its 
 driving forces. It is neither becoming nor graceful for 
 it to slight or dishonor the springs which awaken and 
 impel its own energies. 
 
 2. As Sentiment furnishes the moving forces to Sci- 
 ence, it more or less distinctly shapes its ends. These 
 ends may not be always explicitly recognized, but they 
 are none the less real. They may seem to be over- 
 looked by the one-sided devotee of Science, and yet be 
 unconsciously proposed as the aims by which he justi- 
 
24 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 lies to himself his scientific zeal, and seeks to set aside 
 the objections, and win the confidence, of his fellow- 
 men. 
 
 Political economy would subject all special and pri- 
 vate sentimentalities — to what ? Surely to the public 
 welfare and what is thought a great blessing, for which 
 the sympathy of man for man is the sufficient reason. 
 This science sternly represses individual sympathies, 
 reproves private charity, and would shape and regulate 
 our benevolent doings by its dry and hard precepts and 
 its formal and heartless routine. It sets up great 
 phalansteries in the place of uncomfortable homes for 
 the poor and afflicted. It places a hard and rough 
 hand upon the impulses of pity. But it is always in 
 the name of the public welfare, and this is nothing 
 more nor less than the well being or the sources of well 
 being to the myriads of individuals who make up the 
 Commonwealth. Wherever this science restrains and 
 guides our private charity, it gives as its reason that 
 we shall make more hearts glad, and more homes 
 happy. 
 
 When the parent or teacher denies a petition for 
 indulgence or help, it is that the child or pupil may 
 enjoy the higher satisfaction of independent activity, 
 and win the well-earned rewards of labor, economy, and 
 self-control. 
 
 When political wisdom would guard the rights of 
 capital, it is that the laborer may be impelled to accu- 
 mulate capital for himself, or at least may be assured 
 constant and uniform wages. 
 
 When the appeal is from Sentiment to Science upon 
 the question of female suffrage, it is always in the name 
 of that refinement and grace which human nature is 
 supposed to delight in. 
 
 When organized and progressive civilization absorbs 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 25 
 
 the lesser nationalities, and enforces its behests with 
 cannon and cavalry, it is at least in the name of hu- 
 manity that it enforces the decrees that overwhelm the 
 adherents of every lost cause. 
 
 What, indeed, do humanity and progress signify — 
 those charmed words or cant words for which Science 
 bids us do and suffer so much — but richer and more 
 enlarged capacities for human enjoyment ? 
 
 We do not contend that Science always distinctly rec- 
 ognizes these ends, still less that it proposes the wisest 
 means to attain them, but that, in the last analysis, 
 every end which is proposed by any of the applied 
 sciences is defined in the terms of Sentiment. 
 
 In pure science even, in which no practical results 
 are aimed at or achieved, the sense of power and skill, 
 of culture and refinement, of generous sympathy and 
 subtle interpretation, of creative energy and sagacious 
 foresight, are its own exceeding great rewards. These 
 are justly esteemed sufficient to compensate for labo- 
 rious days and wakeful nights, for the scanty support 
 and the contented obscurity which have fallen to the 
 lot of the sages whom the world may honor while they 
 live, but will honor when they die. 
 
 Even those more aspiring speculations which scienti- 
 fically eliminate from the universe a God whom we can 
 know, and an immortality which we may enjoy, seem 
 to find a loftier triumph and a more exulting manhood 
 in the fearlessness with which they face these formid- 
 able problems and the fancied ease with which they 
 unravel them. 
 
 3. Though the sentiments are the motives and end of 
 all our activities, even those of Science itself, they need 
 to be judged and regulated by Science. We mean so 
 far as they are feelings, for it is under this aspect that 
 we view them at present. We leave as yet unde- 
 
26 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 cicled whether they are not largely intellectual. The 
 feelings, we concede, are simply impulsive and blind. 
 The intellect only has eyes to discern and direct : hence 
 the intellect asserts a natural, and, if you please, a 
 divine, right to guide and control Sentiment. Feeling 
 unrestrained by the intellect becomes passion: when 
 partially controlled, and finding in itself its only law 
 and reason, it becomes sentimentalism, which plays the 
 mischief with private and public economies, and gives 
 its sanction to all manner of partial and one-sided 
 theories, which it urges with unreasoning fervor and 
 declamatory harangues. But feeling directed by knowl- 
 edge and judgment is practical wisdom, common sense, 
 sagacious insight, scientific genius. 
 
 That the feelings need a judge and guide is too obvi- 
 ous to require an argument. The feelings are many: 
 they cannot all be gratified. We cannot have our cake, 
 and eat it, at the same time ; and yet we strongly de- 
 sire to do both. Two incompatible desires cannot be 
 indulged at the same moment, by the same man, in 
 respect to the same object. If the two are strong and 
 active, and come together, they work like an acid and 
 an alkali. Who shall decide between them ? Surely 
 not a feeling ! That would be to bring in another force, 
 as blind and as self-asserting as either of the two, — 
 a third party, instead of a judge, who perhaps might 
 divide the oyster by appropriating the meat to himself, 
 and giving the shells to the two. Surely it is the 
 intellect alone that can decide between two impulsive 
 desires. If it decides on grounds of external conse- 
 quences, and by the relations of interest and utility, of 
 private loss and gain, the shrewd and controlling intel- 
 lect is prudence and forecast ; if by the quality of the 
 sentiments, and their place as higher and lower in the 
 individual and social economy, and their fitness to be 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 27 
 
 dominant and law-giving, the judging and ruling intel- 
 lect becomes the conscience. If it rises higher still, and 
 interprets the personal and ethical agencies of the spir- 
 itual universe, through their place and significance in 
 the material, the intellect is transfigured as faith. 
 
 But, in thus directing and ruling the feelings, the 
 intellect neither disavows nor dishonors them. It is 
 neither an usurper nor an assailant of sentiment and 
 feeling as such. When it denies one feeling, it gives 
 leave and play to another. It represses one desire by 
 making another supreme. It detaches one impulse that 
 it may attract another. In all this it neither denies the 
 supremacy, nor disputes the authority, of Sentiment as 
 such. Science guides, but Sentiment moves every thing, 
 — in the realm of spirit at least. Whether this may 
 not be true of the universe of matter, we do not as yet 
 decide. 
 
 These considerations prepare us to take a step for- 
 ward in our argument, and to add — 
 
 4. Science should often recognize in Sentiment an 
 important element and datum of proof. If Science is 
 called into existence by sentiment, and sentiment fur- 
 nishes and shapes the ends of science, and sentiment is 
 controlled by science, then science may reasonably rec- 
 ognize sentiment as having an important place in the 
 economy of Nature. 
 
 For example, in all those sciences which have to do 
 with human interests, as in all the subdivisions of po- 
 litical and social philosophy, it may be assumed as a 
 sound maxim, that any fundamental doctrine which can 
 be clearly proved to be inconsistent with the elevation 
 and enjoyment of the greatest number of human beings 
 is to be regarded as untrue. In other words, those 
 teachings of political economy which can be shown to 
 be the most humane give primd facie evidence that 
 
28 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 they are solid and sound. Those systems that favor 
 individual ownership of property, a measure of co- 
 partnership in capital, and co-operation in labor, gen- 
 eral education, the alleviation of drudgery, reasonable 
 amusements, the refinement of the public tastes, bring 
 a strong recommendation in their favor, on strictly 
 scientific grounds. These grounds rest upon the axiom 
 that all the arrangements of Nature contemplate the 
 gratification of the better and nobler sentiments of 
 individual men. All social and political organizations 
 find the reason of their being in this as an assumed and 
 attainable end. Nature would be a monster, did she 
 not arrange for the common good ; and Nature would 
 be a bungler, if she did not provide that whatever makes 
 one man happier and better should be consistent with 
 the well-being of all the rest. This principle, we should 
 notice, by no means decides the part which the public 
 or social administration should take in promoting indi- 
 vidual welfare. It neither sanctions nor looks toward 
 the conclusion that property should be common, that 
 lawless love should be sanctioned, that the State should 
 own or run railways or insurance companies, or make 
 all grades of education as free as water, that society 
 should flood the community with whatever calls itself 
 money, or seek to ease the money-market every time 
 that it is tight, or furnish employment when there is no 
 natural call for this or that species of labor ; but it 
 does authorize us to believe that any political system, 
 any laws of trade, any methods of administration, which 
 cannot be shown in the long-run to be compatible with 
 the well-being of a virtuous community, may be pre- 
 sumed to be scientifically unsound. 
 
 If this is true of institutions and social economy, it 
 must also be true of a theory of life. Whatever theory 
 shocks the modesty or the moderation of nature does 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 29 
 
 violence to that fellow-feeling which makes the whole 
 world kin, gives spur or rein to the appetites which we 
 have in common with the brutes : whatever tends to 
 degrade or debase our manhood, whatever ministers to 
 bad neighborhood between individuals or communities, 
 or inflames envious or selfish passion, is, for these 
 reasons, rightly held to be false on purely scientific 
 grounds. It is the dictate of a rigidly scientific spirit 
 to reject such a theory altogether until it forces convic- 
 tion by absolute demonstration. 
 
 In such cases, it is not the claim of Sentiment as such, 
 still less of Sentiment as pure feeling, which decides 
 the question, but of Sentiment as recognized and inter- 
 preted by Science. The appeal is not taken from the 
 intellect to the feelings, which would open the flood- 
 gates to fanaticism and passion; nor is it from one 
 feeling to another, which would call on the blind to 
 lead the blind ; nor does it transfer one subject matter 
 to the court of the intellect, and another to the court of 
 the feelings, which would introduce endless questions 
 about jurisdiction, and make the courts a very laughing- 
 stock by injunctions and counter-injunctions : but it is 
 an appeal to the intellect, in robes of Science too, to 
 ground its judgments upon the data furnished by the 
 presence and demands of Sentiment in the nature of 
 man. 
 
 Science finds in man the desire for immortality, and 
 finds it to be a persistent and irrepressible force. This 
 desire craves existence for those whom we love, as truly 
 as for our individual selves. This desire is a constant 
 and an ever-recurring fact, a phenomenon of enormous 
 significance, a force of terrific energy, if we estimate it 
 by its power of work. It may not be legitimate to rea- 
 son we are unwilling to cease to exist, therefore we shall 
 not cease to exist ; but it is perfectly right to conclude 
 
30 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 that Nature must put a lie on all her analogies and 
 indications, if she has not provided a fact which shall 
 answer to this desire, when viewed in its place among 
 the springs of human action. 
 
 When we reason as physiologists only, about the 
 nature of life, or the possibility of surviving death, 
 we must limit ourselves to those indications which are 
 purely physiological. Physiology, as such, knows noth- 
 ing of what is called sentiment for or against either the 
 origination or the extinction of life. It is at liberty to 
 prove, and it is its duty to prove, if it can, that a living 
 being can be originated or developed into sentient and 
 conscious existence from matter that is not itself alive. 
 But when a scientist fails to do this, and stoutly con- 
 tends that all the reported instances of such origination 
 are untrustworthy, is it fair or scientific, as Mr. Huxley 
 does, to throw into the balance on the one side the 
 possibility or probability of what the next sixty years 
 may show, and not to throw in upon the other the 
 improbability that is suggested by the violence done to 
 every desire and hope of man's inner being ? If a man 
 is scientific in proportion as he is sensitive to the most 
 subtle intimations and analogies within a limited field 
 of observation and experiment, he is as truly scientific 
 when he is equally sensitive to the indications that fly 
 into his face in another field. That Science ought to 
 recognize the sentiments of the soul among the phe- 
 nomena of nature, will not be denied, however often 
 the duty of doing so is practically overlooked. 
 
 The feeling of reverence or worship for the more 
 than finite is another phenomenon, which, Science has 
 at last conceded, deserves its notice. It fails to do 
 justice to it, however, this emotion, if it does not find 
 its counterpart in that living God for whom the heart 
 thinks and longs. We believe that faith in an intelli- 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 31 
 
 gent Creator is essential to the possibility of Science as 
 the interpreter of the thought of the universe. Our 
 present line of argument would involve the conclusion, 
 that, to meet the demands of the heart of man, Science 
 requires a personal and sympathizing Father in heaven. 
 
 Thus far in our argument, we have treated the so- 
 called sentiments as though they were emotions only, 
 having no positively intellectual element, and as only 
 indirectly having claims to the notice of Science. We 
 have argued, that, even when so regarded, they are im- 
 portant as data for scientific reference, and have, so to 
 speak, authority over the conclusions of the intellect. 
 We proceed to exhibit them in another aspect. 
 
 5. Much of what passes for sentiment has a positive- 
 ly intellectual element. Many of the so-called senti- 
 ments signify strong convictions warmed into ardent 
 enthusiasm, and held with passionate earnestness. The 
 intellectual element in them may not be obtrusive. 
 The truths on which these convictions rest may be 
 seen so clearly, and reasoned so readily, that the pres- 
 ence and activity of the intellect can scarcely be ob- 
 served. The feelings may flash so quickly into flame, 
 and glow with such intense earnestness, that even the 
 subject of them scarcely knows that he thinks at all. 
 It should never be forgotten that emotion in man rests 
 on belief; that feeling of every sort is the legitimate 
 product of what is taken to be true. The proverb 
 which reads, Wherever there is smoke, there is fire, may 
 be expanded thus, " Wherever there is fire, there is 
 fuel ; " and this may be still further applied, " Wher- 
 ever there is the fire of emotion, there is a firm belief 
 of truth." 
 
 Now, we do not argue that excited feeling proves 
 certain truth. Nothing would be more absurd. But 
 we reason thus, wherever, from one generation to 
 
32 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 another, under all circumstances, there have been per- 
 sistent habits of feeling, which have taken the strong- 
 est hold of man's nature, and moved it to its depths, 
 animating it to labor and sacrifice, there is certain evi- 
 dence that some fact or truth is earnestly believed. 
 This belief may be often sadly and seriously mistaken, 
 it may be but the caricature or travesty of the truth ; 
 and yet that there is truth about which it is concerned, 
 which man rightly thinks to be important, is most 
 reasonable to be inferred. That truth, whatever it may 
 be or whatever it may concern, Science is bound to 
 search after till it can find and defend it. 
 
 Science, then, is bound to respect Sentiment as an evi- 
 dence of earnest belief, and, finding earnest belief, to 
 inquire how far it is well founded, and, if it be gross or 
 manifest error, to determine what the truth is on which 
 the error rests. To treat Sentiment as though it were 
 only feeling, and to set Science up against emotion, is to 
 fight a useless battle of words, in which Science denies 
 or overlooks a most important fact. To recognize the 
 rights of Sentiment as feeling, and to refuse its rights as 
 founded on beliefs which indicate important truth, is to 
 dishonor and degrade it. 
 
 These convictions, which are so ready to be kindled 
 into a flame of sentiment, are by no means limited to 
 ethical or religious truth. They concern man's earthly 
 destiny as truly as his spiritual nature, his capacity for 
 progress, the triumphs of Science itself, and the harmo- 
 nies between man and nature and God which betoken 
 the triumph of good. Some of them are the axioms 
 of belief and action, without which the prophecies and 
 promises of Science would be a romantic dream, to 
 deny or even question which would be counted intel- 
 lectual folly by the most rigid experimentalist, the most 
 positive dogmatist, and the most dogged materialist. 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 33 
 
 This leads me to observe : — 
 
 6. Science, so far as it dishonors Sentiment, exposes 
 its own narrowness, and brings into question its own 
 right to exist, and to give law to man. That philosopher 
 who reasons that Sentiment has no rights over the scien- 
 tific intellect, because its phenomena and their effects 
 can neither be observed by the senses, pictured by the 
 imagination, or verified by experiment, may consistently 
 dismiss Sentiment in all its forms of faith and duty, as 
 having no possible relations, that he can define, to what 
 he accepts as scientific truth. It would be well, how- 
 ever, that he should ask himself, whether, by his own 
 principles, he does not bring into question the authority 
 of some of those intellectual processes through which 
 all the results of Science have been achieved, and by 
 faith in which all the devotees of Science must stand. 
 The sagacious guess, the creative hypothesis, the splen- 
 did and almost inspired prophecy, the magnificent gen- 
 eralization, such as have made modern Science so 
 glorious, and crowned its heroes as re-creating kings of 
 the material universe, are processes, none of which are 
 capable of being observed by the senses, pictured by 
 the imagination, or verified by experiment ; and yet, as 
 we trust them, or dishonor them, so must Science stand 
 or fall. The scientist who would bring dishonor upon 
 Sentiment, whether on its emotional or its intellectual 
 side, or, seeking to honor it, gives to it only the mock 
 homage of his intellectual distrust, ought to subject 
 the intuitions and processes of his scientific intellect to 
 a similar indignity. But, then, what would become of 
 Science, even the sciences of observation and experi- 
 ment ? So soon as you bring dishonor or distrust upon 
 those intellectual faiths which some call sentiments, Sci- 
 ence itself must fail. 
 
 The case is even worse when the theory of evolution 
 
34 SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 is invoked to explain the higher convictions and feel- 
 ings, especially those which pertain to God and immor- 
 tality. The writer makes no war upon evolution as a 
 law of matter or spirit, so far as it can make good its 
 cause by verified experiments, or even by plausible anal- 
 ogies. But when it is argued that the higher senti- 
 ments and truths must necessarily change from one 
 generation to another under this law, so that they can 
 neither grasp nor indicate any truth with which Science 
 can hold any fixed relations, it follows that the founda- 
 tions of scientific faith must, under the workings of the 
 same law, be exposed to similar distrust. The axioms 
 of mathematics, the belief in time and space, the confi- 
 dence in the order of the universe and in the achieve- 
 ments of Science itself, nay, the recently evolved belief 
 in evolution itself, are all but the temporary results of 
 the joint action of many somethings with their environ- 
 ment for countless ages. But, if these may give way, 
 who shall guarantee the stability of Science itself? 
 Why may it not happen, that, at the next turn of the 
 wheel, evolution itself shall be evolved into a new 
 formula, and be forever displaced? Science in these 
 days wields a sharp scythe, and performs many splendid 
 and daring feats. It were a pity, that in its zeal to open 
 for itself a smooth path, clear of all impertinent in- 
 truders, it should chance to cut off its legs. 
 
 But we may not linger on this treacherous ground. 
 Let us return from this metaphysical quagmire, which 
 so many dread as shaking and uncertain, and gain a 
 firm footing, so that we may compress the results of our 
 argument into a few brief definitions. 
 
 Sentimentalism has been already defined as feeling, 
 partially enlightened by the intellect, and yet refusing 
 to be controlled by it. That sentimentalism is often 
 simple passion or self-will is obvious enough to any one 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 35 
 
 who bestows even a casual notice on the mild and malig- 
 nant fanaticisms which are so abundant in politics, social 
 reform, morality, and religion ; which, on the one hand, 
 shine as splendidly and as harmlessly as the summer 
 lightning, or, on the other, rend and shatter like the 
 crashing thunderbolt. 
 
 Sentimentalism is often misnamed Sentiment in pop- 
 ular discourse. We have so used it, that we might 
 illustrate the better the absurdities and contradictions 
 to which the confusion of the two must inevitably lead, 
 and explain and vindicate the higher and better signifi- 
 cation. In this better sense, Sentiment involves the ac- 
 tion of the intellect, whether it interprets the meaning 
 and scope of an emotion, or kindles emotion into flame 
 by its rapid and sure insight into truth. The proportion 
 of these two elements may vary indefinitely. The pres- 
 ence of feeling as an effect or an element of insight is 
 always present to give warmth and glow to conviction. 
 Sentiment may be as serene as a summer morning, or 
 as stormy as a midnight tempest. It may seem to rea- 
 son ; but its reasons spring from, or extend to, the heart. 
 But they need be none the less solid or convincing for 
 this, but rather the firmer and deeper, because they take 
 stronger and deeper hold on the nobler part of man. 
 
 It follows, also, that Science is not rightly conceived 
 when it is limited to that knowledge which can be for- 
 mulated by mathematical relations, or verified by experi- 
 ment. It would be easy to show that even the impulse 
 to believe in experiment, and to test by mathematics, is 
 suggested and gratified by what some would call a 
 " sentiment." The intuitions and faiths on which Sci- 
 ence rests are uniformly held and assented to with 
 positive and earnest emotion. Science, moreover, is 
 rooted in common sense, and ought never to separate 
 itself from intimate relations with common life. For 
 
6b SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 
 
 the ends of pure science even, the man who inves- 
 tigates is often of greater significance than the school 
 of science which teaches him how to investigate. The 
 motives which impel him, the aims for which he inquires, 
 his estimates of the purpose for which he himself and 
 the universe exist, go far to determine the quality of 
 his studies and the value of their results. 
 
 Science is no foe to common sense on the one hand, 
 nor to faith on the other. It cannot be hostile to com- 
 mon sense ; for, when its methods are closely studied, 
 they are found to be nothing more than an exact and 
 disciplined application of the methods of common sense 
 to a special class of objects. The rules of inference, 
 and methods of induction, are as truly applied in the 
 occasions of every-day life by the humblest of men as 
 by the most consummate scientist. But common sense 
 recognizes very largely the needs and demands of the 
 heart of man. It is uniformly vivified and guided by 
 emotion. Similarly, and under a more careful dis- 
 cipline, may Science be taught and guided by those 
 strong convictions, which, when unquestioned, glow 
 with a gentle and unconscious warmth, but, when ar- 
 rested and challenged, kindle into a sudden and 
 scorching heat. 
 
 Faith, again, is warm-hearted sentiment sustained by 
 rational insight, or rapid but self-evident inductions in 
 respect to the facts and truths which concern that un- 
 seen and spiritual sphere of which the seen and the 
 material are the reflex and symbol. 
 
 A lofty mountain is before us. Its hidden founda- 
 tions we cannot explore. Its inaccessible summit is 
 enveloped in clouds which are now and then for a 
 moment withdrawn, that they may display the sunlight 
 which ordinarily they only suggest rather than reveal. 
 What we know of the mountain symbolizes what we 
 
SCIENCE AND SENTIMENT. 37 
 
 know of the universe, finite and infinite, and the meth- 
 ods by which we know. The portion within our reach 
 we map and measure, and carefully delineate. The 
 foundations beneath we cannot wholly uncover. The 
 summit we can never reach. We confidently interpret 
 the inaccessible by the suggestions indicated in the por- 
 tions which we measure and scale. For the rest, we cannot 
 believe that what we shall hereafter discover will belie 
 what we already know, and meanwhile are content to 
 admire the beauty, and to be elevated by the grandeur, 
 which we feel rather than know. When we essay to 
 construct into an harmonious whole the unseen founda- 
 tions, the accessible slopes, and the unapproachable 
 summit, we are not disturbed that we know and judge 
 of each by a process peculiar to itself. In like manner 
 we accept common sense, with its intuitions that com- 
 mand conviction, and defy analysis ; formal science, with 
 its verified phenomena and demonstrated reasonings ; 
 and faith, with its moving and elevating analogies — all 
 as legitimate activities of the one human soul, and giv- 
 ing that consistent though incomplete knowledge of the 
 universe which satisfies both the intellect and the heart. 
 
II. 
 
 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE VERSUS THE 
 SCIENCE OF MAN 
 
 A PLEA FOR THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 1 
 
 " I walked on, musing with myself 
 whether, after all, 
 A larger metaphysics might not help 
 Our physics." 
 
 Mrs. E. B. Browning. 
 
 Not many days ago, as I strayed into the study of 
 an eminent physicist, I observed hanging against the 
 wall, framed like a choice engraving, several dingy, 
 ribbon-like strips of I knew not what, arranged in par- 
 allel rows. My curiosity was at once aroused. What 
 were they ? and why were they so carefully protected 
 and so greatly honored by my realistic friend? They 
 might be shreds of mummy-wraps, or bits of friable 
 bark-cloth from the Pacific, and therefore needing to be 
 guarded under glass ; or perhaps, indeed, they were 
 remnants from a grandmother's wedding-dress ; or shoe- 
 ties, out of which all color had faded, leaving a faint 
 shimmer of satin finish on the water-stained surface. 
 They were none of these ; to have suggested any of 
 which might have been resented by the grave philoso- 
 pher, who solidly explained that they were carefully 
 prepared photographs of portions of the solar spectrum. 
 
 I stood and mused, absorbed in the varying yet signi- 
 ficant intensities of light and shade, bordered by mystic 
 
 1 Delivered originally as an address before the societies of the * B K 
 at Harvard and Trinity Colleges in June and July, 1871. 
 
 38 
 
THE SCIENCES OF NATURE. 39 
 
 letters and symbolic numbers. As I mused, the pale 
 legend began to glow with life. Every line became 
 luminous with meaning. Every shadow was suffused 
 with light shining from behind, suggesting some mighty 
 achievement of knowledge, — of knowledge growing 
 more daring in proportion to the remoteness of the 
 object known, — of knowledge becoming more positive 
 in its answers as the questions which were asked 
 seemed unanswerable. No Runic legend, no Babylon- 
 ish arrow-head, no Egyptian hieroglyph, no Moabite 
 stone, could present a history like this, could suggest 
 thoughts of such weighty import, or so stimulate and 
 exalt the imagination. 
 
 Over against these symbolic bands — records of light 
 by means of the light, and glowing with light to the 
 soul — hung the portrait of Newton, with its wondrous 
 forehead and eagle glance. I turned from the spectrum 
 to the portrait, and from the portrait to the spectrum, 
 still musing as I turned. Newton's daring suggestion, 1 
 that the force familiarly recognized on the earth might 
 prevail as far as the moon, and possibly extend to the 
 sun, — coming like inspiration, but held in abeyance for 
 years, till careful and long-delayed measurements made 
 it spring into an acknowledged fact, — this came to 
 mind as it had never done before ; with it the successive 
 experiments of Newton upon the light, — his expansion 
 of the colorless beam into the gay and many-colored 
 
 1 " As he sat alone in a garden [1666] he fell into a speculation on 
 the power of gravity; that as this power is not found sensibly dimin- 
 ished at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth to which we 
 can rise, neither at the tops of the loftiest buildings, nor even on the 
 summits of the highest mountains, it appeared to him reasonable to 
 conclude that this power must extend much farther than was usually 
 thought. Why not as high as the moon ? said he to himself ; and, if so, 
 her motion must be influenced by it: perhaps she is retained in her 
 orbit thereby." — Whewell : History of the Inductive Sciences, vol. 1„ 
 bk. vii. chap. ii. § 3. 
 
40 TEE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 spectrum, suggesting theories of rays and undulations 
 and mystic powers in the several colors. There fol- 
 lowed the thought of Wollaston and Young and of 
 Fraunhofer, and his discovery of the lines that were 
 afterwards to be interpreted as a mystic language from 
 the far-off worlds. But, first, chemistry must come 
 into being, to evolve the gases, and decompose the 
 solids, that it might use the refracted light to deter- 
 mine the elements of whatever is consumed in the light- 
 giving flame. Each one of these steps of progress in- 
 volved bold invention and exact observation. But 
 each was necessary to this latest, proudest achievement 
 of our times, by which the scientist has connected the 
 sun and the earth by the closest affinities, and learned 
 not only to interpret the structure of the orb which for 
 centuries had smitten with blindness the eye that had 
 ventured to gaze familiarly upon its face, but even to 
 resolve the nebulae themselves into luminous gases. 
 
 I exclaimed in thought, " Would that Newton were 
 now living, and could look with our open vision upon 
 the blinding sun, the glowing stars, and the burning 
 nebulas ! — those objects which Science first made so 
 remote, and now brings so near, between which and 
 the eye she first interposed such abysms of distance as 
 appall the imagination, and at last made them so famil- 
 iar and so near, that we now inspect the sodium or the 
 hydrogen that burns in the lamp upon our table, with 
 the same look with which we watch the sodium and the 
 hydrogen that have been consuming for ages in the sun 
 or the stars. Of all the kings and prophets of science, 
 surely Newton would most have desired to see the 
 things which we see, and to hear the things which we 
 hear. Would, indeed, that he could live again, and 
 witness the completion of the work which he so nobly 
 began ! " 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 41 
 
 I awake from my musing ; and, abjuring any scepti- 
 cism which I may have cherished, I confess my faith in 
 modern science. Though hard-hearted as any meta- 
 physician ought to be, I prostrate myself before her 
 shrine ; nay, so ardent is my neophytic zeal, that I am 
 tempted to glorify the photographic spectrum into a 
 fetich. Indeed, had I nothing else to reverence, I could 
 easily worship this. 
 
 I return to my studies a wiser, perhaps a sadder, 
 man. To refresh and assure my bewildered spirit, I 
 think of Socrates. Turning to the " Memorabilia " of 
 Xenophon, I find I was not mistaken in my memory ; 
 for it is there set down to the credit of the philosopher, 
 that " he never discoursed concerning the nature of all 
 things, — how that which the sophists call the universe, 
 o xoopog, is constituted, under what laws the heavenly 
 bodies exist, etc., but invariably represented those who 
 concerned themselves with inquiries of this sort as 
 playing the fool. First of all, he inquired whether such 
 persons thought they had so far mastered the facts 
 which relate to man, as to be justified in proceeding to 
 such investigations, or whether they considered it in 
 order to leave human inquiries for physical researches." 1 
 Thus records Xenophon concerning Socrates. Poor 
 deluded son of Sophroniscus ! For such sentiments, 
 the present times would be more against thee than 
 were thine own, hard as they were. Even the defence 
 of atheism would not have saved thee against so enor- 
 mous a heresy respecting the sciences of nature. Had 
 a society of modern scientists sat in judgment upon 
 thee, they for once would have been unanimous, and 
 voted thee worthy of death. Certainly thou wouldst 
 have found a smaller minority than thou hadst in ancient 
 Athens, in any modern scientific association, whether it 
 
 1 Xenophon, Memorabilia, lib. i. cap. i. 11-16. 
 
42 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 were a society for mutual admiration or for reciprocal 
 altercation. For is it not now an exploded idea that 
 man, or what concerns him, is better worth regarding 
 than what was called nature by the sophists in the time 
 of Socrates? Is not man himself now in danger of 
 being eliminated out of the Kosmos ? And as to hold- 
 ing that man has any great significance in the universe, 
 has not the doctrine become fixed, that Science has to 
 do only with phenomena, i.e., with material phenomena 
 and their relations ? Has not man been satisfactorily 
 resolved into nerve-substance and vibrating force, and 
 thus brought under the laws of mechanism ? And has 
 it not come to unconscious speech, without even the 
 suggestion of unconscious irony, that this is the only 
 way in which man can be scientifically studied, even 
 though by this process he is scientifically and summa- 
 rily disposed of? Is it not now near being demon- 
 strated that man, as body and spirit, as conscience and 
 speech, has been evolved from lower forms of being, 
 with all his furnishings of aspirations, categories, arid 
 principles ? and is it not also a matter of grave ques- 
 tion, whether he can long remain in his present transi- 
 tion state, — whether, having been evolved from some 
 very indeterminate germ, he may not be sublimated 
 into something altogether attenuated and impalpable ? 
 In short, is not man ranked very low in the present 
 estimates of comparative science, and is he not in 
 danger of being very soon left out of them altogether ? 
 Somewhat after this fashion ran our meditations 
 respecting nature and man, according to which the 
 two are brought into sharp antagonism as objects of 
 certain and trustworthy knowledge, and as claiming 
 attention from the modern philosopher and educator. 
 Already, in the departments of study and of education, 
 an active controversy has sprung up which threatens 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 43 
 
 to bring on a sharp litigation, in which the parties are 
 to be the Sciences of Nature and the Science of Man. 
 At present, the odds are largely against man, and we 
 fear that soon it may be claimed that man has no rights 
 which the student of nature is bound to respect; in 
 short, that, if Science requires it, man must go to the 
 wall. There is no telling how soon he may be sum- 
 moned to allow himself quietly to be shoved out of 
 being under the operation of natural selection, or to 
 be sublimated into some sort of impalpable incense 
 upon the altar of scientific progress. 
 
 Under these unequal odds I bring to this ancient 
 and honorable philosophical society 1 — a society which 
 originated when philosophy had another meaning than 
 is claimed for it at present — a plea for the science of 
 man ; not as against the sciences of nature, to whose 
 claims I have already confessed my allegiance, but as 
 essential to these sciences, and as, therefore, incapable 
 of being ever superseded, or set aside, or left behind, 
 in their most splendid achievements. I would even be 
 so audacious as to seek to show, that, in all these, man 
 must be a constant quantity, and that the elements 
 which he furnishes can never be dispensed with ; that, 
 as the sciences of nature make progress, these elements 
 will come more and more distinctly into recognition ; 
 that, as nature is more profoundly studied, the results 
 of this study will bring man's capacities and endow- 
 ments more distinctly into view. I would demonstrate 
 that man must be thoroughly understood and nobly 
 confided in, if nature is to be interpreted in its widest 
 relations, and our confidence in the principles and laws 
 which are essential to the science of nature is to be 
 surely established. I offer this plea, not in the interests 
 of strife, but in the interests of peace ; not to gain a 
 
 i Of the * b k of Harvard and Trinity. 
 
44 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 one-sided victory, but to show that no action can hold 
 between the two parties, because the sciences of nature 
 and of man can never be at variance. I would also 
 show, that as there can be no science of nature which 
 does not recognize the science of man, and as the study 
 of nature cannot be prosecuted to the neglect of man, 
 so the study of man will be always furthered by a 
 generous study of nature ; that as, on the broader field 
 of investigation and culture, so on the narrower field of 
 education and discipline, the scientific study of nature 
 and the scientific study of man are mutually dependent 
 and mutually helpful. 
 
 We enforce our argument, first of all, by an analysis 
 of the conception of science. What science is, is not so 
 easily stated as would seem likely from the freedom 
 with which the term is used, or the readiness, not to 
 say the flippancy, with which its authority is enforced. 
 The most cautious scientist would doubtless concede 
 that nature furnishes the materials, and man arranges 
 them ; more exactly, the observing man collects facts, 
 and the reflecting man explains facts. We speak freely 
 of the careless glance of the one and the sagacious in- 
 sight of the other. We talk of the secrets which Nature 
 has been carefully hiding for generations, and has been 
 reluctantly forced to yield at the bidding of one who 
 had overheard the charmed words at which the doors 
 of her treasure-house must fly open. If we are suffi- 
 ciently curious to ask what science is, every answer 
 which we give must carry us back to man as an agent 
 who thinks natural facts into scientific theories, who 
 explains phenomena by laws, and founds systems on 
 principles. This question, it is true, may be curious 
 rather than useful. It were too much to expect that 
 Newton should pause in the tremulous suggestion that 
 first connected the detention of the revolving moon 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 45 
 
 with the force that brings down the falling stone, in 
 order to ask whence the suggestion was inspired, and 
 how it could be justified ; or that the ardent Davy 
 should have held back from the brave experiment that 
 literally unearthed the bounding potassium, in order to 
 perfect a metaphysical analysis of the processes which 
 discovered, or the reasons which foretold it ; 2 or that 
 Kirchhoff should have been diverted from the daring 
 gaze by which he would read the secret of the sun, in 
 order to interpret the thoughts which emboldened him 
 to the effort. But how is it after a discovery has been 
 made, or a great secret of nature has been mastered? 
 Then not only curiosity turns from the result to the 
 process by which it has been achieved, but the anxiety 
 to make sure that the jewel wrested from nature has 
 been lawfully obtained, and may be safely held, impels 
 to the earnest inquiry whether the charm by which we 
 won it was whispered us in our ear by the honest spirit 
 of nature, or by some mischief-loving imp of the mock- 
 ing fantasy. So it happens long after Newton's dis- 
 covery has become a commonplace to the schoolboy, 
 and Davy's experiment is repeated every day by the 
 shop-lad, and the revelations of the spectrum analysis 
 have enabled the novice glibly to discourse of the 
 secrets of the sun, that the true and earnest philosopher 
 is impelled carefully to retrace the path which has con- 
 ducted Science to the dizzy heights on which she stands, 
 and tremblingly inquires, How came I hither ? Is the 
 standing-ground firm ? Are the objects which I seem 
 
 1 For the details of this discovery and experiment, see Life of Sir 
 Humphry Davy, chap. iii. We quote the following: " I have been 
 told by Mr. Edmund Davy, his relative and then assistant . . . that 
 when he [Sir Humphry] saw the minute globules of potassium burst 
 through the crust of potash, and take fire as they entered the at- 
 mosphere, he could not contain his joy, he actually bounded about the 
 room in ecstatic delight; and that some little time was required for him 
 to compose himself sufficiently to continue the experiments." 
 
46 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 to see the firm and solid land, or only a delusive 
 mirage ? 
 
 Now, if we ask these questions, we must answer them ; 
 and if we answer them, so far as we can see, we must 
 study the nature of man. We cannot justify the pro- 
 cesses by which we interpret nature, unless we scru- 
 tinize the processes of the human spirit which performs 
 them, and search after the principles and faiths which 
 these processes assume and rest upon. We cannot dis- 
 cover and vindicate the grounds on which our inquiries 
 rest, without finding them embedded in man's being as 
 axioms and principles, which, as the result of further 
 scrutiny, we find that he can neither question nor set 
 aside. In other words, the foundations of the science 
 of nature in the last analysis are discovered in the 
 ineradicable beliefs and convictions of the human spirit ; 
 and it is only by the earnest and careful study of this 
 spirit that we can find them, and, having found them, 
 can recognize them as the principles by which we 
 interpret both nature and man. 
 
 Were we to proceed farther in the analysis of science, 
 we should add, that science objectively viewed is uni- 
 versally conceived as related knowledge. Those who 
 limit it most narrowly, assert that it gives us phenom- 
 ena connected by relations. But facts or phenomena 
 do not connect themselves. To conceive that they do 
 or can, were to fall into the worst and emptiest trick of 
 personifying an abstraction, against which this class of 
 philosophers are, as they should be, the most earnest in 
 their cautions. They require an agent to do this work, 
 and to do it, not after the caprices of an infant's or an 
 idiot's handling, but by wise and intelligent combina- 
 tions. Whence do these relations, these mystic bonds 
 of science, proceed? The interpreting mind does, in 
 some sense, find them already in its hands. Whether 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 47 
 
 they are evolved from its own experience, as the pro- 
 gressive acquisitions of association which cannot be 
 broken, or perhaps hardened in the brain under physio- 
 logical laws, as Mill, Bain, and Spencer would teach 
 us ; whether, like a mystic veil, they are thrown over 
 the otherwise chaotic phenomena of both matter and 
 spirit by the formative energy of man, as Kant con- 
 fidently suggests ; or whether they are at once the con- 
 ditions of thought to man, because they are the condi- 
 tions of being in nature and God, as the wit of common 
 sense and the research of the profoundest philosophy 
 declare, — these relations must, in the study of nature, 
 be confidingly applied by man as fast and as far as the 
 chaos which bewilders the infant, and overawes the 
 savage, is thought into a kosmos by man's interpreting 
 reason. If the inductive sciences claim allegiance from 
 the common sense of mankind, the inductive method 
 must be justified to its critical, and even to its scepti- 
 cal analysis. But the inductive method can in no way 
 be thus justified, except as the intellect falls back upon 
 its own underlying faiths concerning God and nature. 
 Briefly, an inductive science of nature presupposes a 
 science of induction, and a science of induction presup- 
 poses a science of man. 
 
 We urge, still further, that the history of the sciences 
 of nature illustrates their near relation to the science of 
 man. Before Socrates, the physics were as crude as 
 the metaphysics. Both alike were raw guess-work, 
 founded on hasty resemblances more rudely interpreted 
 and generalized. From such speculations about matter 
 and spirit Socrates wisely withdrew his thoughts, that 
 he might first understand himself as nearer and more 
 intelligible to himself than nature. But, in learning 
 how to study himself, he also learned the secret of 
 knowing other things. If we may trust the brief expo- 
 
48 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 sitions of Xenophon and the embellished dialogues of 
 Plato, he learned the rules of cautious observation, 
 wise definition, and comprehensive comparison, and 
 rigidly enforced them as the conditions of all trust- 
 worthy knowledge. The Socratic method was first 
 applied by him to man and what concerns man. But 
 the disciples of Socrates, having learned the secret of 
 wise observation, could not but forthwith apply it to 
 nature ; and out of this Socratic school came the ambi- 
 tious cosmogony of Plato, the perfected logic, and the 
 sober, and, in many respects, solid physics of Aristotle, 
 with the beginnings of that geometry which soon was 
 so nearly perfected as not to be disdained by Newton 
 and Laplace, — the geometry which the modern schools 
 that are most jealous of the study of man, rightly and 
 earnestly insist on as the only condition of science, 
 writing over their portals, as Plato did, "Let no one 
 enter here who cannot geometrize" 
 
 As we trace the beginnings of modern physics, we 
 find that the true method of interpreting nature Was 
 sought for by Bacon and Descartes in the nature of 
 man, by the first impliedly and yet abundantly, by the 
 second confessedly and formally. The present century, 
 so distinguished for the achievements of physics, num- 
 bers not a few among the most successful students of 
 nature whose attention has been given to the scrutiny 
 of the methods of Science itself. We name Davy, 
 Herschel, Whewell, Agassiz, Faraday, and Tyndall — 
 all of whom have judged the science of induction to 
 be the most fundamental, the most wide-reaching and 
 fascinating, of sciences. Not a few, like Davy, have 
 combined poetic and metaphysical tastes with a genius 
 for physics. We may say almost universally, that men 
 great in discovery, and profound in philosophic research, 
 have always been forward to recognize that man must 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 49 
 
 furnish the key to the mysteries of nature ; he himself 
 being the greatest mystery of all. There have been 
 many so-called physicists who were content to find or 
 take their formulae and principles at second-hand, and 
 work them out in problems and experiments, — many 
 who have hastily borrowed or stolen them from some 
 crude and effete metaphysics ; but never was there a 
 philosopher of nature who looked for a theory of his 
 science, who did not believe in a science of man. 
 
 Our position is still further confirmed by the defects, 
 in this regard, of some of the recent philosophies which 
 are now attracting general attention. These philoso- 
 phies have these feature, in common : they all claim to 
 be constructed in the spirit of the inductive method, 
 and after the analogies of modern physics, and to be 
 justified by actual experiment. But they all can be 
 shown to be seriously defective, for the reason that 
 their science of man is too narrow or erroneous to 
 furnish a solid basis for any science of nature what- 
 ever. 
 
 We begin with the philosophy which is now in the 
 mouth of every man, the so-called Positive Philosophy ; 
 and, to be both discriminating and just, we will first 
 notice it in that form in which it was taught by its 
 original expounder. The fundamental doctrines of 
 Comte, and the characteristics of the positive philoso- 
 phy, are thus summed up by Mill : " We have no 
 knowledge of any thing but phenomena (and our 
 knowledge of phenomena is relative, not absolute). 
 We know not the essence nor the real mode of produc- 
 tion of any fact, but only its relations to other facts in 
 the way of succession or of similitude. These rela- 
 tions are constant, that is, always the same in the same 
 
50 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 circumstanced. The constant resemblances which link 
 phenomena together, and the constant sequences which 
 unite them as antecedent and consequent, are termed 
 their laws. The laws of phenomena are all we know 
 respecting them. Their essential nature and their ulti- 
 mate causes, either efficient or final, are unknown and 
 inscrutable to us." 1 Of this positive philosophy, as 
 thus expounded, we observe that it is properly, if not 
 emphatically, metaphysical. Against this charge, Comte 
 would earnestly protest in the words, "Have I not 
 demonstrated, by a broad and decisive induction, that 
 the human mind must have passed through the stages 
 of theology and metaphysics before it could reach the 
 apotheosis of positivism ? If this induction is good, I 
 cannot be remanded to the condition which I have al- 
 ready outgrown." We do not care to question whether 
 this historic induction of Comte is correct, concerning 
 which his own adherents hold diverse opinions ; nor do 
 we urge that he has no right, according to his funda- 
 mental principles, to make any historic induction at all : 
 we simply assert the fact that the positive philosophy is 
 a metaphysical phenomenon. To urge that it cannot 
 be, because it does not occur in the right order of time, 
 is to urge that a patient cannot have scarlet-fever or 
 the measles, because the same patient, according to the 
 theory of these diseases, can have neither a second time. 
 It is, to apply the a priori method, to set aside a positive 
 phenomenon or fact. That the positive philosophy is 
 metaphysical, in the proper sense of the term, is too 
 obvious to admit of question. Its problem is meta- 
 physical. It proposes not only to discover the criteria 
 of the processes which are common to all the special 
 sciences, but it sets these forth as the criteria of every 
 true science. Its method is metaphysical in so far as it 
 
 i J. S. Mill, the Positive Philosophy of Comte, pp. 7 and 8. Am. ed. 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 51 
 
 passes each of these sciences in review, and re-applies 
 these principles to each for its subsequent reconstruc- 
 tion and correction. Like every other metaphysical 
 system, it concerns itself with relations. But constant 
 relations are what, in all systems, exalt observed phe- 
 nomena to the dignity of science. Other systems rec- 
 ognize more relations, — those of causation or force, 
 mayhap those of design. Comte's metaphysics hold to 
 fewer, — those of sequence and similitude. To use a 
 figure of clothing, while other systems honor, by recog- 
 nition and use, the habiliments which obvious necessity 
 and universal usage have sanctioned, this sect appear 
 among the sans culottes of philosophers, on the prin- 
 ciple, that, the fewer clothes we have, the nearer we 
 come to naked truth, and the less occasion we have 
 to look after our clothes, or the less we are tempted to 
 think more of the clothes than of the man. 
 
 Mill, indeed, while he concedes (p. 8) that Comte, 
 without knowing it, accepted and sought to solve the 
 problem of metaphysics, contends that he rightly de- 
 fined and avoided metaphysics in the technical sense 
 of the habit of " conceiving of mental abstractions as 
 real entities, which could exert power, and produce 
 phenomena," etc. That this tendency to hypostasize 
 abstractions into real agencies has prevailed in all ages, 
 we admit ; that Comte and Comte's disciples have not 
 escaped its influence, it would be easy to show. No 
 class of reasoners seem to exemplify it more eminently. 
 Every question which you ask them, beyond the charmed 
 circle of the formulae which the master magician has 
 drawn around them with wand and charm, is answered 
 by the stereotype phrases of sequence and similitude, 
 till it would seem as though these relations had become 
 personified into those living forces on which the universe 
 depends for its existence and ordering. 
 
52 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 But all this is by the way : the only charge which we 
 care at present to urge against Comte is, that he does 
 not recognize the presence and the agency of man ; that 
 he attempts to furnish a philosophy of science which 
 leaves entirely out of view the prime element in science, 
 — the nature of knowledge as explained by the nature 
 of men as qualified to know. Man is not recognized 
 by Comte * as such a being at all, but only as a mass 
 of nervous substance, incased in a material shell, the 
 functions of which, so far as they are deemed worthy 
 of notice, are simply physiological, with the added 
 capacity to expand or modify the incasing skull. Even 
 the poor compliment is not formally paid to this ner- 
 vous substance of being able to respond to the rela- 
 tions of sequence and similitude in material phenomena. 
 Much less is it honestly conceded, as Comte's own sys- 
 tem would require, that this mass has the additional 
 power to observe the relations of constant sequence and 
 similitude between its own material condition and any 
 one of these acts of response or observation. All this 
 is overlooked, and superficially huddled away into the 
 general statement, that what are called psychological 
 processes are properly included under biological phe- 
 nomena ; and this by the man who claims for the func- 
 tions of his own brain the magic power to discover the 
 follies of all the preceding philosophies, and to prevent 
 all error in succeeding ages ! Man, as treated by Comte, 
 is not even cavalierly bowed out from the ivory gate of 
 this palace of magnificent pretensions, but the door is 
 contemptuously and violently thrust in his face ; and 
 then, inasmuch as there can be no science and no phi- 
 losophy of science in which the presence of man must 
 not somehow be implied, he is smuggled in by the 
 
 1 The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte, translated hy Harriet 
 Martineau, bk. v. chap. vii. 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 53 
 
 meanest of the servants through the narrowest postern 
 that could easily be devised. 
 
 Much may be truly said in praise of Comte and the 
 positive philosophy. The daring of his problem, his ex- 
 act and manifold knowledge of the special sciences, the 
 breadth of his generalizations (especially in mathematics 
 and physics), the cool severity of his stony-eyed criti- 
 cism, — all these deserve the highest commendation. But 
 the naive and narrow simplicity, which, in a philosophy 
 of knowledge, leaves out of sight man, or the know- 
 ing agent, and the unconscious innocence of his meta- 
 physical abnegation of metaphysics, should claim no 
 man's admiration. The student of nature or of his- 
 tory who is content with a formula to work by, may 
 be satisfied with the positive philosophy ; but any one 
 who looks for a well-rounded theory of all human 
 knowledge, and a comprehensive statement of the 
 axioms and the principles which it involves, cannot but 
 be disappointed with Comte's teachings, and reject him 
 as a trustworthy expounder of philosophy. 
 
 John Stuart Mill, the follower, yet critic, of Comte, 
 has distinctly recognized some of his defects, and has 
 attempted to supply them. But he has failed in four 
 essential particulars. He has neither given a satisfac- 
 tory theory of the mind nor of matter, nor of the 
 process, nor of the axioms, of induction itself. Though 
 he contends most stoutly for the legitimacy of psycho- 
 logical observation, and the necessity of a correct 
 theory of the soul as fundamental to induction, he 
 provides no such theory : as how could he, if he limits 
 this science, after the dictum of his master, to phe- 
 nomena and the relations of sequence and similitude ? 
 The knowing agent that must not only build up 
 science, but provide its foundation principles, Mill re- 
 solves into successive states of consciousness : he even 
 
54 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 calls these feelings, which are wrought by we know not 
 what. He defines the agent that believes in the spec- 
 troscope, and is not dazed by the sun, u as a series of 
 feelings with a background of possibilities of feeling." * 
 We do not stay to inquire what the word "background" 
 can mean, unless it be the knowing ego familiar to com- 
 mon sense, and not unnecessary to philosophy, which is 
 smuggled in through the back-door of a vaguely meta- 
 phorical term ; nor whether "possibilities" does not in- 
 volve, while it seems to hide, the relation of causation 
 or force, against which Mill protests. We only observe, 
 that it is more creditable to the candor of Mill than to 
 his acuteness, that, on second-thought, he completes 
 this definition of the soul by calling it also " a series of 
 feelings which is aware of itself as past and future." 2 
 Here, again, we have another example of this subrep- 
 tion by a postern, of the notions of the soul itself, and 
 its relations to time, both of which had formally been 
 discharged by the front passage as superfluous. More 
 amazing still is it, that, after making this correction, he 
 recovers his sense of consistency, or rather, demon- 
 strates his own insensibility to the absurdity of his 
 position, by confessing that "we are reduced to the 
 alternative of believing that the mind, or ego, is some- 
 thing different from any series of feelings, or possibilities 
 of them, or of accepting the paradox, that something 
 which, ex hypothesis is but a series of feelings, can be 
 aware of itself as a series." 3 Which of these alterna- 
 tives does he embrace? Does he adhere to the one 
 construction which his formal definitions, as well as the 
 whole drift of his philosophy, require him to support ? 
 or does he frankly concede that he believes in the mind 
 as an agent, — an existing being which is something 
 
 1 Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, chap. xii. 
 * Ibidem. a Ibid. 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 55 
 
 more than a series of feelings ? He does neither, but 
 proceeds to affirm, " The truth is, that we are here face 
 to face with that final inexplicability at which we inevi- 
 tably arrive when we reach ultimate facts." 1 But why 
 not accept the facts, and shape one's definitions accord- 
 ingly, instead of constructing a definition of the soul, 
 and building a theory of induction upon it, which the 
 facts can never sustain. He prefers to concede his fail- 
 ure in the extorted acknowledgment : " I do not pro- 
 fess to account for the belief in mind." 2 We had not 
 expected such a confession without repentance, and, 
 what is worse, without a sense of the need of repent- 
 ance, from the modern lawgiver of scientific method ; 
 from the new Bacon, who has codified the rules for 
 the inductive study of nature ; from the plausible and 
 pertinacious antagonist of what he calls a priori meta- 
 physics ! 
 
 Not only has Mill entirely failed, and by his own 
 confession, to provide a mind which can interpret 
 matter, but he has failed as signally to provide for our 
 belief in matter, or the universe of nature, which man 
 must interpret. Though he claims, by eminence, to be 
 the philosopher of things ; 3 though he denounces with a 
 slight disdain those who prefer thoughts to things, — he 
 makes no provision for our knowledge of things, or our 
 belief in the material world. His formal definition of 
 matter (while it is vastly more vague and unsatisfac- 
 tory) is as purely idealistic as that of Berkeley or 
 Collier. Matter he defines as " a permanent possibility 
 of sensations." 4 He concedes that this definition would 
 satisfy Berkeley, and that, in any other sense than 
 this, he does not believe in matter. He did not seem 
 
 1 Examination of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy, chap. xii. 
 
 2 Ibid. 3d Lond. edition. P. S. 3 Logic, bk. i. chap. ii. 
 * Exam., etc., chap. xi. 
 
56 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 at first to be aware, that, through the word "perma- 
 nent," time has stealthily crept into his definition, and 
 that "possibility" is not too narrow to let in causation, 
 — that dreaded metaphysical entity. He makes a fear- 
 ful nod, when he says squarely, " The possibilities are 
 conceived as standing to the actual sensations in the rela- 
 tion of a cause to its effect" l His assurance culminates 
 when he refers our faith in the permanence of these 
 possibilities to the assumption that sensations similar to 
 our own are experienced from material objects by other 
 beings. " The world of possible sensations succeeding 
 one another, according to laws, is as much in other 
 beings as it is in me : it has, therefore, an existence 
 outside of me, it is an external world." 2 As if the 
 existence of other beings, with the relations of outside 
 and inside, were not the things to be accounted for ; 
 and as if, through the door opened to admit this item 
 of proof, space and its relations, including matter, had 
 not marched boldly in, after both had been formally 
 excluded, till they could be formally introduced by a 
 philosophical ticket of leave ! 
 
 But, allowing Mr. Mill to believe in man and nature 
 as much or as little as he will, we inquire, with greater 
 earnestness, what is his theory of induction, i.e., how 
 does he explain the process ? and on what foundations 
 does he rest the resulting product? These questions 
 are somewhat important when the scientist requires me 
 to believe in the spectroscope. Especially are they im- 
 portant in the view of the neophyte, whose faith in 
 science is weak, and who considers all at once the num- 
 ber of assumptions which enter into the result, — the 
 truth of gravitation, the theory of light, the chemical 
 analysis by light of burning bodies and gases, and, above 
 all, when he takes into account the enormous distances, 
 
 1 Exam., chap. xi. 2 Ibid. 
 
VERSUS TEE SCIENCE OF MAN. 57 
 
 and the subtle indications. It is not wonderful that he 
 asks, " How and why is it that I am justified in accept- 
 ing this wonderful story, as enchanting, if it be not as 
 fabulous, as the story of the 'Lamp of Aladdin'?" 
 Pray, Mr. Mill, who knowest every word and syllable 
 of the magic spell, repeat it to me letter by letter, and 
 word by word, confirm the steps of my tottering faith, 
 trace out for me the subtle and narrow path along 
 which the philosopher has reached the stars, and even 
 leaped into the abyss beyond. 
 
 How does Mr. Mill answer these entreaties ? " In- 
 duction, my son, in philosophical language, is the result 
 of repeated experiences of sensations so closely com- 
 bined as to have become practically inseparable. We 
 learn in this way to make the familiar and the near to 
 represent the unfrequent and remote, according to cer- 
 tain axioms and principles concerning the uniformities 
 and laws of nature and the relations of time and space, 
 which give mathematical truths and relations." — "But 
 whence are these ultimate beliefs derived?" To this 
 Mr. Mill has no other reply: "All these are derived 
 from induction. Even the very principles that are used 
 in induction, and the very beliefs that are most sacred 
 concerning the sequences and similitudes of phenomena 
 — these all are the products of induction, even though 
 they are the conditions of induction and all come 
 from inseparable associations." — " Is this all that can 
 be said of them ? How, then, can I trust them, suppos- 
 ing I have not yet learned to associate these things to- 
 gether ; or what if they should be differently connected 
 in other minds ? " To this he would reply, " The last 
 is supposable ; and the consequence would be, that 
 those minds would have different beliefs concerning 
 the laws of nature, and even concerning the fixedness 
 of any laws of nature, or the relations of number and 
 
58 THE SCIENCES OF NATUBE 
 
 magnitude. It is supposable, that, to the inhabitants of 
 another planet, their inseparable associations should be 
 so strangely mixed and re-adjusted, that they should 
 multiply three and four into eleven, and should conceive 
 that to issue ten per cent dividends signifies to steal 
 the capital ten times over. Or the inhabitants of 
 another might be trained to believe that two straight 
 lines might so enclose a space, that a railway charter 
 from New York to Erie might be mathematically demon- 
 strated to cover all the adjacent territory indefinitely 
 in every direction. But to correct all such abuses, he 
 would add, " You can use experiments, and they will 
 verify all correctly joined associations, and expose those 
 which are false." — " But," urges the novice, " I can make 
 but few experiments, and concerning objects of limited 
 reach ; and what I am required to believe is a long way 
 off. I cannot test the assertion that sodium is actually 
 burning in the sun, the indications are so very remote, 
 though very plausible. I can burn the sodium in my 
 lamp, and, as I watch the spectrum, I can refract 
 another spectrum from the sun ; but how shall I pass 
 from what is united in the one to what is unknown in 
 the other ? Nay, how do I know that what you some- 
 times call causation, and at other times call sequence, 
 prevails in the sun at all ? " This question is so impor- 
 tant, and the answer so fundamental to the neophyte's 
 faith, that Mr. Mill would probably refer him to chap- 
 ter and verse in his t " S}^stem of Logic," which reads as 
 follows : "In distant parts of the stellar regions, where 
 the phenomena may be entirely unlike those with which 
 we are acquainted, it would be folly to affirm confi- 
 dently that this general law of causation prevails any 
 more than those special ones which we have found to 
 hold universally on our own planet. The uniformity 
 in the succession of events, otherwise called 'the law 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 59 
 
 of causation,' must not be received as a law of the 
 universe, but of that portion of it only which is with- 
 in the range of our means of sure observation, with a 
 reasonable degree of extension to adjacent cases. To 
 extend it farther is to make a supposition without evi- 
 dence," etc. 1 "But, if all this is so, I may as well give 
 up my faith in the solar spectrum. Sodium burns in 
 the lamp, and its flame can be defined ; but to conclude 
 that sodium burns in the sun, because the sun emits a 
 similar light, does not seem reasonable. The cases are 
 far enough from being adjacent, and the circumstances 
 are, in manifold particulars, very unlike." Mill's very 
 slender basis for inductive reasoning would seem to be 
 as suitable to confirm the doubter concerning some new 
 discovery in physics as the writings of Colenso to 
 strengthen faith in the Pentateuch, or of Strauss and 
 Baur to lead to confidence in the gospel history. But 
 the defects in Mill's philosophy of induction are neces- 
 sary consequences of his defective and uncertain science 
 of man's power to know. The signal failure of one of 
 the most elaborate attemps that has ever been made to 
 furnish a scientific foundation for the science of nature 
 is explained by its defective and uncertain science of 
 man. 
 
 The defects of Mill's philosophical writings are the 
 more conspicuous, the more sharply they are contrasted 
 with their manifold excellences. His rules for the 
 practice of induction are comprehensive and sagacious, 
 and they are amply illustrated and applied. His obser- 
 vations upon classification and language are rich contri- 
 butions to philosophical literature. His acuteness in 
 criticising, and his skill in exposing, the vulnerable 
 points of antagonistic philosophies, as also his admi- 
 rable candor in confessing the difficulties of his own, 
 
 1 System of Logic, bk. iii. chap. xxi. sect. 5. 
 
60 THE SCIENCES OF NATUEE 
 
 with his something more than admirable unconscious- 
 ness that his confessions amount to a complete sur- 
 render of every thing for which he would contend, 
 force his reader at times to exclaim, " Miranda simpli- 
 citas si non sancta ! " Like Comte, he protests that he 
 does not expound metaphysics, but only logic, striving to 
 set up a distinction between the reasons of the logical 
 rules which he professes to expound, and the under- 
 lying philosophical axioms, which he styles " transcen- 
 dental metaphysics." And yet these he is constantly 
 obtruding, and endeavoring to account for ; contending 
 that our ideas of time and space, the conceptions and 
 axioms of mathematics, the belief in causation, in induc- 
 tion, and in the uniformity of the laws of nature, are all 
 derived from experience ; while experience, with its 
 authority for the distant and the future, is the product 
 of associations that have become so inseparably blended 
 that they cannot be got rid of. 
 
 From Mill, we proceed to the Cerebralists, to Alex- 
 ander Bain and his school, who limit the science of 
 man to the analysis of the brain and its functions, and 
 claim that the so-called physiological psychology is the 
 only basis for a solid science of the soul. This point 
 we shall not contest : we urge only, that, if the basis 
 is broad enough for a science of man, it is neither broad 
 nor deep enough to support a science of nature. Let 
 it be granted that brain convolutions, and nerve vibra- 
 tions or nerve growths, may account for the differences 
 and developments of the human soul ; that vision is 
 simply a nervous response to the undulating light, and 
 touch is an adjustment of particles in the inner ved 
 cuticle in accordance with the molecular agitations in 
 the solids with which it comes in contact. Let it be 
 granted that memory, imagination, classification, and 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 61 
 
 reasoning, are but material forces newly correlated in 
 the forms of nervous movements, and that what is 
 called self-consciousness is one set of brain fibres dan- 
 cing a mazy antistrophe to similar fibres in a correspond- 
 ing brain lobe. Granting that all of man which we 
 call thought, emotion, and aspiration, is reducible to 
 the workings of mechanical statics and dynamics, we 
 fail altogether to explain how man so constituted and so 
 acting can form a science of nature ; how Newton came 
 to connect the falling stone with the moon steadily 
 detained and impetuously struggling in its path, and 
 ventured to write down the law of each in a brief alge- 
 braic formula ; nor how Kirchhoff happened to imagine, 
 and was inspired to believe, that he could see the burn- 
 ing sodium in the molten furnace of the sun, and could 
 follow the hydrogen that flashes in jets along its sur- 
 face. Let cerebral physiology do what it will in its 
 movements against a better theory of man ; let it call 
 in to its aid the portentous battalions of the correlated 
 forces ; let unconscious cerebration dart in and out of 
 the conflict with its wily and quick-moving cavalry — 
 one and all fail utterly to demolish the solid squares of 
 convictions on which the intellectual soul must plant 
 itself when it makes good a grand discovery, like those 
 of Newton, or Davy, or Faraday, or Kirchhoff. The 
 eloquent John Tyndall has truly said, more boldly 
 perhaps than he was aware, and forgetful of consis- 
 tency with many of his teachings, " It is by a kind of 
 inspiration that we rise from the wise and sedulous con- 
 templation of facts to the principles on which they 
 depend." "This passage from facts to principles is 
 called induction, which, in its highest form, is inspira- 
 tion." 2 Whatever else may be true of the brain phi- 
 losophy, it can never explain and validate induction, 
 i John Tyndall, Fragments of Science, p. 60. 
 
62 THE SCIENCES OF NATUBE 
 
 with the mystery of its insight into nature's secrets 
 and the mastery of its power over nature's forces. 
 
 From Comte and Mill, and the cerebralists, we pro- 
 ceed to Herbert Spencer, who claims to be more pro- 
 found and comprehensive than them all ; for whom his 
 adherents claim, that, like Kant, he is the zermalmende 
 Philosophy — the all-crushing of these times ; of whom 
 it is asserted, that he takes into his system all that is 
 true in the old metaphysical and the new positive and 
 brain philosophies, and causes every thing to re-appear 
 with a profounder meaning and a more catholic appli- 
 cation. We cannot charge against Spencer that he 
 neglects or dishonors the science of man. He stands 
 foremost among modern writers in recognizing psy- 
 chology as fundamental to all philosophy, whether of 
 matter or spirit. He may be said to accept spiritual 
 phenomena as having existence in their own right, and 
 as claiming authority over other facts, so far as they 
 furnish the principles for every department of philos- 
 ophy. He recognizes fully the necessity that certain 
 principles should be necessary and axiomatic. So far 
 all is hopeful, and seemingly all that a sound philosophy 
 could desire. But we soon discover that these fair 
 promises are sacrificed to the merciless requirements of 
 a metaphysical hypothesis which is as remorseless in 
 its exactions as it is usurping in its authority. The 
 law of evolution, acting as a movement of differentiation 
 and integration, is ushered upon the scene, destined, 
 like Saturn, to devour its own children as fast as they 
 are produced. It is itself not proved. It does not 
 claim to be self-evident, but simply, that, like Mill's 
 induction, it is capable of being verified in every indi- 
 vidual instance in which it can be applied. Its terms, 
 also, are so broad as to be capable of a great variety of 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 63 
 
 significations. " Evolution," " differentiation," and " in- 
 tegration," are words of many-sided import, as Spencer's 
 use of them satisfactorily illustrates. Evolution is now 
 treated as though it were a living force, endowed with 
 the energy, and invested with the wisdom, of a personal 
 creator ; and again it sinks to an innocent symbolic 
 formula. Differentiation and integration now rise to 
 the dignity and mystery of organizing forces, and anon 
 they sink into the meaningless platitudes of insignifi- 
 cant logical generalizations. It is not surprising, that 
 with phrases so vague in their import, and so plastic in 
 their application, the mysteries of the universe are 
 often explained by Spencer in the manner of a dexter- 
 ous juggler, — as plausibly to the eye, and as unsatisfac- 
 torily to the mind. 
 
 But one thing, at least, Mr. Spencer has not ex- 
 plained, nor does he in any wise provide for ; and that 
 is the possibility of a science of nature, and simply 
 because by his theory the principles on which such a 
 science rests are themselves but transient waves thrown 
 up for the moment by an ever-heaving and new-evolv- 
 ing sea. According to Spencer, man as a differentiated 
 and integrated type of being is physiologically evolved 
 from a less complex type of being. Intelligence is a 
 more complex evolution of life, and life is the joint 
 product of interior and exterior relations. Even the 
 axioms of intelligence which Spencer had recognized 
 as the necessary and ultimate laws of thinking — these 
 obey the same law. At first they are sprouting ten- 
 dencies towards scientific axioms, which are gradually 
 fixed and hardened in the brain, so as to strengthen 
 with the growth, and be transmitted with the progress, 
 of successive generations. The conceptions of time 
 and space, with the relations they involve, follow this 
 rule, being perfected and adjusted by a long course 
 
64 THE SCIENCES OF NATUBE 
 
 of physiological evolutions. This is man according to 
 Spencer. Is he competent to attain to a science of 
 nature ? Behold him, on some bright morning of the 
 evolving aeons, just ushered into being, " like the 
 herald Mercury, new-lighted on some heaven-kissing 
 hill," which he spurns with his impatient foot, as just 
 about to leave the earth for some higher sphere. He 
 looks out upon nature, that he may interpret its laws ; 
 he geometrizes among the stars like a god ; he weighs 
 the mountains in balances ; he takes up the isles as a 
 very little thing ; he reads the history of the earth, 
 turning back its rocky laminae one by one, and interpret- 
 ing the characters that speak from each. He catches 
 the light, and unfolds it into spectra of beauty, finding 
 in each one of its glowing bars some secret of nature's 
 hidden magic. He studies the composition of matter, 
 its crystalline orderings of method and symmetry, and 
 its chemical affinities and transmutations. He attempts 
 the more difficult problem of life : he pauses in aston- 
 ishment before the profounder mystery of the soul. 
 Next he essays to account for the origin of these varied 
 forms of being ; and, by one daring sweep of generaliza- 
 tion, he thinks to comprehend and explain the universe. 
 By the magic of a formula as vague as it is broad, he 
 thinks he discovers that matter and spirit, that thoughts 
 and things, are evolved by a self-moving tendency, after 
 which life is lifted out from death, and intelligence springs 
 forth from life. He is confident that the science of 
 the universe is unravelled by a newly corrected science 
 of man, adjusted to his metaphysical theory. But is it 
 so ? Has Spencer succeeded ? Let it be granted that 
 so long as man endures as a persistent type of knowing 
 force, with his interior relations, — i.e., his powers, his 
 categories, his time and space, — that so long ike science 
 of the universe, which is built up by the application of 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 65 
 
 them all, may stand, and be trusted as true. But what 
 is to happen at the next evolution of this ascending 
 spiral, when another form of knowing energy is evolved, 
 with its new and more complex furnishings ? May not 
 some new interior relations emerge, some powers and 
 modes of thinking, some principles of science itself, 
 which shall reverse the science of to-day, and cause the 
 Principia of Newton, the Logic of Mill, and the First 
 Principles of Spencer himself, to be but an empty 
 babble, because they are all outgrown ; the intellect 
 newly evolved finding in them no import, and acknowl- 
 edging in them no authority ? 
 
 To this it will be replied, that Mr. Spencer assumes 
 that there can be no new evolution of the power to 
 know, which does not correspond to some new objective 
 relation in that which is known ; that, while it is true 
 that the beliefs in time and space are themselves devel- 
 oped, he assumes that there correspond to them certain 
 exterior relations ; that, in fact, he even goes farther, 
 and surrounds this finite universe with the incompre- 
 hensible somewhat, in whom he allows us to believe, 
 provided we will concede that what we believe does not 
 correspond to the truth, and summons us to worship, 
 provided we will confess that we worship we know not 
 what. He does, indeed, assume all this. But by what 
 authority does he enforce these dogmas, except by the 
 impressions of a being who is himself evolved, and 
 whose power to believe that there are realities which 
 answer to his own interior relations is itself a transient 
 interior relation which has been evolved from the 
 agencies which have chanced to produce it, and whose 
 methods of knowing are themselves the products of an 
 evolving and changing physiological growth? If the 
 man of the present aeon, as the philosophy of Spencer 
 explains, is warranted in trusting the axioms of evolu- 
 
66 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 tion and the persistence of force, then these axioms are 
 something higher and more authoritative than physio- 
 logical products, evolved by the coincidence of exterior 
 and interior relations. If Mr. Spencer's "First Prin- 
 ciples," or the first principles of any other philosopher, 
 are to be received as the foundations of science, they 
 are good for all time, for all the past and all the future. 
 They have a higher and more permanent authority than 
 his special theory can vouch for. The sciences of 
 nature and spirit which he expounds cannot stand upon 
 any foundations which he provides for their support in 
 his science of man. Every such science is weak just 
 in proportion to the sweep of its pretensions and the 
 accumulation of its facts. It is like an imposing engine 
 which is reared upon a pedestal that is massive to the 
 eye, but which crushes its foundations into sand by 
 the first movements of its ponderous and complicated 
 structure. 
 
 The position which Spencer holds among the philoso- 
 phers of our time is so unique as to justify, if not to 
 require, special attention. Many-sided in his culture, 
 especially on the side of physics, mathematics, and 
 natural history, and apparently familiar with the history 
 of human culture and human progress, he seems to 
 command an inexhaustible fund of pertinent and at- 
 tractive illustrations. If he is not always clear in 
 announcing his principles, if his arguments do not 
 always convince us of the truth of what we do under- 
 stand, the wealth and variety of his facts never fail to 
 delight and astonish the confiding reader, who cannot 
 find it in his heart to distrust so well-furnished a writer. 
 The apparent breadth and daring of his generalizations 
 surprise the student who does not consider that philo- 
 sophical genius is as strikingly displayed in the acute 
 detection of subtle differences as in the vague sugges- 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 67 
 
 tion of broad and meaningless similarities. The catho- 
 lic spirit with which he seems to desire to do justice 
 to every system of philosophy and religion prepares 
 for an easy credence in the universal solvent which 
 promises to decompose them all. The positiveness of 
 his manner and the dogmatism of his assertions, which 
 increase with the paradoxical character of his opinions, 
 are elements of power with readers whose credulity 
 rises with the daring of their admired and trusted 
 leader. It would not be fair to say, that, so far as 
 matter is concerned, Spencer writes like a sophist or a 
 charlatan, for the reason that he instructs us in too many 
 single and important truths. But it is not unjust to 
 assert, that, in method and manner, he is master of the 
 art of imposing exposition. The reader who has had 
 some experience in the necessary art of searching for 
 a meaning and method in writers in which neither is 
 obvious, will often lay down Spencer in despair, if not 
 with disgust, for his stealthy subreptions, his cool word- 
 plays, his confounding of inductions with axioms, and 
 his sacrifice of common sense to the requirements of an 
 unproved theory. The clearness of his diction is no 
 compensation for the lack of that earnestness and verve 
 which are the never-failing indications of the highest 
 qualities of genius. The coolness of his manner rather 
 betrays than hides the consciousness of paradox. His 
 attempt to reconcile philosophy with religion proves his 
 conceptions of both to be superficial. No well-read 
 student of philosophy can hesitate to believe, that, not- 
 withstanding the zeal of his admirers, he will ere long 
 cease to be the wonder of the hour ; that, so soon as 
 the secret of his plausibility is exposed, he will suffer a 
 more complete neglect than he will fairly deserve. 1 
 
 1 The author takes the liberty to call the attention of his reader to 
 the fact, that this is a metaphysical essay or meditation, the argument 
 
68 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 These arguments and criticisms must suffice. We 
 do not urge that a profound study of man, or a formal 
 recognition of the principles which underlie the study 
 of nature, are essential to eminent attainments in 
 special sciences, or to enlarged and liberal views of 
 scientific research. The working formulae of a single 
 science, and, indeed, of many, may be mastered by an 
 adept, and skilfully applied to brilliant achievements, 
 almost without the suspicion that they can be justified 
 by a philosophic method. The principles and methods 
 
 of which is directed to a single conclusion, and is in no sense a compre- 
 hensive treatise or criticism of any system of philosophy. While he 
 claims no exemption from the obligation to interpret Spencer's doc- 
 trines correctly, and to state them honestly, he does not consider 
 himself required to expound his system at length, or to show, that in 
 many of the positions to which he attaches very great importance, 
 and urges with the greatest persistence, he is flagrantly inconsistent 
 with himself; that he not only goes heyond the range of knowledge 
 and belief to which he had limited himself by his theory of evolution, 
 hut introduces assumptions for which his system makes no provision. 
 With the most earnest desire to understand Spencer, and some effort to 
 reconcile his doctrines with one another in logical and philosophical 
 coherence, we can find no place in his theory for what he calls Ultimate 
 Religious Ideas, for the reality of which he contends so earnestly, as 
 against Hamilton and Mansel, with naive unconsciousness of any in- 
 consistency with his own theory of knowledge, — on which theory, 
 however, he does not hesitate to fall back at once as soon as he seeks to 
 demonstrate their perpetual unknowableness by man. Nor is it any 
 easier to see how this theory allows him to distinguish between a 
 formulated and an unformidated consciousness, after having shut himself 
 up to that consciousness which is formulated ; nor how his explanation 
 of the genesis of the ideas of space and time by evolution can provide at 
 all for his belief of the necessity or universality of these ideas, or of the 
 realities which correspond to them ; nor how the philosopher who has 
 limited the researches of science to the relations of co-existence and 
 sequence, and has thereby formally excluded the relation of causation, 
 should abruptly introduce us to something which he denominates force, 
 which he oracularly informs us is inscrutable, and concludes therefrom 
 that matter and spirit may therefore be mutually convertible and inter- 
 changeable. The reader who chooses to make the experiment for him- 
 self, of explaining and reconciling these incoherences of Spencer, is 
 referred to his First Principles, part I. chaps, ii. iii. and iv., part II. 
 chap, v., and The Principles of Psychology, part IV. chap. vii. § 208. 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 69 
 
 of induction are practically taught by nature and com- 
 mon sense to every one who is willing to use them. 
 But should any one be questioned or denied, either in 
 obedience to the private maxims of a special philoso- 
 phy, or the spirit of a narrow and special study of a 
 part of nature called physics, it must be recognized 
 and defended ; and, in order that it may be defended 
 and recognized, it must be carefully studied by a 
 thorough examination of man. 
 
 For this study, the devotee of any special science 
 may be the more disqualified in proportion to his zeal 
 and success in his own department ; but, for this very 
 reason, the greater may be his confidence in pronoun- 
 cing upon questions of this sort, and with a positiveness 
 which is proportioned to his incompetence. Nothing is 
 more arrogant, and nothing ought to be more offensive, 
 than that the powers and principles on which all science 
 and induction depend should be resolved by or after 
 analogies derived from the mechanics of matter and 
 the dynamics of life. To narrowness of this sort the 
 sciences of nature offer special temptations. The 
 objects are so real, the processes are so definite, the 
 experiments are so satisfying, the enthusiasm is so 
 contagious, that the devotee is tempted occasionally to 
 forget that he is a man as well as a scientist, and to 
 adjust his estimates of human science and culture, and 
 even of man's power to know, by a standard taken 
 from a single and a narrow sphere. He that would 
 converse with Nature with effect, in these times, must 
 retire apart into a separate cave, that is lonely and far 
 withdrawn. Within its recesses alone does Nature 
 whisper her choicest secrets, and after a long and pain- 
 ful initiation of the devotee. To his uplifted torch 
 alone does she reveal the starry roof and the brilliant 
 vision. No wonder, that, when he emerges into the 
 
70 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 light of common day, he is as one dazed and bewildered, 
 and talks of common things with strange and perverted 
 speech. A one-sided cultivation, with its positiveness, 
 and not ill-gronnded conceit, is not barbarism indeed ; 
 bnt it is not culture in the large and generous sense of 
 the term. A system of education which is bent upon 
 training specialists in any department may be defective 
 in proportion to the completeness with which it absorbs 
 and limits the energies of its devotees. That the study 
 of man is fitted to correct these exclusive tendencies 
 has been demonstrated by the many eminent examples 
 which modern physics has furnished of philosophers dis- 
 tinguished alike for imaginative genius, careful observa- 
 tion, and speculative interest concerning the nature of 
 man and the methods of science. That these tenden- 
 cies need to be corrected, is as strikingly proved by 
 the number of scientists of another sort, who are not 
 content with a well-earned reputation within their own 
 departments, but set themselves to reform psychology 
 and metaphysics after the law of the dissecting-room, 
 and to correct theology in very extemporized "Lay 
 Sermons." 1 
 
 We do not overlook the truth, that the student of 
 man is exposed to a narrowness and dogmatism of his 
 own, and can learn much, if he will, from the sciences 
 of nature. All these sciences are but the products of 
 
 1 The writer has no desire to say hard things of Mr. Huxley, hecause 
 he has chosen to adopt the title of Lay Sermons for certain of his dis- 
 courses ; but he cannot avoid the impression that he would have done 
 much more wisely, had he pursued a course with respect to metaphysics 
 and theology similar to that which he does not hesitate to recommend 
 to clergymen and metaphysicians with respect to science, — i.e., had he 
 let them alone. The confident utterances in respect to the fundamental 
 problem of philosophy, and the truths and duties of religion, which are 
 freely expressed in many of these discourses, appear to the greatest dis- 
 advantage when contrasted with the purely scientific expositions into 
 which they are interwoven. They seem to have many of the worst char- 
 acteristics of the most offensive descriptions of sensational preaching. 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 71 
 
 the varied applications of his spiritual power to the 
 investigation of that truth which must be tested by 
 experiment, and enforced as fact. A mistake in the 
 investigation of nature is not only certain to issue in 
 failure in discovery ; but it at once attracts attention to 
 the error of method in the experiment, or of principle 
 in the theory. Nature is fearfully and sternly realistic. 
 She abhors the brilliant vagaries, the imaginative rhap- 
 sodies, the cloudy phraseology and dreaming idealism, 
 in which the one-sided student of man and of meta- 
 physics is tempted to indulge. While she suggests an 
 elevating and spiritual philosophy of her own, and 
 hides a magnificent history in her past, as well as veils 
 a more splendid romance in the future, she deals very 
 summarily with the metaphysical cosmologies, the ideal- 
 istic physics, and realistic logics, which imaginative 
 students have put off as a priori philosophies of nature. 
 The student of the mind and of man, who has been 
 schooled by a close and stern wrestling with the forces 
 and laws of matter, cannot but carry the lessons which 
 he has learned into his study of the soul and of the 
 methods of science. He will exact from others, and 
 impose on himself, severe requirements in respect of 
 clear definition, rigorous logic, well-grounded analogies, 
 and coherent arrangement. The best security against 
 the recurrence of that metaphysical romancing by 
 which the science of man and the logic of science have 
 been dishonored in the past is to be found in the 
 methods to which physics are so vigorously held. 
 Under the pressure of these lessons, the metaphysics of 
 the future are likely to prove sober and discreet. If 
 they should need any additional warning from this 
 quarter, they can find them in the examples of extrava- 
 gant metaphysics which are furnished by the physicists 
 and physiologists who would develop man, and the in- 
 
72 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 ductive philosophy itself, from the crucible, a bean- 
 stalk, or the gorilla ; or by the metaphysicians who 
 solve all the problems of the universe by a formula 
 of sequences and similitudes, and a law of evolution, 
 — forever attempting, and forever failing, to discover 
 and reveal the mystery that lies hidden in the unknowa- 
 ble and the unknown. 
 
 The study of man is not necessarily the study of 
 psychology or speculative philosophy. Man is made 
 manifest in history, philology, literature, art, politics, 
 ethics, and theology. The thoughts of man have rec- 
 ognized and accepted those principles and institutions, 
 those manners and laws, that civilization and culture, 
 which give security and grace to the present life, while 
 they awaken the anticipations, and confirm the faiths, 
 which reach into another. The study of all these is a 
 study of the humanities. It enables us to understand 
 man, and to benefit man, not only as he interprets and 
 controls what we call nature, but as he interprets 
 and controls that which is highest in nature ; i.e., man 
 himself. 
 
 This suggests the thought, that the sciences of nature 
 are not only related to the science of man because man 
 interprets nature, but because man is a part of nature ; 
 and nature cannot be truly and liberally interpreted, 
 unless man, in his higher capacities, is embraced within 
 her plan, and made the end of her agencies. That is a 
 very narrow view of nature which only finds in nature 
 physical agencies, and limits her resources to mechanics 
 and chemistry, but discovers no place in her broad 
 expanses or her generous provinces for spirit or intelli- 
 gence, accepting no man, but protoplasm. That is also 
 a narrow view which recognizes man's higher endow- 
 ments and destiny, but allows them a scanty place and 
 meaning in the scientific interpretation of the physical 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 73 
 
 arrangements of the universe. The science of man, 
 and of man's higher nature in its highest developments, 
 is essential to a science of nature, because nature itself 
 cannot be interpreted, except as designed for the uses 
 and culture and development of man as a spiritual 
 being. Thus to interpret nature does indeed require 
 that we assume design in nature. But all philosophy 
 must assume this, so far as it interprets the past or 
 forecasts the future. The positive philosophy does this, 
 when it assumes that " the relations of sequence and 
 similitude " are constant ; that is, are always the same 
 in the same circumstances. Darwin and Spencer both 
 assume that there is a plan of successive development 
 or evolution provided for in the infinite capacities of the 
 undeveloped germs (if such began at all), or in their 
 still more enlarged capabilities of successive evolution 
 and disintegration, if the march of evolution is in 
 cycles returning upon one another. It would seem 
 that the wise intelligence assumed for this law of evo- 
 lution would draw so heavily upon the faith of its 
 defenders, as to leave them little courage to sneer at 
 any theory of creation as " the carpenter theory." But, 
 upon questions of consistency or taste, we have no 
 room to enlarge. We contend, at present, only for 
 the position that we cannot have a science of nature 
 which does not regard the spirit of man as a part of 
 nature. 
 
 But is this all? Do man and nature exhaust the 
 possibilities of being? We' cannot answer this ques- 
 tion here. But we find suggestions from the spectrum 
 and the spectroscope which may be worth our heeding. 
 The materials with which we have to do in these most 
 brilliant scientific theories seem at first to overwhelm 
 us with their vastness and complexity. The bulks are 
 so enormous, the forces are so mighty, the laws are so 
 
74 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE 
 
 wide-sweeping and at times so pitiless, the distances are 
 so overmastering, even the uses and beauties are so 
 bewildering, that we bow in mute and almost abject 
 subjection to the incomprehensible All, of which we 
 hesitate to affirm aught, except what has been manifest 
 to our observant senses, and connected by our insepara- 
 ble associations. We forget what our overmastering 
 thought has done in subjecting this universe to its 
 interpretations. Its vast distances have been annihi- 
 lated ; for we have connected the distant with the near 
 by the one pervading force which Newton divined. 
 We have analyzed the flame that burns in our lamp 
 and the flame that burns in the sun, and done this by 
 the same instrument, connecting by a common affini- 
 ty, at the same instant and under the same eye, two 
 agents the farthest removed in place, and the most 
 subtle in essence. As we have overcome distances, so 
 we have conquered time, reading the story of antece- 
 dent cycles with a confidence equal to that with which 
 we forecast the future ages. The philosopher who 
 penetrates the distant portions of the universe by the 
 omnipresence of his scientific generalizations, who reads 
 the secret of the sun by the glance of his penetrating 
 eye, has little occasion to deny that all its forces may 
 be mastered by a single all-knowing and omnipresent 
 Spirit, and that its secrets can be read by one all-seeing 
 Eye. The scientist who evolves the past in his confi- 
 dent thought, under a few grand titles of generalized 
 forces and relations, and who develops, and almost gives 
 law to, the future, by his faith in the persistence of 
 force, has little reason to question the existence of an 
 intellect capable of deeper insight and larger fore- 
 sight than his own, which can grasp all the past and 
 the future by an all-comprehending intelligence, and 
 can control all events by a personal energy, which 
 
VERSUS THE SCIENCE OF MAN. 75 
 
 may, perhaps, be softened to personal tenderness and 
 love. 
 
 We blame not the scientific discoverer, when, fresh 
 from some triumphant experiment, he rejoices in the 
 consciousness of power. We wonder not that he rises 
 from his feat of discovery with a sense of mastery and 
 dominion. Man by thought is the king of the uni- 
 verse, so far as by thought he masters its secrets, and 
 lays his hand upon its forces. Let him be crowned as 
 king by Science, and let no one dispute his right to 
 rule. But let him never forget that it is only by the 
 right which spirit asserts over matter, which thought 
 assumes over things, that he has gained this domin- 
 ion, and that he can extend it only as he learns more 
 wisely how to know and use his own sagacious, self- 
 relying mind. 
 
 But has nature no other king? To answer this 
 question here lies not within our scope. The sugges- 
 tions which we have made would, however, seem to 
 justify the conclusion that the sciences of nature, when 
 viewed in their fundamental philosophy, do not neces- 
 sarily lead to atheism. The history of these sciences 
 of nature, moreover, testifies, that while the dexterous 
 \n orkers in experiments may successfully apply the 
 fcrmula3 which the thinkers have furnished, and be 
 content to look no farther, the architects and philoso- 
 phers of nature have uniformly and necessarily recog- 
 nized the only possible foundations of a philosophy of 
 nature in the spirit of man, as capable of thinking the 
 thoughts of God. The nature of science as justified 
 to the mind of man, also reveals the truth that its 
 methods and assumptions are but varied acknowledg- 
 ments of an originating Intelligence whose thoughts 
 and purposes we interpret just so far as we discover the 
 forces, determine the laws, or explain the history, of 
 
76 THE SCIENCES OF NATURE. 
 
 the universe. So far as man as a thinking being thinks 
 the facts of nature into science, so far does he complete 
 the cycle by recognizing the discoveries which he 
 makes and verifies as the living thoughts of the living 
 God. 
 
in. 
 
 WHAT WE MEAN BY CHRISTIAN' 
 PHILOSOPHY} 
 
 I am aware, as many of you must be, that the phrase 
 Christian Philosophy is rejected by many well-meaning 
 and truth-loving men as unmeaning and unscientific. 
 They would urge in objection, that a philosophy com- 
 mitted beforehand to the support of Christianity must 
 thereby abandon its scientific independence. Moreover, 
 Christianity in form is a historic narrative, — a simple 
 record of facts, a story of events, a portraiture of per- 
 sons : what can it possibly have to do with philosophy, 
 which concerns itself only with forces and laws and 
 principles? Then, again, the events and personages 
 which Christianity records are supernatural; whereas 
 science and philosophy know nothing of the super- 
 natural, but are limited altogether to those forces which 
 are natural, and those laws which are constant and 
 fixed. Philosophy also addresses itself to the Reason, 
 whose principles of evidence are clear and unchange- 
 able, and whose methods of inquiry are definite and 
 uncompromising. Christianity also appeals to Faith, 
 which, whatever it may be as a process of belief or con- 
 viction, is neither compelled by demonstration nor 
 silenced by experiment. The spirit of Science is ag- 
 gressive and self-relying. The spirit of Christianity is 
 self-distrustful and confiding. * Christian knowledge, 
 moreover, thrives in the sphere of emotion and aspira 
 
 1 Delivered as a lecture originally at Cincinnati, March 31, 1877. 
 
 77 
 
78 CHBISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 tion. It requires and rejoices in the genial warmth of 
 the affections and the hopes. But science admits no 
 other light than the cool and dry light of reason: it 
 shrinks from every influence which does not either jus- 
 tify or compel conviction. To finish the argument, 
 Christianity has jealously withstood every advance of 
 science which has questioned its dogmas, and every 
 attempt of philosophy to try its conclusions by verify- 
 ing processes and tests. Science has made progress 
 just in proportion as it has been indifferent to these 
 fears or braved this hostility. For these reasons, there 
 can be no propriety in recognizing any philosophy as 
 Christian. It should be esteemed a positive offence 
 and dishonor to science to teach any of its principles 
 in the interest of, or with any reference to, the Chris- 
 tian faith. It follows that each can serve itself best 
 by leaving the other to itself. Let each be content 
 with its own methods, its own criteria of truth, and its 
 own conclusions, and be entirely unconcerned with 
 any possible relations which it may hold to the other. 
 These views are not held by scientists and philosophers 
 only. They are accepted and enforced by not a few 
 Christian thinkers, and in the interest of their faith. 
 Whatever may be the spirit in which these views are 
 held, it cannot be overlooked or denied that they are 
 extensively received and earnestly propounded by many 
 scientists on the one hand and Christian theologians on 
 the other. 
 
 I propose briefly to inquire how far these views are 
 just, and, in doing so, to ask whether there is any 
 such thing as a Christian philosophy, and, if there is, 
 what are its limits and its extent, what subjects it ex- 
 cludes and what it embraces within its sphere, — what 
 are its methods of inquiry and its grounds of con- 
 viction. 
 
DEFINED AND DEFENDED. 79 
 
 I. I would ask you to consider first that Christianity- 
 is more than a history. It is, indeed, a record of facts 
 and events. But these facts and events are significant 
 and important only as they illustrate important princi- 
 ples and truths. Though they do not prove these 
 principles, they assume them to be true, — as that there 
 is a personal and self-existent Creator, the originator of 
 the forces and the upholder of the laws of nature, who 
 can be known by man, who is interested in man, and 
 can be honored and loved by man ; that man is morally 
 responsible to himself, and therefore to God, and needs 
 guidance and help from God; that he is destined to, 
 and capable of, another life. It is to man as such a 
 being that God reveals himself, according to the Chris- 
 tian story. It is these truths concerning God and man 
 which give to the events of this history all their signifi- 
 cance and interest. 
 
 II. Christianity does more than assume these truths. 
 It also enforces them. Rather it assumes them that it 
 may enforce them, if its story is true, by the most im- 
 pressive and moving of all manifestations of a personal 
 character, such as touch the affections and conscience, 
 and arouse and stimulate the springs of action. It is 
 true, it does not utter these truths in the language of 
 the schools. It scarcely propounds or recognizes them 
 in abstract language at all ; but it impersonates them in 
 living beings, whose looks and words and acts move to a 
 believing and loving response. And yet these truths and 
 principles, for all that, are ever present, and give to these 
 personal acts and words all their meaning and interest. 
 
 III. Every one of these truths has some possible or 
 actual relation to scientific thought. As a consequence, 
 Christianity is brought into permanent relations to phi- 
 
80 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 losophy. Let any one of these principles be set aside as 
 impossible or false, and the Christian history becomes 
 either untrue or insignificant. Let philosophy show to 
 its own satisfaction that God is a fiction of the fancy ; or 
 an impersonal force ; or that he is only a name for the 
 universe itself as an organic whole ; or that, while he ex- 
 ists, he cannot be known; or that, so far as he is known, 
 he must be falsely known ; or that man is without moral 
 freedom, and therefore incapable of moral responsibility ; 
 or that the future existence of man is scientifically im- 
 possible, — and the interest and force of the Christian 
 story are necessarily set aside. It becomes nothing but 
 an interesting record of a faith which once was living, 
 but now is dead. What had been a temple filled with 
 believing worshippers becomes a mausoleum, in which 
 the curious stranger hears the hollow echoes of his 
 solitary footfalls as he walks over the tombs below, — 
 in which all the men who once worshipped above now 
 sleep beneath ; and with them are buried forever all 
 that made the temple a hallowed fane. 
 
 IV. These truths, if they need any proof, or are 
 capable of being proved, are in no sense dependent on 
 the testimony of Christianity, but must be tried at the 
 bar of philosophy. When we say they must be tried in 
 these courts, we do not assert that the evidence on 
 which they rest is either demonstrative or experimental. 
 It may be neither. It may be of a kind peculiar to it- 
 self. It may be intuitional and self-sufficing, or possibly, 
 so far as our argument goes, is supernatural. We care 
 not to inquire or to answer, so long as it is clear that 
 philosophy must either pass judgment upon this evidence 
 as satisfactory, or at least as not inconsistent with its 
 previous decisions, or perhaps send the case to a court to 
 which it allows jurisdiction concurrent with faith itself. 
 
DEFINED AND DEFENDED. 81 
 
 V. For these reasons the principles of Christian 
 philosophy are easily, and they ought to be carefully, 
 distinguished from the truths of Christian theology. 
 The truths of theology are, and those of philosophy 
 are not, supported by testimony. The relations of the 
 two to scientific evidence and proof are for this reason 
 unlike. We grant that truths of theology proper, when 
 accepted on testimony and by faith, hold an important 
 relation to philosophy in that they must be believed to 
 be scientifically possible and credible, and to a certain 
 extent must be defined and explained and arranged 
 after scientific methods. Every system of theology 
 seeks to be in this sense scientific. Every catechism 
 is an introduction to the science of Christian theology. 
 So far as Christian truths are defined and explained, 
 they constitute such a science, whether the principles 
 are received on the authority of the Scriptures, of tra- 
 dition, or of the Church. On the other hand, Christian 
 philosophy, as contrasted with Christian theology, limits 
 itself to those truths, and to those relations of truths, — 
 whether they are historical or revealed, personal or 
 supernatural, — which in some sense shine by their own 
 light, or rest on the evidence of Reason. 
 
 VI. The nature of Christian philosophy is brought 
 into bolder relief by the fact that its distinctive princi- 
 ples have been held by not a few men who did not 
 accept Christianity as historically true or in any sense 
 as supernatural. Socrates, Plato, Marcus Antoninus, 
 Theodore Parker, Francis Newman, are by no means 
 isolated examples. Not a few of these men have held 
 these truths, not only by intellectual belief, but with a 
 fervid personal faith. But they held them as philoso- 
 phers by a necessity and conviction that were intellect- 
 ual, and a logical consistency that was scientific. They 
 
82 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 carried these principles into their theory of the uni- 
 verse, both the physical and the spiritual, adjusting to 
 them their judgments of nature and the soul, of man's 
 history and man's destiny, of society, government, and 
 law, of their ideals of human life and attainment ; thus 
 bringing their applications into intellectual consistency, 
 and binding their conclusions into a more or less coher- 
 ent scientific system. 
 
 VII. In like manner there have been held in ethnic 
 and Christian schools a variety of theories antagonistic 
 to and destructive of what we call a Christian philoso- 
 phy, — theories which have denied thought or purpose 
 in the universe, and substituted blind force for intelli- 
 gent origination ; which have resolved the order of the 
 kosmos into the struggling forces of these self-existing 
 and self-impelled atoms, which swim in the chaos of their 
 drowned compeers; which have denied any care for 
 man, or power to help, on the part of God ; which have 
 excluded from man any foundation for moral self- 
 respect or moral responsibility, and have bravely ac- 
 cepted and frankly avowed the consequences of their 
 theories in some one of the manifold varieties of mate- 
 rialistic atheism. We cite Democritus, Lucretius, and 
 Hobbes as holding theories of this sort. We might cite 
 not a few men now living, were it not easy for such to dis- 
 own affinity with the older atheists by a newly invented 
 terminology for very similar principles. The fact that 
 Christianity makes certain truths more definite and vivid, 
 and re-enforces them with new effect, and invests them 
 with the glow and fire of personal energy, does not 
 make these truths to be any less philosophical in their 
 nature, any more than the fact that some non-Christians 
 hold them makes it improper to speak of a Christian 
 philosophy. 
 
DEFINED AND DEFENDED. 83 
 
 Why, then, it may be asked, if this philosophy may 
 be and has been held by those who receive and those 
 who do not receive the Christian faith, — why do we 
 call it distinctively a Christian philosophy ? 
 
 1. To this question we answer : Because it is a sim- 
 ple matter of fact, that Christianity first forced these 
 truths effectually upon the world's attention and the 
 world's acceptance by means of its supernatural claims 
 and its supernatural history, and caused them to be 
 largely accepted as those principles of scientific thinking 
 which now commend themselves to man's reason, and 
 shine by their own light. In defending itself, Christi- 
 anity has been forced to defend these truths on grounds 
 of reason against the attacks of subtle and powerful 
 antagonists, and sharply and still more sharply to 
 define them, under the unsparing scrutiny of keen- 
 sighted critics. In these attacks and defences these 
 truths have been brought into every conceivable rela- 
 tion to other truths and theories, both of science and 
 religion. When the discussions have seemed to be 
 purely theological, they have very often, if not more fre- 
 quently, turned upon some principle of this underlying 
 philosophy. It does not follow, because Christianity 
 has inwrought certain truths into the world's phi- 
 losophy, that it has taught them by authority, or 
 enforced them by miracle or testimony. This infer- 
 ence is excluded by the undisputed fact, that, in its 
 use of miracle and testimony, Christianity assumes 
 these principles to be accepted and to be necessary in 
 order to give force or significance to miracle or his- 
 tory, and that again and again it has rested its cause 
 on grounds of philosophy alone. Much is said in these 
 days of the hinderance which Christian theology has 
 been to science and philosophy. Much might be said 
 
84 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 of the stimulus and aid which it has given to both in 
 the world's enlightenment. 
 
 2. Not only has philosophy been stimulated and 
 shaped by the earnest thinking of Christendom upon 
 Christian themes, but it has moulded Christian civiliza- 
 tion and organized Christian institutions. The civil- 
 ization and institutions of modern life are the products 
 of Christian ideas, — to a large extent of the positive 
 and supernatural facts which Christianity asserts, but 
 always of the great verities which give these facts their 
 significance. The amenities, the manners, the legisla- 
 tion, and the jurisprudence of modern life are the 
 always blooming flowers and the ever-ripening fruit of 
 those ideas of God, of the soul, of duty, and of immor- 
 tality, which Christianity has made sacred and ener- 
 getic. In other words, Christianity has given the world 
 a peculiar and practical philosophy of belief and of 
 life, which has become a new atmosphere for its think- 
 ing and feeling. This atmosphere pervades the streets 
 of every city, it is diffused through forests in which man 
 dwells far from man, carrying protection and courtesy 
 and honor and truth where otherwise lawless violence 
 and brutal rudeness would have been unrestrained. 
 The complicated organism of modern life, which we 
 call its credit and its commerce, its culture and its arts, 
 its morality and its refinement, is constantly renewed 
 by the force of these ideas of Christian philosophy, 
 which are the life-forces of the ever growing and ever 
 more ramified structure : as the oak which has stood 
 for centuries feels the force of one life through every 
 fibre and leaflet and bud. Let these ideas fail by the 
 prevalence of an anti-Christian philosophy, or let them 
 be weakened in their force, and the structure will lose 
 its coherence, and show by its slow or sudden ruin how 
 
DEFINED AND DEFENDED. 85 
 
 powerful and necessary to its existence were the truths 
 which gave it strength and beauty. We may conceive, if 
 we do not believe, that faith in Christianity as a super- 
 natural force should die out, and the strength and 
 beauty of modern life should remain ; but we can 
 neither conceive nor believe that faith in the truths of 
 Christian philosophy should fail, and this fair structure 
 should escape the dry-rot which must slowly sap its 
 strength, or the swift ruin which would attend its 
 sudden fall. 
 
 3. Christian philosophy, however, like philosophy in 
 general, should be sharply distinguished from any one 
 of the special sciences. It would be absurd and un- 
 meaning to speak of Christian physics, or Christian 
 mathematics, or Christian geology ; but it by no means 
 follows that it is unreasonable to speak of Christian 
 philosophy. The reason is obvious. Every single 
 science is limited to a special class of phenomena and 
 certain easily distinguished powers and laws. But phi- 
 losophy concerns itself with those powers and relations 
 which are common to many phenomena, and which are 
 the conditions of every special science and of all scien- 
 tific thinking. A special science may be prosecuted 
 without either asking or answering the question whether 
 there is a God ; or whether the spiritual agent, vulgarly 
 called the human mind, which builds its knowledge into 
 a science, can be material in its essence or evolved from 
 matter ; or what are the grounds of our belief in the 
 order of nature ; or is there a purpose or design in the 
 universe ; or can the soul survive the body. These ques- 
 tions are more or less properly questions of philosophy, 
 as it is distinguished from any one of the sciences. That 
 this distinction is well taken will appear from a few 
 examples. Physics is limited to mechanical or molecular 
 
86 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 forces, and the bodies in which they inhere. It treats 
 of adhesion and impulse and pressure, in molecules and 
 masses and liquids ; of matter^ as its parts cohere in 
 solids, or flow in liquids, or are repelled in gases ; as it 
 undulates in light, or expands and glows in heat, or pal- 
 pitates in electricity ; as it manifests force, now as heat 
 or electricity or light, or as capacity for mechanical work. 
 Chemistry, again, has to do with another set of proper- 
 ties and relations, by which two or more elements unite 
 in a result unlike either, and attract and repel each 
 other in definite proportions. Physiology has to do 
 with another set of activities and relations, by which 
 living tissues are formed that manifest peculiar prop- 
 erties, and organs which perform special functions. 
 
 As common and essential to all these, mathematics, 
 again, has to do with pure quantity as conceived by the 
 mind, as in geometry and algebra, and with applied quan- 
 tity as in mensuration, surveying, engineering, gunnery, 
 and other arts of man ; or on a larger scale in astronomy, 
 that measures and weighs the celestial masses in their 
 movements, and predicts their places ; or in chemistry, 
 that combines and repels its molecules in strictest 
 obedience to the relations of number by a skill and 
 thought even more consummate — if indeed the vast 
 universe of masses and the minute universe of mole- 
 cules have a thinker at all. 
 
 The agents and powers with which physics, chemis- 
 try, and physiology are concerned exist together in the 
 same universe, and have some common relations with 
 one another. Mathematics has relations common to 
 all, for its quantities are recognized in all and applied 
 to all. Inquiries respecting the conceptions which enter 
 into each of the several sciences, whether they are as- 
 sumed as existing in the universe, or as governing the 
 mind of the scientific inquirer in his efforts to interpret 
 
DEFINED AND DEFENDED. 87 
 
 the secrets of nature, necessarily define the bounds of 
 philosophy as distinguished from science. 
 
 These inquiries will compel us to ask whether thought 
 or blind force originated and rules the universe ; whether 
 man, who interprets the universe, can intelligently solve 
 its riddles, or whether he is always impelled to guess ; 
 whether he shall, or shall not, outlive the matter over 
 which his triumphant thought and skill is perpetually 
 proclaiming him master and king. That there is such a 
 science, which is the science of the sciences, or the 
 prima philosophic has been recognized by all thinkers, 
 from Aristotle down to Huxley and Tyndall, however 
 imperfectly many have conceived or denned it. 
 
 It is not my object to define or describe this underly- 
 ing and fundamental branch of knowledge, or to insist 
 that philosophy is its fitting name. I desire only to 
 show that it cannot be suppressed, and that it proposes 
 and seeks to answer the most interesting and important 
 questions which can occupy man's intellect or which 
 concern his destiny. 
 
 4. These points being established, I proceed to say, 
 that a man may be a very eminent scientist without 
 being an eminent philosopher. He may even be pre- 
 eminent in his mastery of a single science without 
 giving special attention to the philosophy of the very 
 science of which he is master. To be eminent in as- 
 tronomy or physics or chemistry or physiology, one 
 needs only to accept the conceptions and definitions 
 which the great discoverers have gained, without in- 
 quiring into the exactness of these definitions, or the 
 consistency of one definition with another, — much less 
 without asking or answering any questions concerning 
 the relations of his own science to other sciences or to 
 the sciences in general. These sciences are very largely 
 
88 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 sciences of observation and experiment. As such, they 
 permit the amplest range for the energy of many a zeal- 
 ous devotee, who would be hindered and distracted if 
 he concerned himself with their underlying philosophy. 
 It is only the more inquisitive minds, the minds of 
 larger and more generous spirit, which cannot be re- 
 strained from searching after the authority of the prin- 
 ciples and laws which he is daily and hourly applying. 
 
 Even in the pure mathematics — the science of ab- 
 stractions, whose elemental air is transparent ether 
 itself — a man may be eminent in resolving problems 
 and inventing theorems, — he may accept the axioms 
 without asking after their authority, and use the defini- 
 tions without inquiring concerning their fitness, — much 
 more without ever caring to inquire what is the mental 
 process by which the mind gets possession of the point, 
 the line, the circle, the cube, or the sphere; or what is 
 that mysterious entity which men call space, in which 
 these geometrical constructions seem to float, as fish in 
 the sea, and to which the reasoner is always referring, 
 whether he knows it or not. 
 
 5. If now we turn to the special sciences which con- 
 cern themselves with the human spirit, we find these 
 lying nearer to philosophy, as we use the term, than 
 the physical sciences, in which observation and experi- 
 ment test every theory and try every definition. It can- 
 not be true that the phenomena of knowledge and feel- 
 ing are energies any the less real or potent than are the 
 manifestations of gravitation or electricity. It must be 
 true, moreover, that electricity and gravitation are noth- 
 ing except so far as they are known. The act of know- 
 ing is superior to all others. It is itself the agency by 
 which nature re-appears in the form of a demonstrated 
 science, or is explained by a sagacious theory, such as 
 
DEFINED AND DEFENDED. 89 
 
 the leaders of science are now and then inspired to 
 frame, as those of Copernicus and Newton and Faraday, 
 and possibly Darwin, or is tested by decisive experi- 
 ments, such as Franklin and Davy have devised by 
 skilful invention. The agency of knowledge in inter- 
 preting nature is as real and potent an agency as any 
 of the powers of nature which it brings out of their hid- 
 ing-places, and forces to declare the secret of her work- 
 ing. If the power of knowing is as real as any force 
 which is known, it is not lower but higher in rank 
 because it cannot itself be tasted or seen or touched, 
 or weighed by the pound, or measured by the inch. 
 Let us also remember that itself* sees and touches and 
 weighs and measures, not gravitation and electricity 
 alone, but every property and relation in the universe, 
 from any of the single forces, which, as light and heat, 
 pervade all space, to any momentary combination of two 
 or more, under which the gossamer floats and glistens 
 in the sunbeam, or which whirls the atoms or molecules 
 around their centres, or hurls the gaseous particles with 
 tiny but unfelt strokes against the elastic walls, which 
 they expand but cannot break. 
 
 Is mental force any the less real, or less worthy of 
 scientific study, because its energies and intensities can- 
 not be weighed and measured? Surely it cannot be 
 in the estimate of him who remembers that itself weighs 
 and measures all physical energies, and can even con- 
 struct, by processes which it is itself puzzled to explain, 
 the entities of geometry and number, and yet is forced 
 to set them up, it knows not why, as the tests and 
 standards of trustworthy knowledge. The science 
 which has to do with the intellect of man has indeed, 
 like chemistry and physics, its own special subject- 
 matter ; but, inasmuch as this very subject-matter is the 
 function of knowledge itself, it cannot be studied as a 
 
90 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 special science, and prosecuted, without leading to the 
 portals of what we have distinguished from all the spe- 
 cial sciences by the name of Philosophy. The same 
 is true of ethics, or the science of the ends and rules of 
 human activity. This science, like physics and chem- 
 istry, deals directly with its own limited subject-matter. 
 To this subject-matter the adept must in a certain sense 
 limit himself if he would understand his materials and 
 master his tools; but he cannot completely cover his 
 own department unless he studies man in his relations 
 to his fellow-man, to himself, to the animal creation, to 
 the future life if there be such a life, and to his Cre- 
 ator if He can be known. Let him seek never so ear- 
 nestly to confine himself to ethics alone, he will find, 
 before he is aware, that he has entered upon the field 
 of philosophy, and within this into the department of 
 Christian theism or that of anti-Christian, and possibly 
 also of anti-moral atheism. 
 
 6. No special science can possibly fall out with a true 
 philosophy, or come in conflict with it. You might as 
 soon conceive that a house should fall out with a solid 
 foundation, or a tree should come into conflict with its 
 well-established roots. .The teachings of the two can 
 never conflict. If it can be shown that a theistic philoso- 
 phy, or a philosophy which recognizes a plan of benevo- 
 lence in the universe, involving responsibility for man 
 and the possibility of immortal life, is the only rational 
 or the most rational explanation of the processes which 
 every special science conducts, and the axioms on which 
 it rests, then there is no place for any conflict to arise 
 between any special discoveries which any science can 
 reach, or the processes by which they are attained, or 
 the faiths which these processes assume. Each has 
 nothing to fear from the other. The two cannot pos- 
 sibly come into collision. 
 
DEFINED AND DEFENDED. 91 
 
 7. In order that such a philosophy may show itself 
 to be true, it must show itself to be broad enough for 
 every science to rest upon, — the sciences of spirit, with 
 their peculiar properties and laws, as truly as the sci- 
 ences of matter, with the properties and laws of each. 
 It must explain every description of phenomena, the 
 moral as well as the rational. It must provide stand- 
 ing-room for all : it may exclude none. It cannot be 
 inconsistent with any. 
 
 Mathematics and physics and chemistry, and physi- 
 ology and geology and psychology, and ethics and po- 
 litical science, and even theology and religion, must 
 each be recognized. The rights of each must be ac- 
 knowledged. A philosophy which is subjected to such 
 a test as this, which is constantly liable to criticism 
 and complaint from every party, cannot be charged 
 with hostility to any because perchance it may assert 
 that belief in spirit, in God, and in immortality, is a 
 necessary condition or consequence of its being a phi- 
 losophy at all. I do not assert that there is no exposure 
 to mistake or error in determining the true philosophy; 
 but these exposures are trivial as long as it is tried by 
 scientific methods, and sought for in a scientific spirit. 
 If it is urged that there are biassing influences in favor 
 of a philosophy which satisfies our higher wants and 
 aspirations, we reply that there are also biassing influ- 
 ences against such a philosophy. If theism attracts 
 some minds on what are called theological grounds, 
 atheism does the same. For atheism is as truly a the- 
 ology as theism, and now and then seems capable of 
 kindling a zeal which overleaps reason, and flames into 
 a fanatical ferocity. 
 
 8. On the other hand, there is serious danger lest the 
 devotees of a special science should make it the rule for 
 
92 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 every other, and exalt it into a fundamental philosophy. 
 Some of us remember the fable of a besieged city, for 
 whose defence a council of citizens was called, repre- 
 senting the chief occupations of its inhabitants, and 
 how, after each man had set forth the virtues of the 
 material he dealt in, the tanner contended, that among 
 all there was nothing like leather. This story is exem- 
 plified in so grave a matter as the philosophy of the 
 universe. The ultra-materialist will not believe that 
 any thing is real except matter, or that there are any 
 properties or laws which science is bound to respect 
 except the properties and laws of matter. 
 
 It is no dishonor to the devotees of the physical 
 sciences to assert that they are especially exposed to 
 this temptation. These sciences are, as they ought 
 to be, largely sciences of observation and experiment. 
 While their phenomena naturally engross the attention 
 and occupy the thoughts of the many, the philosophy on 
 which they rest is a matter of curious interest only to 
 the few. It has no direct interest for those who are 
 occupied with ordinary physical researches. It is not 
 surprising that such men should be ready to explain the 
 phenomena of life and of spirit by the forces and laws 
 with which they are familiar, and be prepared to believe 
 that matter and motion account for the existence of the 
 universe and the occurrence of all its phenomena. This 
 is less surprising in consideration of the fact that so 
 great a variety of the most refined material forces, as 
 light and heat and electricity, have, to the satisfaction 
 of many, been resolved into a single force, and that this 
 force has been ascribed to the capacity of material par- 
 ticles for varied forms of motion. If this be so, the phy- 
 sicist reasons, let the material be a little more refined, 
 and the motions be more subtle, and matter will put 
 on the phenomena of life. Let the process advance to a 
 
DEFINED AND DEFENDED. 93 
 
 higher potency, and spirit will appear in its feebler and 
 humbler forms ; let it proceed still farther onward and 
 upward, and the highest forms of intellectual and moral 
 activity will be manifest. If what was once dead mat- 
 ter can, by forces and agencies within itself, be subli- 
 mated to these finer activities, — if that which seems so 
 gross can be finely touched to issues so fine as these, — 
 then the universe of matter, self-moved to the noblest 
 manifestations of thought and feeling, has no occasion 
 for any other intelligence than such as sleeps in its own 
 atoms, and can be evoked by a happy combination or a 
 chance impulse of its own. The growth of materialistic 
 evolutionism is similarly accounted for. Let the phe- 
 nomena of life attract the scientific study of a genera- 
 tion of devoted students. Let the mysterious process 
 of growth from the seed to the plant, and the embryo to 
 the perfected animal, be the subject of curious yet famil- 
 iar interest, and development becomes the word of the 
 hour, at once exciting the curiosity by its peculiar mys- 
 tery, and then sating it by its frequent recognition, till 
 its mystery shall have evaporated into a commonplace. 
 Let it be discovered that development has a wider range 
 and application than had been supposed, even among liv- 
 ing forms and beings ; that many so-called species have 
 originated from simpler forms of life. Let the truth be 
 accepted among zoologists and palaeontologists, that a 
 law of progress can be traced from simpler to more 
 complex forms of life, from the fossil period down to 
 the present. To any conclusions of this sort philosophy 
 can have no possible objection, provided they are sus- 
 tained by scientific evidence and are supported by 
 scientific arguments. But when the analogies of the 
 growing seed or embryo are extended to lifeless matter, 
 and made the substitute for creative force ; when an 
 unthinking tendency to variation, coupled with a ten- 
 
94 CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHY 
 
 dency to conservation equally blind, are asserted to be 
 the last formulae which philosophy needs ; when star- 
 dust, rushing from a rarer to a denser medium, is 
 deemed the only and the ample explanation of the 
 structure and order of the planetary system, of the pro- 
 duction of air and water and earth, of the production 
 of animal and vegetable life, of the manipulation of 
 sensitive, intellectual, and spiritual activity, of con- 
 science, law and religion ; when, in short, the develop- 
 ment of the germ of plant or animal is accepted as the 
 ultimate solution of the evolution of the kosmos and of 
 all which the kosmos can reveal, even to the mind of a 
 Humboldt, which reflects it by scientific explanation, — 
 then we have a right to say, in the name of philosophy, 
 that the idols of a single private chapel of knowledge 
 shall not be admitted into its sacred fane, and lifted up 
 upon the high altar of its worship. And we do this with 
 reason ; forasmuch as the doctrine of evolution, even if it 
 were true, is no fundamental conception on which all the 
 sciences can stand, but supposes many other such con- 
 ceptions, pre-eminently one, and that is, the conception 
 of a plan beginning millions of ages past, most compre- 
 hensive of minute detail, infinite in the possibilities 
 which it realizes and rejects, and steadily pressing for- 
 ward towards its fulfilment, — in a word, supposes cre- 
 ative energy with unexhausted capacity and intelligent 
 wisdom. 
 
 In some of these remarks I have anticipated the dis- 
 cussions which lie before us. The remarks may, how- 
 ever, serve to impress the conviction which thinkers of 
 all schools of science are beginning to acknowledge, 
 that the questions which are now agitating the devotees 
 of any department of knowledge can only be answered 
 by asking prof o under questions in respect to man's 
 
DEFINED AND DEFENDED. 95 
 
 nature, i.e., his capacity to know either matter or mind ; 
 in respect to the essence of matter, of life, of sensibility, 
 of science itself ; in respect to duty and right and im- 
 mortality ; and again, in respect to the destiny of man 
 as an individual and as a race, in the present and in the 
 future life, — most of all in respect to God : whether 
 science compels us to recognize him, or must shut and 
 bar forever the brazen gates which seem to lead into his 
 inner sanctuary, and thus forever delude and tantalize 
 the successive generations which stream towards those 
 gates by painted and gilded mockeries which at a dis- 
 tance seem to reveal the mysteries of the highest truth, 
 and on a near approach vanish like the vapor before the 
 sun. 
 
 Questions of this sort agitate thinking men to the 
 very depths of their being. They cannot be evaded. 
 They can only be answered by cherishing the truly 
 scientific spirit, — that spirit, which, according to the 
 great expounders of the modern scientific method, is 
 coincident with the spirit which the great Master of 
 Christian truth declared was indispensable to a man who 
 desires to enter into the kingdom of heaven. In pre- 
 scribing this spirit in searching after truth, the greatest 
 of teachers has given the sufficient rule and inspiration 
 for all philosophical inquiry. For this reason, and mani- 
 fold others, we believe, that, when he founded the king- 
 dom of God upon earth, he provided a place, and a very 
 large place, in it for a Christian philosophy. 
 
TV. 
 
 THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN- 
 STUART MILL} 
 
 The reasons are manifold why the life of John Stuart 
 Mill should be interesting. His personality was unique 
 for both weakness and strength. His education was 
 something marvellous in its way, perhaps more marvel- 
 lous than that of any English-speaking youth of the 
 present century. His career was almost a romance, 
 if it be not quixotic to apply the epithet " romantic " to 
 a man who was so completely a metaphysician and a 
 radical. 
 
 If we recall the contempt and ostracism which were 
 bestowed so energetically by all England upon the little 
 knot of speculative radicals with whom Mill identified 
 his youthful fortunes, and watch the influence which 
 they gained in each successive decade, till, at the death 
 of their acknowledged leader, all England noticed the 
 event as the going-out of one of its greatest lights; 
 and if we also reflect on the place which Mill made for 
 himself towards the end of his life in the Common- 
 rooms of the great universities, where, thirty years 
 before, his name was mentioned only with contemptu- 
 ous sneers, — it is impossible not to wonder with amaze- 
 ment at his success, even if we fail to accord to it our 
 unmixed sympathy. 
 
 As a laborious and indefatigable toiler in the abstract 
 sciences, Mill has certainly made his mark more em- 
 
 1 Scribner's Monthly Magazine, March, 1874. 
 96 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL, 97 
 
 phatically than any man of his generation, unless we 
 except the great Scotchman with whose opinions he 
 so boldly grappled, or the more adventurous agnostic 
 who walks with confident footsteps over the path which 
 Mill opened with a cautious and stealthy pace. As a 
 devotee of political economy, and a sturdy champion 
 for legal, social, and political reforms, he was always 
 conspicuous, and never would acknowledge defeat. In 
 all these particulars Mill's life was remarkable, and the 
 story of it is most worthy of attention. But most of 
 all is it remarkable for another reason. His ethical 
 and religious faith was essentially, if not avowedly, 
 atheistic, and, being such, may be taken as a repre- 
 sentative of that of many speculative and cultured 
 men of the present generation. Of the man who held 
 this faith we have not the life only, but the life as nar- 
 rated by himself, and narrated with a freedom and 
 minuteness which are as uncommon as they are in- 
 structive. 
 
 It is with this aspect of his life that we propose to 
 concern ourselves, and with this only. Mr. Mill has 
 chosen to write the history of his own religious and eth- 
 ical opinions, and of the character which was moulded 
 by them. He has done this with singular frankness, 
 and with a marvellous indifference to the favorable or 
 unfavorable judgments of his fellow-men. We propose 
 to follow him in a spirit as dispassionate as his own, 
 to inquire into the causes which produced this some- 
 what extraordinary phenomenon, and to estimate the 
 worth of the product itself, not by the ordinarily re- 
 ceived standards of natural or Christian theism, but 
 by those which we may assume to be accepted by culti- 
 vated men, irrespective of any theological preposses- 
 sions. 
 
 We deem it necessary to premise, that we accept Mr. 
 
98 AUTOBIOGBAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 Mill's account of himself as unprejudiced and true. 
 We do not care to go beyond his own narrative for our 
 data, or to judge of his culture, his aims, or his conduct, 
 by any other testimony than his own. Not a little has 
 been said by his critics in the way of detraction from 
 the correctness of some of his statements, and of addi- 
 tion of facts omitted by him, particularly in respect to 
 his relations to Mrs. Taylor. "We prefer to disregard 
 all this supplementary matter, and to accept without 
 question the statements concerning his conduct and 
 motives which are given by himself. 
 
 Mr. Mill introduces a sketch of his father very early 
 into his own autobiography. He does this very nat- 
 urally, for his father's personality and principles exerted 
 a controlling influence over his own from his birth to 
 his death. The filial deference with which the son 
 uniformly speaks of his father is discernible in all his 
 writings, and is very conspicuous in this history of his 
 own life. It is with painful delicacy that he alludes to 
 his growing want of sympathy with him as his own life 
 went on, and with tender satisfaction that he notices 
 how, towards the end of that life, he interested himself 
 in re-editing his father's principal work on philosophy. 
 Mr. George Grote shared in these feelings, and ex- 
 pressed the warmest satisfaction in furnishing matter 
 for the same re-publication, that he might testify his 
 gratitude to the man who had done so much for his 
 own education and his own practical principles. The 
 man who impressed himself so powerfully upon such 
 men as John Stuart Mill and George Grote, long after 
 his own death, must have been an extraordinary man. 
 
 James Mill was a Scotchman, with a self-reliance and 
 a capacity for self-assertion which surpassed that of any 
 other Scotchman of whom we are informed, marvellous 
 as the possibilities and achievements of Scotchmen 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 99 
 
 are said by some to be in these regards. He was 
 trained originally as a beneficiary student for the min- 
 istry in the Scottish Presbyterian Church. But he 
 " had by his own studies and reflections been early led 
 to reject, not only the belief in revelation, but the 
 foundations of what is commonly called natural reli- 
 gion." Finding no halting-place in deism, " he yielded 
 to the conviction, that, concerning the origin of things, 
 nothing whatever can be known." And yet the son 
 insists that he was not a dogmatic atheist, and that he 
 even held that such atheism was absurd. He says, 
 strangely enough, that his father was led to abandon 
 theism on moral rather than on intellectual grounds. 
 " He found it impossible to believe that a world so full 
 of evil was the work of an author combining infinite 
 power with perfect goodness and righteousness. In- 
 deed, he rather preferred the Manichean theory of two 
 separate originators, or principles, of good and evil." 
 If he was not a dogmatic atheist, he was disposed to 
 be a dogmatic Manichean. If not a dogmatic atheist, 
 he was sufficiently dogmatic as an anti-theist and anti- 
 christian, holding, with Lucretius, that all religion, 
 whether natural or supernatural, is essentially demor- 
 alizing: indeed, "as the greatest enemy of morality, 
 first by setting up fictitious excellences, belief in 
 creeds, etc., . . . but above all by radically vitiating 
 the standard of morals, making it consist in doing the 
 will of a Being, on whom it* lavishes, indeed, all the 
 phrases of adulation, but whom in sober truth it 
 depicts as eminently hateful. . . . This ne plus ultra 
 of wickedness he considered to be embodied in what 
 is commonly presented to mankind as the creed of 
 Christianity." Mr. Mill warms as he proceeds in ex- 
 pounding this u dogmatism " of his father, and insists, 
 for his own part, that although the demoralizing con- 
 
100 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOIIN STUART MILL. 
 
 ceptions of the object of the Christian's love and wor- 
 ship are largely mingled with and modified by the ideal 
 excellence which he may derive from other sources, 
 yet they cannot but exert a pernicious influence in 
 disturbing and clouding this very ideal. 
 
 At the risk of dwelling upon a point which ought 
 to be self-evident, we observe that Mill the father, as 
 described by the son, does not appear to refer to any 
 of the hard sayings in the Scottish Calvinistic creeds 
 as the grounds of these wholesale attacks on every 
 form of religion, but to certain hard facts in the econ- 
 omy of the universe, which must, in his view, compel 
 any man who believes in an intelligent Creator to ac- 
 cept such views of his character as must be demoral- 
 izing. He therefore preferred not to believe in God 
 at all, and, in order to save his morality, he accepted 
 the Manichean theory as nearest to his approximation 
 to a religious creed. How this creed could be emi- 
 nently moral in its influence he does not affirm, and it 
 would be hard for him to prove. 
 
 It is important also to notice that the phenomena of 
 the universe as seen by our brace of philosophers, with 
 one God, or no God, or two Gods behind them, were 
 observed through the spectacles of a private philosophic 
 theory of their own, which might, possibly, have had 
 something to do with the conclusions which they reached 
 in respect to the demoralizing influences of all religion. 
 This theory of theirs embraced two cardinal princi- 
 ples, — the doctrine that man is the creature of circum- 
 stances, and that his circumstances determine his 
 character through the predominance of the associations 
 which are formed by his environment. Mill the father 
 adopted very early the fatalism of Hartley's u Obser- 
 vations on Man ; " and Mill the son made it the busi- 
 ness of his life to establish this as the only rational 
 

 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 101 
 
 and tenable theory of human progress and perfecti- 
 bility. It is very easy to see how, on the principles of 
 this philosophy, which both the Mills accepted as indis- 
 putable, they should arrive at very peculiar conclusions 
 in respect to the rationality of theism and Christianity, 
 and the possibility of holding any creed concerning 
 God which should not be demoralizing. This Hart- 
 leian fatalism itself, in the view of many who reject it, 
 is a theory which seems to be utterly inconsistent 
 with the possibility of morality of any kind. A witty 
 American writer, who is never weary of attacking what 
 he calls Calvinism as fearfully demoralizing, seems 
 almost equally zealous in propagating a theory of ne- 
 cessitarian " mechanism in thought and morals," which 
 is inconsistent with moral responsibility or self-respect. 
 It is not surprising that those who hold such a doc- 
 trine should find in religion, as interpreted by their 
 principles, an instrument of demoralization, or that they 
 should be unable to furnish a satisfactory theory of the 
 goodness of God in his dealings with men. We cannot 
 but contrast the summary method with which the great 
 problems of thought concerning these questions are 
 disposed of by this Scottish schoolmaster, with the ear- 
 nest struggles, the patient inquiries, and the triumphant 
 faith of multitudes who have faced the facts as boldly, 
 and acknowledged the difficulties as frankly, as he, but 
 with whom faith in the living God as good was tri- 
 umphant, and the power of Christian theism to inspire 
 and sustain an elevated moral life was verified by the 
 most decisive evidence. 
 
 But James Mill the doctrinaire was not to be put 
 down, though all the world should be against him. 
 With a self-confidence which was almost sublime, and a 
 power of self-assertion which would seem to be indomi- 
 table, he attached himself to Jeremy Bentham, and be- 
 
102 AUTOBIOGBAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 came a devotee to his projects for social and juridical 
 reform. With a strong interest in political economy, 
 and an ardent faith, in spite of his Manicheanism, in the 
 perfectibility of man by means of democratic govern- 
 ment and representative institutions ; with a keen sense 
 of those social inequalities and traditional abuses which 
 were so fearfully rank in England, even in the first two 
 decades of the present century ; with a strong interest 
 in history, and a comprehensive capacity to discern 
 the workings of institutions, — he adopted most of the 
 theories of Jeremy Bentham, and gave all his energies 
 to his proposed reforms, many of which at that time 
 seemed quixotic. His " History of British India " 
 brought him into public notice, and secured him in 
 1818 a place of influence and pecuniary support in the 
 East India House. Being capable of immense intel- 
 lectual labor, and of untiring energy, he became the 
 inspiring genius of the few rising young men whom he 
 could gather about himself, as well as an indomitable 
 worker in the cause of radical reform. His most im- 
 portant services to his generation, however, were ren- 
 dered by the education of George Grote and John 
 Stuart Mill. Over the latter he had complete control, 
 and he began with him at the earliest possible period. 
 
 The son was born in 1806, — twelve years and more 
 before his father was installed in the India House. 
 During these years the father was dependent on literary 
 labor for his subsistence, and yet contrived to do the 
 reading and writing which were necessary for the com- 
 position of his great history. With these burdens upon 
 him he began to teach the boy Greek when three years 
 old, and taught him so well, that he had read some of 
 the easiest, and one of the most abstruse, of Plato's 
 Dialogues, with Herodotus, parts of Xenophon, etc., 
 by the time he was seven or eight. To Greek, arith- 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 103 
 
 metic was added. At eight he began Latin. After he 
 was five or six, he began to read history, and recited to 
 his father, in his daily walks, from a large number of 
 standard ancient and modern historians, reading copi- 
 ously also in voyages and travels. Of children's books 
 he owned only "Robinson Crusoe," and borrowed " The 
 Arabian Nights," "Don Quixote," Miss Edgeworth's 
 "Popular Tales," etc. When he began to learn Latin, 
 he assisted in teaching his brothers and sisters, and took 
 up the Greek poets. From eight to twelve he read an 
 appalling amount of Latin and Greek, finishing with 
 Aristotle's Rhetoric, and throwing in a second large 
 instalment of ancient and modern history. Of poetry 
 he read somewhat, and wrote English verses. From 
 twelve to fourteen he read considerable portions of Aris- 
 totle's " Organon," and did not a little logical analysis ; 
 read Demosthenes for pleasure, and some of the most 
 important Dialogues of Plato, also Tacitus, Juvenal, 
 and Quintilian ; and assisted his father to read the manu- 
 scripts and proofs of his history as it went through the 
 press. When he was thirteen and more, he was put to 
 the study of political economy, and at fourteen his reg- 
 ular education was finished. His father was an exact- 
 ing though a stimulating teacher, and often presumed 
 on greater maturity of intelligence than he found. He 
 was careful to guard his pupil against self-conceit, incul- 
 cating the lesson upon him, that if he should find, on 
 comparing himself with other persons of his age, that 
 he knew more than they, he must remember that it was 
 because he had enjoyed special advantages. The son 
 thinks that he had no arrogance when a child, and 
 knows that he had no special humility. He owns that 
 various persons who saw him in his childhood thought 
 him "greatly and disagreeably self-conceited, prob- 
 ably because he was disputatious, and did not scruple 
 
104 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 to give direct contradiction to things which he heard 
 said." 
 
 We ought not to omit noticing, that he travelled not 
 infrequently in England with his father and his father's 
 friends. It is characteristic of the author to say of a 
 sojourn at Ford Abbey, " This sojourn was, I think, 
 an important circumstance in my education. Nothing 
 contributes more to nourish elevation of sentiments in 
 a people than the large and free character of their habi- 
 tations. The middle-age architecture, the baronial hall, 
 and the spacious and lofty rooms of this fine old place, 
 so unlike the mean and cramped externals of English 
 middle-class life, gave the sentiment of a larger and 
 freer exertion, and are to one a sort of poetic cultiva- 
 tion," etc. 
 
 After the age of fourteen he resided in France for a 
 year, becoming familiar with the language, and had a 
 slight introduction to French domestic and social life, 
 studying somewhat under French professors. On his 
 return he resumed his ordinary studies, prosecuting 
 the branches (in the main self-directed) which he had 
 begun, and giving himself especially to the study of 
 jurisprudence, political economy, and psychology. He 
 attaches special importance to his reading of a book 
 published under the pseudonyme of " Philip Beau- 
 champ," entitled " Analysis of the Influence of Natu- 
 ral Religion on the Temporal Happiness of Mankind." 
 This work was founded on the teachings of Bentham, 
 and was prepared by George Grote, and sets forth very 
 emphatically the doctrines of which we have already 
 spoken, — that both natural and revealed religion are 
 hostile to human happiness and welfare. 
 
 Of this method of education and its results we have 
 only a word to say. That it could only have been 
 achieved and sustained with a strong nature to enforce, 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 105 
 
 and a pliant nature to accept it, is sufficiently obvious 
 to any man who knows even very little of boys. That 
 the pupil read and studied as he describes, we have no 
 reason to doubt. We cannot suspect Mr. Mill of exag- 
 geration as to the principal facts of detail, although we 
 might suppose him to deceive himself as to the amount 
 of intelligence which he brought to these studies. 
 That his judgments concerning himself are inclined to 
 be suave and sanguine is evident from many pages of 
 his writings. But we can easily believe that a boy of 
 so gentle a temper and so passive a nature as his, with 
 great capacity to acquire, and no little acuteness of 
 judgment, should have been stimulated, by a powerful 
 and energetic nature like his father's, to the achieve- 
 ments which he describes. One thing he says of him- 
 self, which seems to be highly probable, viz., that he 
 learned how to know better than how to do ; that he 
 was singularly helpless in managing and providing for 
 himself, whereas his father was singularly handy and 
 self-reliant. So far as we can judge from his writings, 
 it was one of the great defects of his nature, that, while 
 he was apt at books, he never learned to know, not only 
 how to do things himself, but how they were done by 
 other men. In other words, he was singularly deficient 
 in common sense in respect to doing of all sorts, whether 
 the doing concerned the management of a household, 
 the conduct of a commonwealth, the relations of the 
 sexes, or the government of the universe. The disabil- 
 ities which he incurred from this forced and secluded 
 training were aggravated by the circumstance that but 
 few persons visited his father's house, and he was con- 
 versant with a very limited society, and rarely had in- 
 tercourse with boys of his own age. His childhood, he 
 thinks, was happy ; though his father failed in tender- 
 ness, and was averse to any manifestations of affection. 
 
106 AUTOBIOGBAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 In respect to religious belief, he says he never had 
 any. " I am one of the very few examples in this 
 country, of one who has not thrown off religious belief, 
 but never had it : I grew up in a negative state with 
 regard to it. I looked upon the modern, exactly as I 
 did upon the ancient religion, — as something which in 
 no way concerned me. It did not seem to me more 
 strange that English people should believe what I did 
 not than that the men I read of in Herodotus should 
 have done so. History had made the variety of opinions 
 among mankind a fact familiar to me, and this was but 
 a prolongation of that fact." This is sufficiently naive 
 at the first aspect : at the second it may raise a question 
 whether this record was a simple remembrance from 
 childhood, or an interpolated argument from the uncon- 
 sciously sly old man. If it were the one, its validity 
 as an argument should have been transparent to the 
 veteran practitioner of logic. If it were the other, it 
 can be excused by the abundant evidence which is fur- 
 nished in his writings, that he had acquired so firm a 
 faith in himself as to be unable to suspect himself of 
 being either disingenuous or simple, although his read- 
 ers might be certain that he must be one or the other. 
 
 If Mr. Mill is to be judged as a boy by the ordinary 
 examples of boyhood, we should say, that had he been 
 trained to say his prayers and to go to church ; had he 
 learned hymns and the catechism, in addition to Greek, 
 Latin, and logic, before he was twelve years old ; and 
 had he been as docile in religion as he was in his other 
 studies, — he could not easily have failed, under his se- 
 cluded training, to be a conceited prig, in spite of the 
 sweetness of his temper and even the ardor of his piety. 
 Conceding that he had achieved the serene indifference 
 to the Christian beliefs of his countrymen which he 
 describes, and had accepted with confiding assurance 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 107 
 
 the conclusion that all religions are alike demoralizing 
 nuisances, he must have been very unlike most other 
 boys not to have had some rather decided temptations 
 to what " the Methodists " call spiritual pride. When, 
 for example, as he walked on Sundays by an open 
 church, and looked in upon its demoralizing worship 
 with somewhat of the shudder with which the Christian 
 boy of twelve regards the rites of heathen service, it 
 would have been difficult for him to withhold the 
 thought, which in a theist would be a prayer, " O 
 Lord, I thank thee that I am not as other men are ; 
 that I never fast and never pray, and firmly believe that 
 it is the height of demoralizing superstition to conceive 
 that the universe is ordered by infinite goodness." As 
 at present advised, we must say, that, as between the 
 two sorts of prigs, we much prefer the Christian to the 
 atheistic variety. Mr. Mill was not a little of a prig 
 from childhood to the end. As for the average of boys, 
 we would rather take the chance of the demoralizing 
 influences of Christianity than of the demoralizing influ- 
 ences of Atheism or Manicheanism, even when attended 
 by the purest ethical examples and the sternest and 
 loftiest precepts. As to ethics, those of the father were 
 formed by the best models of the Greek philosophy, at 
 least so the son thinks. He was self-confident, self-gov- 
 erned, delighting in labor, and rejoicing in self-control. 
 He found his chief happiness in intellectual activity and 
 achievement, and enforced the same rule upon all over 
 whom he had influence. One thing strikes us unpleas- 
 antly in both father and son. The father taught the 
 son to keep his opinions in respect to religion to him- 
 self, because at that time they could not prudently 
 be avowed. This advice indicates that the Greek ethics 
 had not altogether transformed the canny Scotchman 
 into a son of light. This practical lesson, the son 
 
108 AUTOBIOGBAPHY OF JOHN STUABT MILL. 
 
 acknowledges, was attended with some moral disadvan- 
 tages. What these disadvantages were he leaves his 
 readers to conjecture, assuring them that he never 
 shrank from avowing his religious views to his compan- 
 ions when there was occasion. One boy was shocked, 
 as well he might be ; another tried to convince him of 
 his error, but without success. He proceeds to remark, 
 that at present there is less occasion for atheists to hesi- 
 tate, from motives of prudence, to avow their opinions, 
 and adds, with the greatest positiveness, that there is a 
 much larger number than is supposed of the most en- 
 lightened and virtuous of cultivated men who hold such 
 opinions, and that these are uniformly more truly reli- 
 gious than any other class. It has now come to be 
 acknowledged, he says, that a deist may be truly and 
 eminently religious. But he assures his readers that 
 this is emphatically possible and true of many whose 
 belief falls short of deism, " because they have an ideal 
 conception of a perfect Being, to which they habitually 
 refer as the guide of their conscience." All this we 
 do not care to discuss or to dispute. We only say, 
 that it strikes us oddly, if this class of eminently pure 
 and lofty souls is so large, that Mr. Mill should need to 
 assure them that the time has now come in which they 
 may prudently avow that atheism which they had 
 hitherto partially or wholly concealed. 
 
 One point in the father's moral code is of special sig- 
 nificance. " Feelings, as such, he considered to be no 
 proper subjects of praise or blame. Right and wrong, 
 good and bad, he regarded as qualities solely of con- 
 duct, of acts and omissions, there being no feeling 
 which may not lead, and does not frequently lead, 
 either to good or bad actions; conscience itself, the 
 very desire to act right, often leading people to act 
 wrong. ... He blamed as severely what he thought 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 109 
 
 a bad action, when the motive was a feeling of duty, as 
 if the agents had been consciously evil doers." This 
 was a necessary inference from the fatalistic associa- 
 tionalism which he accepted. That this opinion was 
 erroneous was subsequently discovered by the son, 
 when he learned that morality pertains to the feelings 
 and intentions. 
 
 In 1823 Mr. Mill (the son) obtained a subordinate 
 place in the India House ; and here he remained for 
 thirty-five years, till the East India Company was set 
 aside, in due time succeeding his father. He was 
 then eighteen years old. He did not give over his 
 habits of study, but prosecuted his plans for self-im- 
 provement, and entered upon the field of public activity 
 as a writer for the press. The u Westminster Review " 
 was established somewhat later. The tide of liberal- 
 ism was rising rapidly, and with such accessions of 
 strength and prestige as it had never received before. 
 Not the least of these came from the associates of Mr. 
 Bentham and Mr. Mill the elder. But among them all 
 the elder Mill was the master spirit. u He was sought 
 for the vigor and instructiveness of his conversation, 
 and did use it largely as an instrument for the diffusion 
 of his opinions. I have never known a man who could 
 do such ample justice to his best thoughts in colloquial 
 discussion." But it was not in intellectual power alone 
 that he excelled, but " in that exalted public spirit, and 
 regard, above all things, for- the good of the whole, 
 which warmed into life and activity every germ of simi- 
 lar nature that existed in the minds he came in contact 
 with, .. . . and the encouragement he afforded to the 
 faint-hearted or desponding among them by the firm 
 confidence " (strange faith for a Manichean, and ap- 
 proximating to superstition !) "he always felt in the 
 power of reason, the general progress of improvement, 
 
110 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 and the good which individuals could do by judicious 
 effort." The points of opinion to which the school at- 
 tached the greatest importance were the doctrines of 
 Bentham in morals and jurisprudence, the modern 
 political economy, the Hartleian metaphysics, and 
 Malthus's views of population. In politics James Mill 
 insisted on the efficacy of two things, — representative 
 government and freedom of discussion. The greatest 
 foes to human progress, in his view, were class interests 
 in the two forms of an aristocracy and an established 
 priesthood. He was a democrat from policy only, — - 
 because a free government furnishes the best securities 
 for human welfare, — not from any theory of the rights 
 of man. He insisted on moral obligations for similar 
 reasons, but refused to derive the sanctions of duty 
 from any thing that savored of asceticism and priest- 
 craft. " In psychology his fundamental doctrine was 
 the formation of all human character by circumstances, 
 through the universal principle of association and the 
 consequent unlimited possibility of improving the 
 moral and intellectual condition of mankind by edu- 
 cation. Of all his doctrines none was more important 
 than this." " These various opinions were seized on 
 with youthful fanaticism." " We put into them a sec- 
 tarian spirit, from which, in intention at least, my father 
 was wholly free." " The French philosophes of the 
 eighteenth century were the examples we sought to 
 imitate, and we hoped to accomplish no less results." 
 "My zeal was as yet little else at that period of my 
 life than zeal for speculative opinions. It had not its 
 root in genuine benevolence, or sympathy with man- 
 kind. . . . Nor was it connected with any high enthu- 
 siasm for ideal nobleness. Yet of this feeling I was 
 imaginatively very susceptible ; but there was at that 
 time an intermission of its natural aliment, poetical 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. Ill 
 
 culture, while there was a superabundance of the disci- 
 pline antagonistic to it, that of mere logical analysis." 
 "The cultivation of feeling was not in much esteem 
 among us." " While fully recognizing the superior ex- 
 cellence of unselfish benevolence and love of justice, 
 we did not expect the regeneration of mankind from 
 any direct action on those sentiments, but from the 
 effect of educated intellect, enlightening the selfish 
 feelings." And yet, at this period, Mill notices that he 
 would now and then be powerfully moved by some ele- 
 vated sentiments in poetry or biography, and that he 
 had one or two distinct impressions that there was some- 
 thing nobler than the career of a sectarian and a partisan, 
 even for objects so high as those of social and political 
 reform. His "inauguration as an original and inde- 
 pendent thinker " he dates at certain joint studies with 
 a few others in logic and "analytic psychology," the 
 basis of which was " Hartley on Man," to which his 
 father's "Analysis of the Human Mind" was added. 
 We notice that about this time he was brought into 
 familiar and frequent contact with men of somewhat 
 different training and associations, and of opposite 
 ways of thinking, — with university men, and men of 
 avowed Christian principles, like Thirlwall, Macaulay, 
 the late Bishop of Oxford, Edward and Henry Lytton 
 Bulwer. 
 
 It was then that he underwent what he calls " a crisis 
 in his mental history," and advanced "one stage on- 
 ward." From 1821, at the age of seventeen to eigh- 
 teen and onward, he had a definite " object in life, — to 
 be a reformer of the world." " My conception of my 
 own happiness was entirely identified with this ob- 
 ject." This theory of life animated and contented 
 him for a few years. "But the time came when he 
 was awakened from this as from a dream." It was in 
 
112 AUTOBIOGBAPHY OF JOHN STUA3T MILL. 
 
 the autumn of 1826. He was in a dull state of nerves, 
 in a generally depressed state, — " the state, I should 
 think, in which converts to Methodism usually are 
 when smitten by their first ' conviction of sin.' " We 
 hardly know what induced Mr. Mill to add this, — 
 whether by way of condescension to his less illumi- 
 nated Methodist brethren, or whether he deemed it 
 an extraordinary stroke of philosophical sagacity, or 
 whether he enjoyed what occurred to him as the hu- 
 mor of the conceit. Possibly his Methodist brethren 
 might refer the suggestion to the Devil ; but, if so, 
 he must have assumed the guise of a mildly flavored 
 Mephistopheles. The experience was no joke, how- 
 ever humorous it might seem in the retrospect. Mill 
 was led to ask himself (in all seriousness, as many 
 before him had done), " Suppose that all your aims 
 in life should be realized, and all human institutions 
 and opinions should be perfected, would this make 
 you happy ? " An irrepressible self-consciousness dis- 
 tinctly answered, " No." " At this my heart sank with- 
 in me : the whole foundation on which my life was 
 constructed fell down." This cloud hung over him 
 for months. Books and studies could not dissipate it. 
 The old ideals no longer satisfied or stimulated him. 
 He felt that his love for mankind had worn itself out. 
 He had no friend to whom he dared or cared to un- 
 bosom himself. Least of all could he go to his father, 
 to whom the revelation would have been a disappoint- 
 ment and a reproach, as it would have demonstrated 
 that his theory of education had proved a failure. In 
 accounting for the defects of his culture, as thus de- 
 monstrated, the son employs the technical phraseology 
 of the associational psychology. " His associations had 
 not been trained rightly. They should have been con- 
 formed to the laws of nature and the reality of things, 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 113 
 
 and thus have been placed beyond the reach of possi- 
 ble dislocation. Moreover, the habit of analysis to 
 which he had been subjected was itself unfavorable 
 to the formation of the strongest and most satisfying 
 associations." But the most skilful diagnosis of a 
 disease, even though it is expressed in the most philo- 
 sophical terminology, is not a cure. So it proved 
 with Mr. Mill. The disease to him was sharp and 
 threatening. However fantastic it might have appeared 
 to his unsentimental associates, it was a fearful reality 
 to himself, so serious as to make existence a burden 
 almost insupportable. No language, he thought, was 
 better adapted to express it than the language which he 
 quotes from Coleridge : " Hope without an object can- 
 not live." No words were oftener in his mind than 
 those words of Macbeth to his physician : " Canst thou 
 not minister to a mind diseased, pluck from the mem- 
 ory a rooted sorrow ? " A good Methodist would have 
 suggested that the words which would have phrased his 
 feelings most perfectly were, " I thirst for God, for the 
 living God." At last the remedy came, and as suddenly 
 as a Methodist " conversion." But it came by no diag- 
 nosis of the causes of the disease, or analysis of the 
 associations, but by the development of what the men 
 of his school would call a sudden gush of " sentiment- 
 alism." This personified metaphysician was reading 
 Marmontel's memoirs, and lighted on a story in which, 
 at his father's death, this boy heroically takes up the 
 burden of the family's sorrows and needs. "A vivid 
 conception of the scene and its feelings came on me, 
 and I was moved to tears. From this moment my bur- 
 den grew lighter." There is nothing strange in such 
 an experience. Coleridge makes the Ancient Mariner 
 relate, how, as he gazed upon the living creatures about 
 him, he broke out with the words : — 
 
114 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 " Oh, happy living things ! no tongue 
 
 Their beauty might declare : 
 A spring of love gushed from my heart 
 
 And I blessed them unaware : 
 Sure my kind saint took pity on me 
 
 And I blessed them unaware. 
 The self-same moment I could pray.** 
 
 Mr. Mill did not proceed quite so far as this. The 
 more is the pity. But he did make one step forward. 
 He adopted an entirely new theory of life, and sought 
 to turn it into practice. First he learned to forget him- 
 self, which he had never done before ; i.e., he endeavored 
 to lay aside the self-consciousness which his unnatural 
 training had bred. He schooled himself to think little 
 of his own happiness as the aim and end of his life, but 
 to fix his thoughts and care upon his fellow-men, and to 
 forget himself in his love for them. He did not aban- 
 don what, in a certain sense, ma} r be called the utilita- 
 rian theory of the New Testament ; but he attained some 
 rude notion of the New-Testament theory of self-sacrifice 
 and self-forge tfulness. We would not intimate that he 
 ever condescended to acknowledge any obligation to 
 such a book, or to the Master of its wisdom ! Second, 
 which at first thought seems inconsistent with his 
 new aims, he began to cultivate directly what he calls 
 " the passive susceptibilities." " The cultivation of the 
 feelings became one of the cardinal points of my ethical 
 and philosophical creed." The instruments of this new 
 branch of self-culture were not truth, but poetry and 
 art. He began to find a meaning in what he had heard 
 of the importance of both. Music first moved him. It 
 is characteristic of this calculating logician, that at first 
 he was seriously disturbed by the possible prospect that 
 all the possible combinations of tones in melody and 
 harmony should be exhausted, and that music would at 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 115 
 
 some time have exhausted its resources as an instrument 
 of culture and enjoyment ; and what should he do then ? 
 Akin to this was the thought, that when all human 
 institutions should be perfected, and every human being 
 should be perfectly trained by the proper adjustment 
 of circum stances, there would be nothing left for a pro- 
 fessed reformer to live for. To this suggestion poetry 
 brought relief, and, singularly enough, the poetry of 
 Wordsworth. This opened to him the culture of his 
 feelings as an object worthy to be pursued, and the pos- 
 sibility of constant occupation and development, and 
 of exhaustless delight in the enjoyment of nature, as 
 his sensibility should be increasingly refined. 
 
 In other words, this man, who had been so carefully 
 trained to believe only in the power of the intellect 
 and in the omnipotent force of right opinions and 
 reformed institutions, was now converted to the doctrine 
 that the feelings are the springs of action and the 
 sources of happiness. He became what some men call 
 a "sentimentalist." It is not wonderful that he did 
 not like to tell his father and his fellow-reformers, and 
 that, all his life after, he sought to make trimming com- 
 promises between his old and new extremes of doctrine. 
 Nature had her revenge upon him. At first he had 
 relied on intellectual achievement as an end, dignified, 
 indeed, by a certain dim recognition of human perfecti- 
 bility, vaguely conceived, and scarcely half understood. 
 But this perfection was limited to the actions, instead 
 of having its root in the character, as controlled by 
 unselfish love. He next conceived of this perfection as 
 consisting in the prevalence of the higher sentiments, as 
 the product of culture, and the result of better associa- 
 tions. His second position was defective ; because, under 
 the fatalistic theory to which he still adhered, there is 
 no possible provision for either individuality of char- 
 
116 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 acter, or virtue. Moreover, for the culture of those 
 higher sentiments, he rested in poetry and art, when he 
 should have proceeded to religion. In other words, he 
 began and ended with the imagination, and overlooked 
 the truth, that, unless the imagination in poetry and art 
 suggest an ideal of truth which is diviner than man, it 
 cannot permanently control and cultivate the better 
 sentiments. He failed to see, that, if the imagination 
 is made a substitute for faith, it ceases effectually to 
 purify and ennoble the feelings ; and that the reason 
 why poetry and art do so much for man is, that they 
 prepare him for the faith in that something higher and 
 better which is another name for the living God and 
 whatever the existence of the living God involves. 
 " They that destroy God destroy man's nobility," says 
 an English authority more trustworthy than either 
 Mill the father, with his dry and hard intellectualism, 
 or Mill the son, newly converted to his inconsistent and 
 compromising sentimentalism. 
 
 The new, and, in many respects, the better light which 
 Mr. Mill had received led him to cultivate the society, 
 and to read the writings, of new associates. He became 
 somewhat intimate with Frederick Maurice and John 
 Sterling, and others of the Coleridgian school. He 
 read Coleridge and Goethe and Carlyle. u The in- 
 fluences of European, that is to say, Continental 
 thought, and especially those of the re-action of the 
 nineteenth century against the eighteenth, were now 
 streaming in upon me." His new light also modified 
 his political philosophy. Instead of believing, as he 
 had done, that institutions could perfect men, and that 
 all men were capable of receiving the same institutions, 
 he now held, " that any general theory of politics sup- 
 poses a previous theory of human progress. That is 
 the same thing with a philosophy of history." But, un- 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 117 
 
 fortunately, his philosophy of history was to a large 
 extent of the same type with that of St. Simon and 
 Auguste Comte. His new views were still alloyed and 
 rendered abortive by the associational psychology, 
 which he never abandoned, and the atheism which he 
 never outgrew, and the entire absence of any just con- 
 ceptions of human freedom as the ground of human 
 responsibility. His new discoveries did not lead him, 
 he insists, to abandon any of his original principles, but 
 to see them in fresh lights and with an enlarged sig- 
 nificance. " For example, during the later returns of 
 my dejection, the doctrines of what is called ' Philo- 
 sophical Necessity' weighed on my existence like an 
 incubus." Why it should do so he more than once 
 intimates. The doctrines of freewill he saw to be in- 
 spiriting and ennobling ; the doctrine of fatalism to be 
 depressing and enslaving. He contrived to relieve him- 
 self by what he thought a dexterous compromise, which 
 he parades in his " Logic," 1 as though it were an 
 original discovery of the difference between fatalism 
 and necessity, although it seems to us to be evasive 
 and unsatisfactory. This discovery is certainly not a 
 novelty, having been received in certain Calvinistic 
 schools for more than a century and a half. The reader 
 of Mill's miscellaneous writings will, by the light fur- 
 nished in this account of the change in his opinions, 
 easily explain his changing attitudes of thought in these 
 papers, and his attempts to adjust and compromise his 
 own views with those of men of opposite tendencies 
 and principles. They will find an explanation of the 
 timid and uncertain shuffling, which was in part or 
 wholly concealed from himself by his singular and his 
 perhaps unconscious dexterity in shifting alternately 
 from the sharp and rigid nomenclature of the schools to 
 
 1 Logic, bk. vi. chap. ii. § 3. 
 
118 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 the indefinite and pliant language of common life. It is 
 interesting, though a little saddening, to hear him ac- 
 knowledge that his new position, in a certain sense, 
 estranged him from his father's sympathies. The com- 
 promising son must inevitably have been unintelligible 
 to the uncompromising father, even if their want of 
 sympathy had concerned matters less fundamental. 
 
 At the age of twenty-five he made the last and most 
 important experience of his life. He became acquainted 
 with Mrs. Taylor, with whom he maintained an inti- 
 mate friendship for twenty years, till after the death of 
 her husband, when they were married. For this lady 
 his adoration and love were unbounded. He insists 
 that she lifted him up into higher experiences than he 
 had previously known, that he received more from her 
 intellect than he gave, and that her character became 
 to him a constant inspiration. He avers that the most 
 important of the treatises written after their acquaint- 
 ance was perfected, were in reality more the products 
 of her mind than of his own, and that when she died the 
 overflowing spring of his new thoughts and new emo- 
 tions was forever dried up. We cannot find space for 
 the glowing description which he gives of her mind and 
 character ; nor can we make clear to ourselves at all 
 times exactly what his words import. He definitely 
 states, that, while her aims and expectations concerning 
 the perfectibility of man and society surpassed his own, 
 her judgments concerning the means of realizing these 
 aims were more sagacious and cautious : in other words, 
 she had a rare combination of womanly enthusiasm 
 for the noblest and the largest objects, with womanly 
 wit in her judgment of the means essential to attain 
 them. It is unnecessary to trace in detail the changes 
 which she effected in his opinions. Most of these 
 changes were in the direction which they had already 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 119 
 
 begun to assume. In some respects she was less dis- 
 posed to accommodate herself to the wisdom of past 
 experience and the prejudices of unreasonable conven- 
 tionalism than he, even in his most radical dreamings. 
 He notes among her excellences u a complete emanci- 
 pation from every kind of superstition, including that 
 which attributes a pretended perfection to the order 
 of nature and the universe." Alas that the Numa of 
 our times did not find in his Egeria as believing and 
 devout a spirit towards God as she was noble and lov- 
 ing towards man ! In 1851 they were married : after 
 seven years and a half she died ; and his account of his 
 life after this " most unexpected and bitter calamity" is 
 as follows : " Since then I have sought for such allevia- 
 tion as my state admitted of, by the mode of life which 
 most enabled me to feel her still near me. I bought a 
 cottage as close as possible to the place where she was 
 buried, and there her daughter (my fellow-sufferer, and 
 now my chief comfort) and I live constantly during a 
 great portion of the year. My objects in life are solely 
 those which were hers ; my pursuits and occupations, 
 those in which she shared or sympathized, and which 
 are indissolubly associated with her. Her memory is 
 to me a religion; and her approbation, the standard by 
 which, summing up as it does all worthiness, I endeavor 
 to regulate my life." 
 
 Words like these must have been sincere. Whatever 
 we may think of the reasonableness of Mr. Mill's im- 
 passioned affection for his wife, we cannot doubt that 
 he felt all that he expresses of what she had been to 
 him while she lived, and what she became to him after 
 she had died. 
 
 His acquaintance with this lady gives the character 
 to the third stage of his mental and moral history. In 
 the first stage he was engrossed with intellectual activi- 
 
120 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 ties. In the second he was awakened to the world of 
 imaginative sentiment. In the third he was controlled 
 by strong personal affection. Had a fourth supervened, 
 it should have supplemented and rounded out what was 
 wanting in each and all the others: it should have 
 given him a religion indeed. That idealizing sentiment 
 which properly leads to and belongs to the uncreated 
 and self-existent, he had already accepted. Love for a 
 person whom he esteemed immeasurably his superior, 
 especially in spiritual excellence, he had joyfully ac- 
 knowledged to be a necessity of his being and the re- 
 generation of his life. Of the object of this love he 
 used unwittingly the language of devotees and saints : 
 "What I owe even intellectually to her is in its de- 
 tail almost infinite.'" It remained for him to complete 
 the three experiences of his practical life by the highest, 
 to which the three appropriately conduct ; viz., the in- 
 tellect which discerns, the imagination which aspires, 
 and the heart which loves. His early superficial and 
 vulgar associations with religion, as sentimental, ideal- 
 istic, and affectional, had been already surrendered. 
 There remained nothing to be overcome except the 
 hard and narrow prejudices of a lifelong sectarianism 
 and the supposed requirements of his Manichean phi- 
 losophy. But this Manichean philosophy is as truly 
 incompatible with the existence of man's personal indi- 
 viduality and his social responsibility as it is with faith 
 in a personal God. 
 
 There are two or three phrases in the passage al- 
 ready cited, which are touchingly suggestive. " Since 
 then, I have sought for such alleviation as my state of 
 life admitted, by the mode of life most enabling me to 
 feel her still near me." " Her memory is to me a religion ; 
 and her approbation, the standard by which I endeavor 
 to regulate my life." These words express no belief 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPIIY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 121 
 
 even in the possible immortality of the departed whom 
 he loved. This being held to be absurd, our philoso- 
 pher of hard facts as attested by the actual experiences 
 of sense becomes the slave and sport of the make-beliefs 
 of tenacious associations as they play fast and loose 
 with inevitable realities. He takes refuge in the most 
 unsubstantial idealism. He essays to feel that he is 
 near her, and he wakes to the solid fact that he believes 
 and knows that she is nowhere. Having no other reli- 
 gion, because all religion is superstition, " her memory 
 is to him a religion." Had this philosopher, in the ex- 
 tremity of his grief, erected an altar near her tomb, 
 had he decorated it with flowers, and recited before it 
 her praises, and implored the guidance of her departed 
 spirit to regulate his life, this superstition might be 
 pardoned. Events more strange than these have hap- 
 pened, and events such as these would only be addi- 
 tional examples of how near akin atheism is to super- 
 stition. Mr. Mill's friends have reason to be thankful 
 that he did not enact the sorry farce of Comte with his 
 Clotilde de Vaux. 
 
 It does not come within our plan to follow Mr. Mill 
 through the history of his intellectual activities. We 
 have to do chiefly with his personal and practical life. 
 We shall not here attempt even a general estimate of 
 his intellectual power or his intellectual achievements. 
 To do this would require an elaborate criticism of his 
 principal works and of his philosophical system. But 
 we may be allowed to say, that the perusal of his auto- 
 biography does not leave the impression that Mr. Mill 
 was distinguished for sound judgment as a thinker, or 
 enlightened common sense as a man. His estimates of 
 principles and of men strike us as uniformly pedantic 
 and bookish, rather than penetrating or liberal. Occa- 
 sionally they seem to us weak and whimsical, as when 
 
122 AUTOBIOGBAPHY OF JOHN STUABT MILL. 
 
 he ranks Maurice higher than Coleridge in every par- 
 ticular except as a poet, thinks Carlyle's chief power is 
 the poetic, and studiously depreciates Sir William Ham- 
 ilton. We find evidence of a similar weakness of judg- 
 ment in all his writings ; but, we think, in none of them 
 does he betray such marked and one-sided weakness as 
 in this. The value of many of his treatises is unques- 
 tioned. Many readers who dissent from the charac- 
 teristic principles of his philosophy are forward to 
 acknowledge that his writings are almost as valuable 
 to the world for their conspicuous failures as for their 
 acknowledged excellences. The transparent ndivetS 
 of a man who is so often blind to the obvious weak- 
 nesses of his inconsistencies and concessions sometimes 
 moves the pity of his critics, and disarms the severity 
 of the most determined antagonist. 
 
 No defects of this kind should, however, lead any 
 right-minded man to withhold from Mr. Mill the honor 
 which he merits from all lovers of justice and freedom 
 for the eminent services which he has rendered in the 
 cause of judicial and legislative reform. It is humiliat- 
 ing to consider that the nation which boasts itself so 
 proudly of being by eminence a Christian kingdom 
 should have not only tolerated, but defended, such 
 fearful abuses in its law-courts and its parliaments, 
 and for so long, and at last have imposed the hard and 
 ungrateful work of effectually moving for their reform 
 upon a small company of speculative atheists. It is 
 shocking to be obliged to concede that the English 
 Church should have tolerated within its precincts, and 
 sheltered beneath its altars, such noisome masses of 
 evil as to give so fair a pretext for the charges of these 
 assailants, that its faith and worship were hollow and 
 demoralizing shams. We may not forget the services 
 to public and institutional morality which were ren- 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 123 
 
 dered by these determined rejecters of the faith on 
 which all public morality must stand, and by which 
 it must be enforced. We can never forget that John 
 Stuart Mill was the bold and fast friend of this coun- 
 try and its free spirit in its trying conflict with slave- 
 ry. It was inevitable that his services and sympa- 
 thies for human freedom and human progress should 
 dispose many lovers of freedom to regard his specula- 
 tive and practical principles with a confidence which 
 their independent merits would never have commanded. 
 We cannot regret that this autobiography should 
 reveal the man in his weakness, as well as in his strength. 
 It cannot fail to move our sympathy for the tone of 
 sadness which pervades its narrative from the begin- 
 ning to the end. And yet we cannot but inquire, Why 
 it should be so sad ? Mr. Mill's life was in most respects 
 eminently fortunate. The discipline of his childhood 
 was severe and exacting ; but he bore it with a cheerful 
 spirit, for he was animated by the consciousness of grow- 
 ing intellectual power. Though his companions were 
 few, yet their sympathy was complete, and they hailed 
 his promise with inspiriting delight. His public career 
 was one of constant progress in the consciousness of 
 increasing power and increasing reputation. The pub- 
 licists of Great Britain, who had treated him with con- 
 temptuous neglect, first honored him with criticism, and 
 then with deference, and finally with admiring sympa- 
 thy. The universities, which in his youth had no 
 words too biting for their jeers and their scorn, in his 
 advancing years furnished many devoted adherents, not 
 merely to his measures of reform, but to his speculative 
 principles, in spite of their alleged and real incompati- 
 bility with any form of theism. His labors at the pen 
 and in self-discipline were constant; yet he knew no 
 pleasure so exhilarating as studies and labors like these. 
 
124 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 But he was not satisfied. Sentimental benevolence and 
 imaginative self-culture widened his mind, and softened 
 and elevated his sensibilities. Human affection then 
 took him up. He loved a woman who more than satis- 
 fied his ideal in her intellect, her temper, and her 
 enthusiastic sympathy with his aims and labors and 
 studies. But he gives no evidence that either his mind 
 or his head ever attained to peace. He was without 
 God by his own ostentatious confession. That he was 
 without hope in the eminent sense of the word is con- 
 fessed in every line of this life. After the removal of 
 her who impersonated the best, if not all, of love which 
 he ever enjoyed, he dwelt as near to her tomb as he 
 could, that he might feel that she was near to him. 
 Her memory was his religion, not the belief in her 
 immortal existence. Her approbation was the only 
 standard in the actual and ideal universe by which he 
 sought to regulate his life, and yet this approbation 
 was only a sentimental fiction. 
 
 We have already adverted to the saying of Mr. Mill, 
 that many atheists of his acquaintance were the most 
 religious of persons, having the advantage, as he con- 
 tends, of forming for themselves a perfect ideal of good- 
 ness, to which they could accord the profoundest rever- 
 ence and the most devout affection. We do not care to 
 dispute this opinion. We might concede that what he 
 says in certain exceptional cases is possible. But it 
 should never be forgotten, that these persons must have 
 been trained in a community which is full of Christian 
 theism, and have breathed from their infancy an atmos- 
 phere which is fragrant with the elements of faith and 
 love for a personal and loving God. It may not be 
 surprising that persons of brooding, speculative habits, 
 or morbid sensitiveness to all dogmatic propositions or 
 doubtful arguments concerning a personal God, and 
 
AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 125 
 
 especially when oppressed by the weight of evil in the 
 universe, should flee to the sanctuary of their own ideal- 
 izations, instead of the living presence of an Infinite 
 Person, because they cannot grasp all the relations of 
 existence by their own limited powers, or explain every 
 event which happens in consistency with his boundless 
 love. 
 
 This may be so ; but Mr. Mill's experience testifies in 
 many ways that the universe is darker, rather than 
 brighter, to every soul which fails to believe in such an 
 ideal as a living fact. Mr. Mill sitting by the grave of 
 the wife, who, when alive, was his only animating ideal 
 of perfection, and mourning that she is no longer a 
 living presence, is a representative of many of those 
 religious idealists who think to content themselves with 
 imaginary objects of worship, to whom they strive " to 
 feel that they are near." There are many such, we are 
 constrained to believe, who mournfully, if unconsciously, 
 cry out for the living God in the aspiration, if not in 
 the words, "Oh that I knew where I might find 
 Him!" 
 
 P.S. — Since the publication of Mr. Mill's autobiog- 
 raphy, we have fuller notices of his father and himself 
 in the two works by Professor Alexander Bain ; viz., 
 " James Mill, a Biography," and " John Stuart Mill, a 
 Criticism, with Personal Recollections." (London: 
 Longmans, Green, & Co. New York : Henry Holt, 
 1882.) These works give many interesting details of 
 both father and son, all of which confirm the impres- 
 sions made by the autobiography ; and all the more as 
 they are written in the spirit of faithful but uncritical 
 admiration. 
 
 Some important matter, however, is furnished in 
 "Memories of Old Friends, being Extracts from the 
 Journals and Letters of Caroline Fox of Penjerrick, 
 
126 AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JOHN STUART MILL. 
 
 Cornwall, from 1835 to 1871. Edited by Horace N. 
 Pym." (Philadelphia : J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1882.) 
 In this work Mr. Mill is often noticed as having been a 
 frequent visitant of Miss Fox, and an occasional cor- 
 respondent, about the time of the death of his brother, 
 and not long after that change in his intellectual posi- 
 tion, and to some extent in his associates, which he 
 somewhat vaguely and inconsistently describes and re- 
 cords. It would seem, from his letters and conversa- 
 tions, as recorded in this work, that he came into a 
 much more definite and close sympathy with Christian 
 truth and Christian emotions than he was afterwards 
 willing to acknowledge in his own deliberate record of 
 his psychological history and his religious opinions. 
 Every thing that Miss Fox records of him is eminent- 
 ly honorable to his memory. There are some less 
 amiable and creditable notices of Mill in his youth, 
 which the curious may find in "Wandering Recollec- 
 tions of a Somewhat Busy Life : an Autobiography by 
 John Neal.' , (Boston : Roberts & Brothers, 1869.) 
 July, 1882. 
 
V. 
 
 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER} 
 
 John Stuart Mill 2 has been very frequently 
 brought before the public for criticism. Every book 
 which he has written has been made the occasion for a 
 fresh discussion of some of his opinions, either in the 
 way of attack or defence. It would seem, therefore, 
 to be almost superfluous to make him the subject of an 
 additional essay. But, now that he has ceased to live, 
 it cannot be improper to attempt in a general way 
 some estimate of his claims as a philosopher, especially 
 since his autobiography has furnished ample material of 
 great importance in enabling us more correctly to esti- 
 mate his claims. 
 
 This autobiography has a twofold interest ; as it 
 reveals to us Stuart Mill the man, and Stuart Mill the 
 philosopher. Either one of these aspects of a person 
 so significant in his influence would suffice for an ex- 
 tended discussion. We select the last as our theme. 
 It is with Stuart Mill the philosopher that we propose 
 to concern ourselves; leaving Stuart Mill the man en- 
 tirely unconsidered, except so far as the contemplation 
 of the man may help us to understand the philosopher. 
 The topic is of no inferior interest in view of the high 
 place in which Mr. Mill is held, to a certain extent not 
 undeservedly, by a large number of agile and confident 
 thinkers, and especially in view of the strong opposi- 
 
 1 The International Review, May, 1874. 
 
 2 Autobiography of John Stuart Mill. Henry Holt & Co., New York. 
 
 127 
 
128 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 tion which is felt to his opinions and his modes of phi- 
 losophizing by very many persons whose objections are 
 entitled to a respectful consideration. 
 
 The training of Mill was in many respects peculiar. 
 What it was has been recorded by himself, with rare 
 minuteness and fidelity ; and the record enables us the 
 better to understand some of the peculiarities of the 
 philosopher who was formed by it. He was subjected 
 from his earliest years to a severe and constant disci- 
 pline, under the watchful eye and the rigid hand of a 
 father who seems to have manifested his fatherly affec- 
 tion less in the ways of indulgence and sympathy, than 
 in those of intellectual excitement and exaction. His 
 education began with Greek and Logic. Logic was 
 taught very rigidly, but for practical ends, with the 
 express and seemingly the sole design to train him to 
 become a clear and coherent expounder and defender of 
 his father's opinions. Although Mill the father had very 
 narrow and inadequate conceptions of the importance 
 of logic as a preparation and discipline for the investi- 
 gation of truth, he had a strong and fervent faith in 
 the necessity of its gymnastic for an advocate and a 
 partisan. The truths in which he had any faith or zeal 
 were also very scanty in number and somewhat narrow 
 in their range. He believed very positively in matter 
 and very hesitatingly in spirit. He believed very 
 strongly in man and very feebly in God ; very ear- 
 nestly in human government and social organization, 
 and very faintly in a Divine Providence. He had a 
 faith in democratic institutions which was almost fa- 
 natical, and a hatred of every species of theocracy, 
 which was more than fanatical in its positiveness and 
 acrimony. The perfectibility of man through an en- 
 lightened self-interest — by means of popular govern 
 ment and universal education, especially in the elements 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 129 
 
 of political economy and in the Malthusian doctrines of 
 population — was the chief article of his philosophi- 
 cal creed. To defend and propagate this creed was 
 predestined by the father as the life-work of the son ; 
 and it was to make him dexterous and skilful in attack 
 and defence that the father trained the son, with a 
 more than Spartan rigor, in the school of logical and 
 classical analysis. The effect of this training remained 
 with him through life, and gave a marked character to 
 all his intellectual activities and achievements. He 
 became a clear and patient analyst, finding supreme 
 delight in precise statements and in coherent and well- 
 sustained deductions. Refined distinctions and attenu- 
 ated generalizations became the atmosphere of his 
 intellectual life. He was so thoroughly schooled to 
 patience in labor as to be attracted rather than repelled 
 by any investigation or discussion which seemed to re- 
 quire a long-continued application of the powers of 
 abstract thinking. 
 
 But with all these excellent habits he was not trained 
 to be a philosopher. His father had apparently little 
 interest and less faith in philosophy in the largest sense 
 of the word. Mr. James Mill was an anti-Theist, — not 
 so much from intellectual conviction as from passionate 
 dislike to all questions which suggest those intellectual 
 or scientific relations which lead to God. He was a 
 half-Manichean ; which, for a mind trained like his, was 
 simply to accept the first makeshift by which to dis- 
 pose of any questionings or thoughts which might 
 emerge above the horizon of his political and economic 
 dogmas. He eminently exemplified the truth that 
 Atheism necessarily narrows the intellect, and shuts it 
 down to a limited sphere of thought and inquiry. He 
 had no metaphysics proper, because he steadfastly re- 
 fused to ask the questions which involve a fundamental 
 
130 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 philosophy. The necessity of certain assumptions 
 which cannot themselves be demonstrated from truths 
 more fundamental, nor be derived by induction from 
 experiment or observation, — a necessity which Plato 
 reiterated in imaginative myths, and Aristotle asserted 
 in unmistakable and irrefutable propositions, — Mr. 
 James Mill never acknowledged ; but, severely logical 
 as he was, he either failed to follow any questionings 
 which would conduct to such a goal, or disposed of all 
 such suggestions with positive and contemptuous dog- 
 matism. 
 
 But it is not easy for a man who thinks at all to dis- 
 pense with some semblance of, or substitute for, meta- 
 physical philosophy ; and the semblance with which Mr. 
 James Mill contented himself, was the doctrine taught 
 in Hartley's " Essay on Man." This treatise had been 
 received by him with almost implicit deference, and 
 Hartley and Hobbes became the supreme authorities in 
 his court of last resort. From Hartley he derived two 
 dogmas, which characterized the psychology, and in a 
 sense constituted the whole of the metaphysics, of both 
 father and son. These dogmas were, that nearly all the 
 higher processes of the intellect are capable of being 
 resolved into the so-called association of ideas, and that 
 the law of necessity holds good of the phenomena of 
 spirit as truly as of the phenomena of matter. Neither 
 the father nor the son was a materialist in form or 
 avowal ; but they both never ceased to regard and treat 
 the human soul as in all its processes entirely passive, — 
 alike in its reception of its impressions from without 
 and in the revival of these impressions from within by 
 memory and imagination, as eminently in those interpre- 
 tations of truth which are gained by generalization and 
 reasoning. The fatal tendency imparted to English 
 philosophy by Locke, through his one-sided sympathy 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 131 
 
 with the awakening physics of his times, which was 
 feebly counterpoised by his positive recognition of 
 spiritual phenomena and relations, had taken exclusive 
 possession of Hume and Hartley. Through them it 
 passed on to both the Mills, by whom it has been fixed 
 more firmly than ever in the unconscious and the ac- 
 knowledged methods of many able and influential 
 schools of the present generation. It is true that 
 James Mill, in his " Analysis of the Human Mind," in 
 some important particulars breaks from entire consist- 
 ency with his own fundamental principles, and that 
 Stuart Mill in his " Logic," his " Criticism of Hamilton's 
 Philosophy," and his "Annotations" to the "Analysis" 
 of his father, steps more widely aside from the narrow 
 path to which these principles should have rigorously 
 held him ; but it is also true that neither the father nor 
 the son ever learned to regard the soul as exempt from 
 many of the methods and laws to which matter is 
 subject. While neither of them was an avowed mate- 
 rialist, they never proceeded to a formal disavowal 
 or protest against materialism, and almost uniformly 
 treated and reasoned about the soul as though it 
 belonged entirely to the realm of matter. 
 
 The training of Mill was also singularly isolated, even 
 in its intellectual influences. He seems to have had no 
 companionship except with his father and the younger 
 members of his family. But his father was little more 
 to him than the stimulating and overshadowing task- 
 master, and over his brothers and sisters he was very 
 early established as a monitor and teacher. Even his 
 walks were occupied in study and recital, uniformly 
 under his father's eye. From the first to the last he 
 had little or no companionship with youths of his own 
 age. The society which he saw in the household was 
 limited as to numbers, and was singularly limited as to 
 
132 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 its quality, consisting exclusively of men of his father's 
 way of thinking, — hard-headed Radicals, who in those 
 days were ostracised as quixotic or dangerous members 
 of society; men who, in the judgment of the average 
 Englishman, were regarded as fit candidates for a lunatic 
 asylum or a prison, and who revenged themselves by 
 cherishing a hearty if not a prejudiced contempt for 
 every institution which was fixed and every person who 
 was respectable, i.e., aristocratic. The English Consti- 
 tution and the English Church, which most Englishmen 
 are taught to regard as in some sense permanent and 
 sacred, were uniformly spoken of with ridicule and 
 hatred. Mr. Mill even tells us, that, from his earliest 
 childhood, the religion of his countrymen was viewed by 
 him with pity and wonder. A youth so educated must 
 inevitably have contracted some very unfortunate intel- 
 lectual habits. We do not care to discuss the question 
 whether Mr. Mill was self-conceited in the special sense 
 of the term. He contends that he never was, although 
 he acknowledges that he was considered especially offen- 
 sive for forwardness and self-complacence. But his in- 
 capacity to conceive self-conceit to have been possible 
 of himself, is one of many evidences of the singular 
 inaptitude to understand himself as he must have ap- 
 peared to others, which he displays in all his writings, 
 and which can only be accounted for by some original 
 obtuseness of feeling, or the extreme isolation of his 
 childhood. Had he been forced by the rude sports and 
 the earnest contests of school-boy life to confront his 
 own pretensions with the judgments of his peers, and 
 to measure his intellectual strength in debate and con- 
 ference, he never could have contracted that quiet but 
 persistent dogmatism which is so conspicuous in all his 
 writings, — a dogmatism which is redeemed by no ab- 
 sorbing enthusiasm which might lead him to forget 
 
JOHN STUAET MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 133 
 
 himself in his interest for his cause, and which seems 
 never to have been shaken by the slightest suspicion 
 that his self-complacence was not fully justified. 
 
 The peculiar rSgime to which Mill was subjected 
 would have awakened some antagonism in a less passive 
 and compliant nature. But his was a mind which was 
 singularly pliant in receiving impressions from others, 
 and equally persistent in retaining them ; plastic in the 
 hands of others, but unchangeable when left to itself. 
 His very dependence upon others fixed him in a more 
 dogmatic and determined devotion to the early and oft- 
 repeated inculcations of his early training. He was not 
 so unimpressible, indeed, as not occasionally to feel the 
 force of counter arguments and influences. But Mill's 
 persistent obstinacy would usually enable him to fall 
 back upon the positions which were earliest received and 
 had been deeply ingrained, and to contrive some plaus- 
 ible adjustment between what he was constrained in 
 some sense to recognize and what he was determined 
 not to abandon. No philosopher of modern times can 
 be named who claimed to be so progressive and yet 
 made so little progress, who seemed utterly unable to 
 know when he was fairly refuted, — who would con- 
 tribute so freely, because so unconsciously, the materials 
 for the exposure of his own inconsistency with himself, 
 and yet was so entirely incapable of looking at a sub- 
 ject from the stand-point of another mind. He seems 
 to have lacked in great measure the capacity to be sus- 
 picious of his own positions, or to act the part of a 
 critic upon himself. While he had seen enough of 
 men and read enough in books to be fully alive to the 
 importance of candor, he lacked altogether the spirit 
 of reverence for the gifted minds of the past. His 
 judgments of those of his contemporaries from whom 
 he differed were almost wholly wanting in affectionate 
 
134 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 sympathy or reverential appreciation. His most honest 
 attempts to be candid were often marred by some mis- 
 conception of an antagonist's meaning, or some perver- 
 sion of his fundamental principles. 
 
 But the most signal and comprehensive defect in the 
 intellectual character of Mr. Mill was his lack of com- 
 mon sense, or his almost complete incapacity to judge 
 of common things and common events, and their rela- 
 tions to philosophic principles. This was not more ap- 
 parent in his behavior in respect to some of the most 
 obvious relations of human society, and in his failure 
 as a practical statesman, than it was in his discussion 
 of fundamental truths in political and metaphysical 
 philosophy. This defect is not surprising in view of 
 his early training, and the subsequent course of his 
 life. No boy, not possessed of original obtuseness of 
 judgment or sensibility, — of one or both, — would 
 have tamely submitted to so complete an isolation from 
 the rest of mankind. No boy, who would allow himself 
 to be passively moulded by it, could possibly escape 
 from one-sided views of man, of nature, and of society, 
 or fail to accept the fancies and conclusions of bookish 
 or secluded theorists in place of those corrected judg- 
 ments which the experience of life and of men alone 
 can furnish. The lack of common sense is usually 
 accompanied by the incapacity for humor. Scarcely a 
 trace of humor is to be discerned in all of Mr. Mill's 
 writings. Some of his essays and critiques might have 
 furnished occasions for now and then a play of pleas- 
 antry or an outburst of merriment, but into either of 
 these moods Mr. Mill never relaxed. A solemn gravity 
 seems to have taken complete possession of his being. 
 A persistent positiveness bears him forward in an even 
 and monotonous course of thought and diction. A 
 mild but determined dogmatism gives impressiveness 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 135 
 
 to his utterances. The self-confidence with which he 
 shuns an issue which seems about to be forced upon 
 him, the calm unconsciousness with which he propounds 
 opinions which are contradictory to one another or to 
 common experience, and the dexterous plausibility with 
 which he imposes on his reader and on himself, are all 
 veiled with a solemn air of supreme self-satisfaction 
 which forbids even a smile. Dissent and controversy 
 are hushed into silence before a self-complacency so 
 complete. Levity cannot find it in its heart rudely 
 to intrude upon so staid and solemn a presence. 
 
 It scarcely need be added, that these peculiarities 
 were intensified by the flattery which was accorded to 
 Mr. Mill during the whole of his intellectual career. 
 He was predestined from his infancy to labors for re- 
 form : he was very early recognized for acquisitions 
 and ability as the foremost 3 r oung man in the then 
 rising coterie of English Radicals. His earliest essays 
 in debate and through the press were read with atten- 
 tion, and abundantly, if not excessively, praised. His 
 party grew in numbers and in recognized influence. 
 The books which he published were laboriously and 
 faithfully prepared: every one of them met a public 
 desire and necessity, and, if severely criticised, was lav- 
 ishly flattered. After he found himself famous, he was 
 treated with deference and consideration by the parties 
 and men who dissented most decidedly from his princi- 
 ples. He forced into respect for his writings the dons 
 of the universities, the parsons of the church, and the 
 professors of the schools of science, and was at last 
 made rector of one of the oldest of the universities of 
 Scotland, in which the old logic and the old meta- 
 physics and the old theology had been long and deeply 
 rooted. It is not surprising, that, when he gave himself 
 deliberately to the work of criticising and refuting the 
 
136 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 metaphysician who had been foremost in reputation in 
 Great Britain, he should have assumed airs which his 
 own well-schooled habits of decorum did not alto- 
 gether conceal, and should have presumed not a little 
 upon his own inattention or that of the public to the 
 defects of his own philosophical system, in which he 
 had learned by the deference of others to place such 
 implicit and presumptuous confidence. 
 
 Two peculiarities of Mr. Mill's intellectual activities 
 contributed prominently to his popularity and influence. 
 The one was, that he devoted himself very largely to 
 the discussion of subjects of practical and present in- 
 terest. The other, that he as uniformly aimed to dis- 
 cuss them in a style which could be readily apprehended 
 and followed by intelligent men, and most sedulously 
 avoided the language and methods of the schools. To 
 both these habits he was doubtless trained by his early 
 and long-continued ambition to become a leader of opin- 
 ion in matters of political and social reform. Though 
 from very early life he was thoroughly drilled in the 
 methods of formal logic, and accustomed to deal with 
 the conceptions of political and social science, his in- 
 terest in these sciences was prevailingly partisan. His 
 chief ambition for many years, was to be a leader in 
 actual reforms, and to become in the best sense an 
 accomplished and effective tribune of the people. He 
 studied the science of government, that he might apply 
 it to the* re-organization of the English system. He 
 devoted himself to Political Economy, that he might 
 increase and equalize the public wealth. He wrote an 
 extended " System of Logic," that he might illustrate 
 the application of its principles, particularly those of in- 
 duction, to the discoveries of physical science, and the 
 theories of sociology. His criticism of Sir William 
 Hamilton's Philosophy was incidental to the metaphysi- 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 137 
 
 cal and psychological discussions involved in his own 
 " System of Logic ; " but even this was conducted in the 
 spirit of applied rather than of pure philosophy. Every 
 one of these subjects, at the time when he treated it, 
 was a topic of present and excited interest. The Re- 
 formers, with whom he was identified ; the Radicals, 
 whom he led ; and the more temperate Progressives, with 
 whom he co-operated, — were eager to read and ponder 
 whatever he produced. The students of political and 
 social science became more numerous, more eager, and 
 more intelligently wakeful, with every decade of his 
 life. The public events of every season, and the pro- 
 posed financial measures of every session of Parliament, 
 gave an increased zest to the public appetite for each 
 fresh article of his upon any topic in political economy. 
 By the time Mill was ready to issue his great work on 
 this subject, all Great Britain and America were eager 
 to read it. The splendid career of discovery in every 
 branch of modern physics, which has so distinguished 
 the present century, not only made it inevitable that 
 some writer should treat of the logic of induction, but 
 had already prepared the minds of an army of keen- 
 sighted investigators to receive with applause and 
 honor the first writer who should propose to meet and 
 to solve the problems involved. Sir William Hamilton 
 was at the height of his reputation, and his name was 
 surrounded by the halo of reverence with which it was 
 invested by his recent death, when Mill found it neces- 
 sary to subject Hamilton's philosophy to a bold criti- 
 cism, if he would save his own system from threatened 
 dishonor. Not a single one of the greater or lesser 
 writings of Mill was untimely in the sense of not meet- 
 ing a present popular demand, which in many cases was 
 a permanent demand, and made more permanent and 
 more imperative by the excitement of the supply. 
 
138 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 Not only did Mr. Mill uniformly write upon topics of 
 present interest, but he uniformly preferred the lan- 
 guage of common life to the language of the schools. 
 His popularity and influence are largely owing to the 
 circumstance, that it was a leading aim with him to 
 make scientific distinctions perfectly intelligible to any 
 man of common intelligence who would lend him 
 patient attention. The liability to diffuseness and repe- 
 tition, nay, even to tediousness and commonplace, in 
 nowise deterred him from expanding his discussions to 
 as great a length as might be necessary to secure his 
 reader against the possibility of mistake or of confusion. 
 His diction is uniformly clear in form, and apparently 
 coherent and logical in its connections. His style, it 
 must be confessed, often lacks the verve which comes 
 from the highest kind of enthusiasm. Not infrequently 
 it fails even to hold the attention, and it occasionally 
 requires an earnest and somewhat painful effort on the 
 part of the reader. The most serious defect, however, 
 of this popular and apparently lucid style is, that it 
 leads his confiding readers to overlook his not infrequent 
 deficiencies in thoroughness and consistency. Whatever 
 readers and critics may say of the awkwardness of a 
 precise terminology, and however much they may extol 
 those books of philosophy which are written in the lan- 
 guage of common life, it will still remain true, that an 
 exact terminology, even if it be scholastic, has the ad- 
 vantage of holding both reader and writer to close and 
 consistent thinking. A philosophical terminology which 
 is borrowed from common life, and which is used with 
 the freedom of common speech, may at one time signify 
 one thing and at another time another ; and the writer 
 who does not exactly know in what sense he uses a 
 term in one connection, may use it in another sense al- 
 together unconsciously : or if he is pressed with one of 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 139 
 
 his own interpretations, or the inferences which it in- 
 volves, he may dexterously escape by falling back at 
 his convenience upon the larger or the more limited 
 import, the popular or the scientific. The so-called 
 clear and simple language of common usage may read- 
 ily become turbid and ambiguous at the convenience or 
 necessity of such a writer. John Stuart Mill would be 
 called, by many literary critics, one of the most trans- 
 parent and consistent of English philosophical writers. 
 We have no occasion to deny that this may be true in 
 the easy passages of philosophy, — those places where 
 easy thinking allows easy writing and easy reading, — 
 but we do not find it true of Mr. Mill when he is 
 pressed by any special difficulty. In such circum- 
 stances he is often eminently unclear, even to himself, 
 and eminently evasive and inconsistent in answering or 
 criticising others. We believe this should to a large 
 extent be ascribed to his use of a popular instead of a 
 philosophical diction, and to his affectation of ease and 
 fluency in the elucidation of distinctions which are in 
 their nature neither easy to be grasped nor to be held 
 by the negligent or the untrained mind. 
 
 But Mill's habit of writing forihe popular ear and 
 in popular language wrought its worst consequence 
 when it led him to abandon the distinctions which he 
 had himself laboriously set up, and to play hide and 
 seek with his own fundamental positions, by appealing 
 to some well-known fact or belief of common sense and 
 common speech, and thus by a. dexterous coup de main 
 to relieve his theories from the difficulties and incon- 
 sistencies to which they were fairly exposed. It was a 
 favorite trick, which he often played off upon himself, 
 first to adopt positions which offended common sense 
 and true science, and, when he was held to logical con- 
 sistency, to fall back for relief upon the very facts of 
 
140 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER, 
 
 common sense which his philosophy had set at naught. 
 Even when his attention was called to this inconsistency 
 and apparent self-deception, he was very slow to be con- 
 vinced, and often seems utterly insensible to the force 
 of what seemed to others a conclusive demonstration 
 that he was playing fast and loose with his own prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 One of the most striking examples of the ease with 
 which he could thus impose upon himself by shifting 
 from scholastic to popular language is found in the 
 work which is at once his last and his most elaborate 
 contribution to speculative research ; viz., his " Examina- 
 tion of Sir William Hamilton's Philosophy." Chapters 
 xi. and xii. of this work are devoted to an explana- 
 tion of the belief in an external world by what Mill 
 calls the psychological as contrasted with the intuitive 
 theory; i.e., by the data or postulates of the associa- 
 tional metaphysics. He states these postulates thus: 
 first, the human mind is capable of expectation ; sec- 
 ond, by the laws of association, similar and contiguous 
 phenomena tend to be thought of together ; third, asso- 
 ciations by repetition become so rapid as to be indis- 
 soluble ; fourth, when an association has thus become 
 inseparable, " the facts or phenomena answering to 
 these ideas come at last to seem inseparable in exist- 
 ence." From these postulates he maintains that there 
 are associations naturally generated by the order of 
 our associations and of our reminiscences, which gene- 
 rate the belief of the external world, and cause it to be 
 regarded as an intuition. 
 
 With this challenge he proceeds to define what we 
 mean when we say that the objects we perceive " are 
 external to us and not a part of our thoughts : " — u we 
 mean that something exists when we are not thinking 
 of it, and did exist before we thought of it." This, he 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 141 
 
 says, is synonymous with perdurability or permanence. 
 But permanence is simply " a form impressed by the 
 known laws of association " upon a group or series of 
 sensations which are merely contingent. This is ac- 
 complished thus : When I see a piece of white paper in 
 a room, and, going out of the room, still believe that the 
 paper exists, what I believe is, simply, that when I 
 should return I should experience the same sensations as 
 before, and that this would happen should I return at 
 any moment." We have, then, first, a belief in the pos- 
 sibility, under certain conditions, of the recurrence of 
 certain sensations, viz., those which are treated by Mill 
 as the equivalent of what is commonly known as white 
 paper ; and, next, a belief in the permanent possibility 
 of their recurrence. This is the first step towards the 
 explanation of the belief that white paper is a non ego ; 
 i.e., is external. We posit as the result of the first 
 movement of the associational process, " a permanent 
 possibility of certain sensations." As we stop here for 
 an instant to contemplate what we have gained and the 
 process by which we gained it, we find, that, with the 
 postulates furnished at the outset, nothing is provided 
 for but an expectation that certain sensations will occur 
 in the order in which they have occurred before. Mill 
 would have been more true to his own theory if, instead 
 of calling white paper a " permanent possibility of sen- 
 sations," he had called it a " permanent expectableness 
 of sensations," or " a group, i.e., a series, of permanently 
 expectable sensations." He should also have added, in 
 order to exemplify what and only what his data pro- 
 vided for, a series of sensations expectable on the 
 ground of frequent and rapid repetition. Mr. Mill 
 does neither of these things ; but, leaving his data and 
 the application of them entirely unnoticed, he adopts 
 the language of common life. He talks about " going 
 
142 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 into another room," and says, " when I again place my- 
 self in the same circumstances in which I had those 
 sensations ; that is, when I go again into the room." 
 One would think, that, if he believed in his own theory 
 as needing only to be stated in order to be self-eviden- 
 cing, he would adhere as closely as possible to the con- 
 ceptions and data which the theory itself supplies. But 
 this, Mr. Mill is careful not to do, we suppose uncon- 
 sciously : for, when charged with resorting to such lan- 
 guage because it suggests ideas and beliefs which his 
 theory would not supply, he replies, " it was competent 
 for me to state those facts in the language which was 
 not only the most intelligible, but, to the minds I was 
 addressing, the truest ; " being utterly unconscious of 
 the irony which he pla}^ed off upon himself in calling 
 popular language u the truest." 
 
 Had Mill been entirely " true " to his own theory, 
 instead of " going into and returning from another 
 room," he would have said, after experiencing a series 
 of varying sensations, I should permanently expect 
 to meet another series ; viz., those commonly called 
 white paper. But language like this would never give 
 an external world. It would forever shut us up to sub- 
 jective sensations. The grateful substitution of such 
 phrases as " going into another room " and " white 
 paper " ushers the theorist and his readers at once into 
 the real world, from which the subjective experience of 
 recurring and often-repeated sensations would have for- 
 ever shut them off. 
 
 One word in respect to the phrase " possibility of 
 sensations," adopted by Mill as the equivalent of the 
 external thing commonly called " white paper." If Mr. 
 Mill's school is distinguished for any excellence, it is 
 for its protest against the danger of using abstraeta as 
 real things. And yet, in the hands of this intense posi- 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 143 
 
 tivist and nominalist, the thing " white paper " is trans- 
 lated into the abstraction "a permanent possibility of 
 sensations." This is not all. Expectableness of sensa- 
 tions as a term is as abstract as possibility, but not so 
 convenient " to palter with us in double sense," for the 
 obvious reason, that, whereas " expectableness of sen- 
 sations " would represent ,both the sensations and their 
 relation to the mind as wholly subjective, " a permanent 
 possibility of sensations " suggests more positively the 
 operation of a force " external to ourselves and not a 
 part of our thoughts," and by the associations insep- 
 arably connected with the very phrase. " Possibil- 
 ity," moreover, admits, if it does not require, the 
 relation of causation, which Mill in the terms of his 
 philosophy should resolve into a time-relation ; although, 
 for reasons of his own, he greatly prefers and con- 
 stantly avails himself of those honest and truer words 
 of common life, cause and sensation. " The possibility 
 of sensations " is a phrase appropriate only to the ex- 
 tremest idealists ; and yet it seems to satisfy the utmost 
 needs of this extreme positivist, whose philosophy in 
 most of its affinities is closely allied to materialism. It 
 reminds us of the sonorous language of Johnson when 
 seeking a purchaser for Mr. Thrale's brewery : " We are 
 not here to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the 
 potentiality of growing rich beyond the dreams of 
 avarice." 
 
 But let us follow Mr. Mill. When we come back to 
 the white paper, i.e., to " the permanent possibility of 
 certain sensations," we ordinarily experience only one or 
 two of the group, of which all are possible ; hence this 
 group is considered as permanent, not merely in contrast 
 with " our bodily presence," — a convenient word, but 
 not over-philosophical, — but in contrast with any tem- 
 porary sensations winch we may happen in fact to 
 
144 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 experience from it. The series of permanent possibil- 
 ities thus conceived, is "the idea of substance or 
 matter as distinguished from sensation." We submit, 
 that, if the conceptions and definitions of the associa- 
 tional psychology are adhered to, we should never 
 reach the idea of matter at all, as distinguished from 
 sensations. We should develop only the contrast 
 between a group of sensations, say ten, conceived as 
 permanently possible, contrasted with one conceived as 
 actual, or more frequently experienced than the rest ; 
 but we should not and could not proceed a step be- 
 yond the world of subjective sensations. The plausi- 
 bility of Mr. Mill's explanation arises from the 
 ambiguity of the terms which he takes from common 
 life ; viz., matter and substance, " bodily presence," 
 etc., as contrasted with subjective sensations. 
 
 Mr. Mill completes and clinches his synthesis thus : 
 we cannot doubt that there is an external world; as 
 soon as we find that these possibilities of sensation 
 " belong as much to other human or sentient beings as 
 to ourselves." " This puts the final seal to our concep- 
 tion of the groups of possibilities as the fundamental 
 reality in nature." In this climax of his argument Mr. 
 Mill altogether forgets the fundamental postulates of 
 his theory. He does not stay to explain how the asso- 
 ciational principles provide for the belief that other 
 minds exist. Forgetting his own philosophy, he resorts 
 to common sense. He postulates other minds, in which 
 a belief is not set down among the associational data, 
 and infers, that if other minds have learned under 
 similar conditions with ourselves to expect the same pos- 
 sibilities with ourselves, therefore we have the concep- 
 tion and belief of an external world. This may be 
 conceded ; but by what authority or through what ap- 
 plication of the associational postulates we come to the 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 145 
 
 belief in other minds, Mr. Mill does not acknowledge 
 any obligation to show. 
 
 It is very easy thus to drop from the thin atmosphere 
 of attenuated abstractions, and indulge for a moment in 
 the plain language of common life. The reader wel- 
 comes the familiar terms and arguments ; the author 
 indulges him for a moment ; but little does the reader 
 suspect that the author is enabled in this way to smuggle 
 in some missing link of thought which a rigid adher- 
 ence to the terms and data of his theory would never 
 have supplied, or to insinuate an argument which a 
 strictly logical procedure could never have derived. 
 
 It is also observable, that, in Mill's analysis of the 
 conception of an external world, he makes no mention 
 at all of space-relations ; and yet the absence of this most 
 important element of the objective world is scarcely 
 missed by writer or reader, forasmuch as the terms of 
 common life so readily supply and suggest them. 
 
 We contend that it is not unfair to say, that, by this 
 interchange of common and technical terminology, Mr. 
 Mill contrives to muddle almost every subject which he 
 essays to treat with philosophical exactness. It is no 
 paradox to say, that when he seems to be the most clear 
 and convincing, and because hii terms are familiar and 
 his illustrations are easily followed, he is the most em- 
 phatically confusing and disappointing. We need only 
 contrast him with Berkeley to be sensible of these marked 
 defects. Berkeley is not especially technical in his 
 language ; but he is never afraid to adhere to his own 
 positions, or to face them in all their consequences. He 
 moves with a steady and an onward tread. He derives 
 from his postulates only those conclusions which their im- 
 port warrants, but he fearlessly applies them in all their 
 legitimate consequences. Whether you agree with him 
 or dissent from him, you cannot possibly mistake his 
 
146 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 meaning. You not only know what he holds, but you 
 know why he holds it ; for his reasons follow one another 
 in a close lock-step, of which every foot-fall is linked 
 with every other. So far as mere language is concerned, 
 Mill appears to be as simple and as clear as Berkeley. 
 His freer use of common terms seems to give a special 
 intelligibleness to his diction. But, when you study his 
 diction as a revealer of thought, you find that his 
 definitions are neither lucid nor exact, that his terms 
 are not used in a uniform import, and that neither his 
 analyses are exact, nor his deductions rigid. The clear- 
 ness is superficial, and the logical coherence is only ap- 
 parent. We venture to add, that most of the popular 
 writers of the modern English school who sympathize 
 with Mill's philosophy are open to similiar criticism. 
 They affect clearness. They abound in illustrations 
 from common life. Some of them are masters of the 
 art of exposition. They claim to be eminently exact. 
 It is possible they are exact so long as they confine 
 themselves to their special science or art. But when 
 they proceed to the metaphysics of induction or evo- 
 lution, of mind, matter, or life, the splendid array of 
 illustrations and examples which they marshal before 
 the vision is like a torchlight procession in a fog : the 
 brighter the lights and the more dazzling the move- 
 ments, the more distinctly do they reveal the mists 
 which they seem to illuminate, and the more effectually 
 do they confuse and bewilder the spectator. Hux- 
 ley's Physiology, Bain's Psychology, Darwin's Zoology, 
 and Herbert Spencer's Theology, are often plausible, 
 because they seem to be clear in statement, copious in 
 illustration, and strong in facts. Their readers do not 
 always observe that there is no cover so convenient for 
 defective and incoherent thinking as a confident and 
 dexterous use of the manifold ambiguities which are 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 147 
 
 provided in the language of common life, when skilfully 
 introduced among the abstractions of philosophy. 
 
 We have dwelt upon this defect of Mill as a philo- 
 sophic writer at some length, because we think it has 
 not attracted the attention from his critics which it 
 deserves, and because it is especially fitted to impose 
 upon the incautious student. The single example by 
 which we have illustrated the jugglery with which he 
 seems to impose on himself by the use of illustrations 
 and terms from common life, is by no means solitary. 
 It can be matched by a score which are nearly as strik- 
 ing as this of Mill's peculiar treatment of some of the 
 most important conceptions and doctrines of philosophy, 
 in which he has misled himself and his admirers by the 
 fatal ambiguity of his diction. 
 
 What is more surprising, he seems to be almost in- 
 capable of knowing when he falls into errors of this 
 sort. He is almost equally insensible to the detection, 
 by another, of his own oversights and inconsequences 
 as when these are discovered and confessed by himself. 
 We find an example of this simplicity in chap. xii. of 
 " The Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy," in which 
 he inquires how far the psychological theory of the 
 belief in matter is applicable to the mind. The Psy- 
 chological Theory, it will be remembered, is the theory 
 which is founded in the four postulates already cited, 
 all derived from the laws of association. This theory 
 would require us to conceive the mind to be " a series 
 of feelings or thread of consciousness, supplemented 
 by or with a background of believed possibilities of 
 consciousness ; i.e., feelings which are not, though they 
 might be, realized." After defending this theory 
 against the objections that it is inconsistent with the 
 belief in the existence of other minds, of God, and in 
 immortality, he develops certain intrinsic difficulties, 
 
148 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 which he confesses to be insuperable by his analysis. 
 He notices that the experiences of memory and expecta- 
 tion are more than simple sensations, inasmuch as mem- 
 ory involves the suggestion and belief that a sensation 
 of which it is a copy or representation actually existed 
 in the past ; and expectation involves the belief that a 
 sensation will exist in the future. If, moreover, we 
 speak of the mind as a series of feelings, we are obliged 
 to complete the statement by calling it a series of feel- 
 ings which is aware of itself as past or present. Did ever 
 the hypostatization of abstractions go farther than 
 when a series of feelings is aware of itself? But, noth- 
 ing moved, the author proceeds, " We are thus reduced 
 to the alternative of believing that the mind is some- 
 thing different from a series of feelings, or that some- 
 thing which ex hypothesi is but a series of feelings can 
 be aware of itself." And what does the author do 
 under the pressure of this alternative ? Does he give 
 up the hypothesis, i.e., the psychological theory ac- 
 cording to which the mind is and must be a series of 
 feelings and nothing more, or does he accept the para- 
 dox? Neither. Having fairly confuted himself by 
 reducing himself to the dilemma which he derives so 
 logically and states so clearly, he says the fault is not 
 in the theory, but it is in the facts : — 
 
 " The truth is, we are face to face with that final inexplicability 
 at which, as Sir William Hamilton observes, we inevitably arrive 
 when we reach ultimate facts, • one mode of stating which is so 
 much more incongruous than another, that you cannot state the 
 fact in certain phrases without denying its truth.' * I think, under 
 the circumstances, the wisest thing we can do is, to accept the fact 
 without a theory, and, when we are obliged to describe the fact in 
 terms taken from a theory, to use them with a certain reservation 
 as to their meaning.'" 
 
 A reader of these astounding statements might prop- 
 erly inquire whether their writer were sane or in earnest. 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 149 
 
 After all the imposing assurances in respect to the 
 superiority of the psychological theory held by himself 
 over the introspective or intuitional theory as held by 
 Hamilton, after subjecting the last theory to a scru- 
 tinizing analysis, and testing it by its consistency with 
 facts, and its adequacy to explain phenomena, he writes 
 a long chapter to show that the association al postulates 
 fully account for our conception of matter and the ex- 
 ternal world. He seems to concede that they ought also 
 to explain our conceptions of the mind, and he inquires 
 in another chapter whether they do in fact. He frankly 
 owns that they do not. He even shuts himself up by 
 a dilemma, just as he had a thousand times refuted 
 his antagonists, and had been seeking to refute Sir 
 William Hamilton on every page of this critical exami- 
 nation. Not content with refuting himself in fact, he is 
 free to acknowledge that he has done so. He says, in 
 effect, that he has demonstrated the falseness of his 
 own theory by a reductio ad absurdum. But what then ? 
 Is the theory thus disproved to be rejected ? Not in 
 the least : the fault is in the facts, " in the final in- 
 explicability of all ultimate facts." He calls on Sir 
 William Hamilton to attest that this is so. Should we 
 conceive a man, not only to be logically killed, but to 
 kill himself, and not only to kill himself, but to ac- 
 knowledge that he is killed, and yet to assert, that after 
 he should kill himself, or had killed himself, he was 
 still alive, we should have a case that would be parallel 
 to this felo-de-se of Mr. Mill. 
 
 Mr. Mill goes even beyond this. Such an escapade 
 could not escape the notice of his critics, some of whom 
 expressed themselves very freely in regard to it. In 
 the third edition of his work, he writes a long reply 
 to these critics, as an appendix to the eleventh and 
 twelfth chapters, in which he expresses in the meekest 
 
150 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 possible way his unfeigned surprise that they have 
 bestowed any sarcasm upon this failure of his theory 
 as acknowledged by himself, and asserts that he never 
 contended or believed that it could be applied success- 
 fully to the soul, and that all that he intended to show 
 was, that it was consistent with the belief in God, 
 immortality, and the existence of other beings. We 
 might class a philosopher of this type among the pachy- 
 dermatous animals, for truly he has shown himself not 
 very thin-skinned ; or, more properly, we might conclude 
 that he resembled some Oriental tribes of the human 
 species, who seem, not only to be able to survive the 
 severest operations of modern surgery, but who show 
 little or no sensibility under inflictions which would 
 extort shrieks of agony from a more sensitive Occi- 
 dental. These are not the only examples of uncon- 
 scious logical suicide which might be adduced from Mr. 
 Mill's writings. They are abundant and manifest to 
 any critic who is not blinded by a devotion to Mr. 
 Mill's peculiar metaphysics, or by the apparent clear- 
 ness of his diction when it veils the real ambiguity and 
 incoherence of his reasoning. 
 
 One of the most instructive and interesting parts 
 of his autobiography is that which describes " A Crisis 
 in his Mental History," carrying him, as he says, u one 
 stage forward." Before this crisis he was a narrow and 
 devoted Benthamist in his views of government and 
 culture, of morals and philosophy : as the result of it, 
 he very essentially modified his principles in every one 
 of these departments of speculation. Any attentive 
 reader of his articles upon Coleridge, Bentham, and 
 De Tocqueville, of his tract upon Utilitarianism, and 
 his additions to his father's " Analysis of the Human 
 Mind," in the edition of 1867, would not fail to detect 
 the evidences of a perpetual conflict between two 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 151 
 
 opposing tendencies and almost contradictory prin- 
 ciples. In the articles on Bentham and De Tocqueville, 
 almost every characteristic philosophical principle to 
 which Bentham and his father were fanatically devoted, 
 except those technically theological, are deliberately 
 combated. It was only in his devotion to certain prac- 
 tical measures of social and political reform, that Mill 
 adhered to his first teachers, and stood fearlessly by 
 their side as an active combatant. But he confesses 
 that his father no longer sympathized with his political 
 writings. Even his Utilitarianism is another philoso- 
 phy of Ethics from that taught by Bentham respecting 
 the sources of happiness which are open to man, and 
 the duty of spiritual culture for the independent satis- 
 faction and strength which it ministers; although he 
 retains the fatal necessitarianism which is inconsistent 
 with any possible theory of obligation or responsibility. 
 In the article on Coleridge, the struggle to adjust a 
 compromise between his traditional theories in respect 
 to metaphysical truth and the new light which had 
 awakened so many misgivings, is manifest in the mani- 
 fold acknowledgments which he makes of the defective 
 construction of Locke's " Philosophy " by many, not to 
 say the most, of Locke's so-called disciples, and his un- 
 favorable representation, not to say travesty, of the so- 
 called transcendental or anti-Lockian metaphysics. It 
 is amusing to observe how, when he ventures at last 
 to give in his adhesion to what he calls the school of 
 Locke and Bentham, he skilfully attaches a " rider " to 
 his exposition of their fundamental principle, which 
 neither Locke nor Bentham had ever announced, when 
 he says, "we see no ground for believing that any 
 thing can be the object of our knowledge except our 
 experience and what can be inferred from our experience 
 by the analogies of experience itself" as if under " ex- 
 
152 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 perience " and " the analogies of experience," there did 
 not lie hidden a transcendental element, and even, so to 
 speak, an entire system of transcendental philosophy. 
 A similar sensitiveness to the pressure of his obscure 
 convictions, that there are more things in heaven and 
 earth than are dreamed of in his own philosophy, is 
 abundantly manifest in almost every discussion in his 
 " System of Logic " in which there is any occasion to 
 refer to an underlying metaphysics. It is interesting 
 and almost amusing to notice how uniformly in this 
 treatise the author contrives to introduce a full exposi- 
 tion of his own philosophy in the form and under the 
 title of logical discussions, and dexterously avoids intro- 
 ducing the opposite philosophy under the plea that 
 such inquiries would lead him into transcendental 
 metaphysics. But in all these attempts to avoid grap- 
 pling with fundamental issues, or to dispose of such 
 questions by shuffling compromises, we discern the hazy, 
 unsettled mind, which was determined to adhere to its 
 original bent, even against its underlying convictions 
 that its grounds had not been thoroughly examined, or 
 were not thoroughly trustworthy. 
 
 The relations of Mr. Mill's philosophy to that of 
 Auguste Comte have been made the subject of a crit- 
 ical discussion by himself. The subject is also not 
 unfrequently referred to in his "System of Logic." 
 The deviations from Comte, to which he attaches the 
 greatest importance, do not seem to be vital. Most of 
 them are entirely consistent with his acceptance of every 
 principle which is characteristic of and objectionable in 
 the Positive Philosophy. They leave out of the uni- 
 verse the two relations of causation and of design, and 
 shut up science to the observation of phenomena, which 
 are dignified with the name of facts, and to the connec- 
 tion of these phenomena by the relations of likeness and 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 153 
 
 of succession, which Comte seeks to elevate by calling 
 them laws. Mr. Mill does, indeed, dissent from Comte 
 by contending for psychological phenomena as equally 
 legitimate and equally worthy of scientific study with 
 those which are sensible and material. He moreover 
 positively refrains from asserting that psychical phe- 
 nomena are within the reach and resources of matter. 
 He does not venture to contend that they are cerebral 
 functions or physiological products. These peculiarities, 
 though important, are not in the highest sense vital ; and 
 Mill's metaphysics are substantially Positivist, notwith- 
 standing these positions of dissent. But when he insists 
 on using the term causation, and those which are akin to 
 it, in preference to the terms of mere succession, and 
 freely owns that law and orderliness have usually been 
 referred to a mind, and yet fails to follow out with logi- 
 cal courage and consistency the import of the terms 
 which he insists upon employing, we find fresh exam- 
 ples of his tendency to take advantage of the ambiguity 
 of language to conceal from himself and his readers the 
 uncertainty of his own principles, and to use vacillating 
 compromises in spheres of thought in which they are 
 the least of all admissible. 
 
 One of the most glaring examples of the same charac- 
 teristic is furnished in Mill's "Analysis of the Philosophy 
 of Induction." We did not need to be told by Mill him- 
 self that the works of Whewell had first aroused his 
 attention to those axioms or fundamental principles 
 which must be assumed as the grounds of every inter- 
 pretation of nature. The fact is sufficiently obvious 
 from the frequent references to Whewell's opinions. 
 Mill might reasonably find it impossible to accept the 
 Kantian dialect and the Kantian metaphysics of Whe- 
 well ; but he could not so easily evade the conclusiveness 
 of the analysis by which Whewell demonstrates that 
 
154 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 induction is more than an observation and registration 
 of facts, and requires more than an enumeration and 
 arrangement of similar events or phenomena for the 
 explanation of its sagacious anticipations and its deci- 
 sive experiments. His characteristic candor bade him 
 state the essential conditions of the inductive process. 
 After this careful and elaborate statement of the prob- 
 lem, it excites nothing less than astonishment to find 
 that Mill has the effrontery to contend that the assump- 
 tions which are essentially involved in induction are the 
 products of induction itself, and in language like the 
 following : " The uniformity in the succession of events, 
 otherwise called the law of causation, must be received, 
 not as a law of the universe, but of that portion of it only 
 which is within the range of our means of mere obser- 
 vation, with a reasonable degree of extension to adjacent 
 cases. To extend it farther is to make a supposition 
 without evidence, and to which, in the absence of any 
 ground from experience for intimating its degree of 
 probability, it would be ridiculous to affect to assign it." 
 — Logic, B. III., cxxi., § 5. This passage reminds us of 
 the bold utterances of a colored preacher concerning a 
 passage in the sacred history of which his recollections 
 were more confident than correct. " And the Lord said 
 unto Moses in the garden of Eden." Whereupon a 
 brother behind, who was somewhat better informed, 
 caught him by the coat, and whispered, " Moses wasn't 
 there." Upon which the preacher corrected himself, 
 "And the Lord said unto Abraham." Upon this fol- 
 lowed a similar correction ; to which the preacher, 
 growing confident, repeated, " And the Lord said unto 
 Abraham ; " and the critic whispered more loudly and 
 earnestly, " I say, Abraham wasn't there." The 
 preacher, growing excited, reiterated, "I say, Abra- 
 ham was there or thereabouts" This is not the sole 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 155 
 
 instance in which Mr. Mill substitutes a thereabouts of 
 his own for a there of writers whom he follows and 
 from whom he dissents. 
 
 Mill's editorial notes upon his father's " Analysis of 
 the Human Mind " furnish at least one striking illustra- 
 tion of the defects which have been named. Mr. Mill, 
 the father, in his first edition of this work, 1829, had 
 revived the Hartleyan and Priestleyan doctrine, that in- 
 separable associations explain the processes of belief and 
 knowledge. In his examination of Hamilton, the son con- 
 fidently sets forth the same doctrine as the only and the 
 all-sufficient solvent for most if not ail of the problems 
 of psychology and philosophy, as against the intuitive 
 theory. And yet when he comes to criticise his father's 
 application of the same principle, in explaining belief 
 and knowledge, he rejects it as altogether insufficient, 
 and writes a long note in support of the position that 
 belief cannot be resolved into the operation of insepa- 
 rable associations. When he had occasion to contend 
 against Hamilton, as in the Fourteenth chapter of the 
 "Examination," he urges that the belief in causation 
 can be fully explained by the repetition of the events 
 which are associated as cause and effect : but, when he 
 analyzes the belief of events that have occurred or will 
 occur, he has recourse to two independent and original 
 processes, which he calls memory and expectation ; leav- 
 ing our knowledge and belief of present objects and 
 events to be vaguely classed as feelings or sensations. 
 
 We have, perhaps, adduced too many illustrations of 
 what we regard as Mr. Mill's characteristic defects. 
 His excellencies are manifold. Conspicuous among them 
 is his patience of observation and analysis, and a dispo- 
 sition to be thorough whenever the principles of his own 
 philosophy rendered it possible. We have given our 
 reasons for believing that he was not always perfectly 
 
156 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 ingenuous toward himself, but that, under the pressure 
 of a sharp and urgent necessity, he suffered himself to 
 be imposed upon by the ambiguity of popular terms and 
 phrases, when it conveniently disguised the difference 
 between a true and a false philosophy. 
 
 It is not surprising that a writer who was not always 
 candid toward himself should not be uniformly just 
 toward others. It might seem almost harsh to say that 
 he is not always even fair and generous. He never 
 fails to make a show of being candid and impartial, and 
 doubtless strives to persuade himself that he is so in 
 fact. His " Examination of Hamilton's Philosophy " was 
 indeed a severe test of his mental uprightness. He 
 deliberately grappled with a writer of great learning, 
 unquestioned acuteness, and undisputed pre-eminence ; 
 and he was strongly tempted to put him in fault on 
 every possible occasion. Hamilton was by no means 
 invulnerable. His habits of thinking and writing were 
 not the most cautious. Most of his works were posthu- 
 mous, and subject to the additional disadvantage of 
 having been composed in parts at distant intervals of 
 time, and under the pressure of immediate necessity. 
 It might be supposed that many opinions which he had 
 hastily formed or had somewhat inadvertently phrased, 
 might not be consistent with those which were maturely 
 adopted; although he suffered them to remain uncor- 
 rected in the manuscripts from which he lectured. An 
 antagonist assailed under all these disadvantages cer- 
 tainly deserved considerate and forbearing treatment. 
 We cannot think that he always received either. 
 Whether he did or did not, can be settled only by 
 minute criticism of the several points of the discussion. 
 A superficial perusal of the critique justifies and en- 
 forces the impression that Mill's attitude toward Hamil- 
 ton is supercilious and ungenerous, and that there was 
 
JOHN STUABT MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 157 
 
 little evidence of any . magnanimous appreciation of 
 Hamilton's intellectual or personal superiority. Mill's 
 autobiography abounds in judgments concerning many 
 eminent men among his contemporaries. Most of these 
 estimates are unsatisfactory even when they are lauda- 
 tory. Many of them seem studiously paradoxical and 
 depreciating, and give evidence of nothing so decisively 
 as of a cold and self-centred temper on the part of the 
 critic. Not a few are evidently biassed by anti-theo- 
 logical and anti-Christian prejudices. 
 
 We have designedly avoided in this paper giving any 
 prominence to the relation of Mr. Mill's philosophy to 
 theological opinions or religious belief. It is but simply 
 just to say in conclusion, that his philosophy provided 
 scanty room and nutriment for either imaginative ideal- 
 izations or religious faith. It had as little genuine sym- 
 pathy with literature as it had with theology, and for 
 one reason among many, that it was conceived in the 
 spirit of partisanship rather than that of research. Mill 
 was a well-trained logician, but he was not an accom- 
 plished philosopher. He was an effective advocate and 
 a skilful expounder ; but he was neither a broad- 
 minded inquirer, nor a deep-minded interpreter of the 
 constitution of the universe or the soul of man. He 
 tells us very frankly of the striking changes which 
 he experienced in respect to his opinions and aims, in 
 respect to his judgments of literature, culture, and the 
 affections, and his views of Political Economy and Soci- 
 ology. But, by his own showing, he never freed him- 
 self from the narrowness of the principles and habits 
 in which he was trained. He was narrow to the last, 
 narrow even when he strove to be liberal. He was 
 narrow even in the affections of which he made a reli- 
 gion, the ethical fruits of which were cruel to others, 
 however beneficent to himself. He was narrow in his 
 
158 JOHN STUART MILL AS A PHILOSOPHER. 
 
 culture, notwithstanding all his aspirations and efforts 
 after beauty, pathos, and grace in thought and diction ; 
 and narrowest of all in the dogmatic and ill-concealed 
 contempt in which he held all those speculations and 
 faiths concerning the future life or the self-existent 
 God, which have uniformly fascinated, even when they 
 have greatly perplexed, all the truly great thinkers of 
 the human race. 
 
VI. 
 JOHN STUART MILL AS A TREOLOQIAm 
 
 Three distinguished English writers, all notorious 
 for their negative attitude toward Theism and Christi- 
 anity, have left their maturest and ablest writings upon 
 these topics, to be published after their death. Lord 
 Bolingbroke committed his "Letters on History," 
 which had already been privately printed, to David 
 Mallet, who published them in 1753. This procedure 
 elicited from Dr. Johnson the well-known emphatic 
 comment, " Sir, he was a scoundrel and a coward, — a 
 scoundrel for charging a blunderbuss against religion 
 and morality ; a coward because he had not resolution 
 to fire it off himself, but left half a crown to a beg- 
 garly Scotchman, to draw the trigger after his death." 
 
 The ablest work of David Hume, the " Dialogues on 
 Natural Religion," — perhaps the most subtle anti- 
 theistic treatise ever published in the English language, 
 — was written in 1751, but was not published till 1779, 
 some three years after his death. Hume, by his will, 
 appointed Adam Smith his executor, and left him two 
 hundred pounds for the services he might render in 
 editing this work. But fearing that Smith would be 
 unwilling to execute the task, on account of the odium 
 it might excite, he gave the matter in charge to his 
 publisher, and, in the event of Smith's failure to issue 
 the treatise within two and a half years, to a nephew, 
 by whom it was published in fact. 
 
 1 International Review, July, 1875. 
 
 159 
 
160 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 Mr. John Stuart Mill was more reserved in his life- 
 time, in the expression of his religious opinions, than 
 either Bolingbroke or Hume. Had not his autobiogra- 
 phy in part prepared the public for what they had reason 
 to expect, these theological essays would have been 
 looked for with a more eager curiosity than they have 
 awakened. There seems to have been no good reason 
 for the delay of the publication of the first two essays 
 contained in this volume, both of which were written 
 between 1850 and 1858. The editor confidently avers 
 that their author did not withhold them for so many 
 years " on account of reluctance to encounter whatever 
 odium might result from the free expression of his opin- 
 ions on religion." She ascribes his delay to his well- 
 known deliberation in forming his opinions, and his 
 special dislike to express opinions when half-formed. 
 The careful student of Mr. Mill's other writings could 
 not fail to notice, however, that he uniformly avoided 
 any reference to religious questions, or, in the few cases 
 where they have been forced upon his attention, so care- 
 fully avoided committing himself, as to seem wanting 
 in both frankness and courage. His actual opinions 
 were so generally understood, and the conclusions to 
 which his philosophy must lead him were so inevitable, 
 that his cautious and studied statements were inter- 
 preted as indicating a certain sardonic contempt of the 
 faith or feelings of the most of his countrymen. These 
 feelings were distinctly embodied in the remark in his 
 autobiography, that from his childhood " I looked upon 
 the modern as I did upon the ancient religion, as some- 
 thing which in no way concerned me." This studied 
 and long-delayed reticence cannot easily be reconciled 
 with the emphatic assertion in the same connection, 
 that the time had already come in which it was not 
 only safe for, but obligatory upon, all those who held 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 161 
 
 opinions opposed to those commonly received, to assert 
 them freely and boldly. For many reasons, the revela- 
 tions of this autobiography did not open the way for the 
 most favorable reception of his mature and yet long- 
 withheld opinions upon Theism and Christianity. The 
 avowals made in that notable work of the conclu- 
 sions which he had reached, and the contemptuous or 
 unsympathetic air assumed toward all forms of earnest 
 religious belief, were not fitted to conciliate a very 
 favorable judgment from very many readers, who are 
 not wanting in candor. Nor should it be overlooked, 
 that not a few rejecters of supernaturalism in England 
 and this country, hold a philosophy and a faith which 
 are very far removed from those of Mr. Mill; nor, 
 again, that Mr. Mill's prestige as an authority in meta- 
 physical philosophy has been somewhat diminished by 
 the more imposing proportions and claims of the philos- 
 ophy of Mr. Herbert Spencer. This writer, although 
 his system rests upon the same psychological basis of 
 inseparable associations, claims that it meets all the 
 requirements of the intuitional metaphysics, and even 
 provides for faith in an inscrutable force or being, who 
 or which is at once the necessary assumption of science, 
 the verified product of all experiments, and the satisfy- 
 ing though ever-changing object of faith and worship. 
 
 It might seem almost superfluous to solicit attention 
 to the religious philosophy of so modest a thinker as 
 Mr. Mill, at a time when his ineffectual fires are paling 
 before the radiant splendors of so imposing a teacher as 
 Mr. Spencer. But Mill's system of religious philoso- 
 phy is, to say the least, a metaphysical curiosity. The 
 discussion of it may also be presumed to give some im- 
 portant indirect results, even though it may not be re- 
 quired for the refutation of his arguments. 
 
 The first of the three essays contained in this volume 
 
162 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 is entitled "Nature." In both matter and form it is 
 the least interesting. We cannot be mistaken when we 
 pronounce it one of the feeblest of Mr. Mill's produc- 
 tions, for the ambitiousness of its pretensions, the nar- 
 rowness of its definitions, the defectiveness of its logic, 
 and the repulsiveness of its conclusions. Though writ- 
 ten in the maturity of the powers of the author, after 
 he had felt and acknowledged the liberalizing and ele- 
 vating influences of both poetry and love, and had 
 learned to be catholic in judging, and kindly in appreci- 
 ating, the opinions and feelings of men from whom he 
 differed very widely, this essay seems to reflect the nar- 
 rowest and the most acrid spirit of his unripe youth, as 
 well as those bitter prejudices against all who believe 
 in God's goodness, which characterized his early man- 
 hood. It would seem that his temper must have been 
 for the most part greatly disturbed, while he thought 
 and wrote out this essay. 
 
 He begins by observing that the words nature and 
 natural have become obscured and entangled almost 
 hopelessly in metaphysical vagueness or contradiction, 
 and that it is greatly to be desired that the words 
 should be subject to the careful and patient sifting of 
 the Socratic analysis. Following this method, he pro- 
 ceeds to define the several meanings of nature. The 
 first which he gives is obvious enough, — the sum of the 
 powers, capacities, and laws which make up an individ- 
 ual thing. Closely connected with this signification is 
 that of the aggregate of all things which exist with the 
 total of their powers, capacities, and laws. In this 
 sense nature is synonymous with the finite universe of 
 material and spiritual beings. The second distinctive 
 meaning is that in which nature is opposed to art. 
 But, in this application, the powers which art combines 
 and directs are powers of nature; and the powers 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 163 
 
 which combine and direct the agencies of nature are 
 themselves natural. 
 
 These being assumed to be the two principal senses 
 of the word nature, the author then asks in which of 
 these senses, if in either, is it used when it conveys 
 ideas of "commendation, approval, or moral approba- 
 tion." That it has been used as the foundation of 
 these ethical ideas, cannot be questioned by any one 
 who knows any thing of the ancient moralists, the 
 Roman jurists, or Christian theologians. These last 
 have indeed been somewhat restrained in giving honor 
 to nature as an authority in morals, by the doctrine of 
 human depravity; but this circumstance has inclined 
 the deistical moralists, especially those of the senti- 
 mental school, to exalt nature still more. The doctrine 
 that nature is in some sense an authority to be followed 
 and trusted in morals, is very generally accepted at the 
 present time, though with more or less vagueness of in- 
 terpretation. 
 
 " This employment of the word nature as a term of 
 ethics seems to disclose a third meaning, in which 
 nature does not stand for what is, but for what ought 
 to be." A little consideration will show, as he contends, 
 that there is no third meaning, but that those who " lay 
 down as a rule for what ought to be, a word which in 
 its proper signification denotes what is, do so because 
 they have a notion, either clearly or confusedly, that 
 what is, constitutes the rule or standard of what ought 
 to be." Whether this application of the word nature 
 thus defined, is justified, the author proposes to inquire. 
 The necessity for this inquiry, he insists, is still more 
 imperative, if we consider that the word law is used in 
 ethics with similar vagueness, being sometimes em- 
 ployed to denote what are called fixed uniformities in 
 the operations of things, as in the phrases, laws of mo- 
 
164 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 tion or of chemical combination, and sometimes for what 
 ought to be, as in the phrases, the law of honor, or the 
 law of veracity. 
 
 These are the results of the author's preliminary 
 analysis of the meaning of the word nature, before ar- 
 guing the question proposed in the essay ; viz., whether 
 the ethical rule or principle to follow nature, which has 
 been so generally adopted, by so great a variety of 
 thinkers, can be justified. In this analysis the author 
 betrays not the least suspicion or misgiving that he may 
 have overlooked one of the possible significations of 
 the word nature. From his show of candor on the one 
 hand, and his display of acuteness on the other ; from 
 the naive confidence of his assertions and the cool 
 assurance of his manner, — the confiding reader would 
 infer that Mr. Mill had covered the field of possible 
 significations. Inasmuch as his subsequent argument 
 rests entirely upon the correctness of this analysis, we 
 may be excused if, before accepting the astounding con- 
 clusions to which the author's argument would conduct 
 us, we subject it to a critical examination. 
 
 We do not dispute the correctness of Mr. Mill's 
 statement, that the word nature signifies what is, in the 
 general sense of the properties and capacities of any 
 one, or of the aggregate of the various beings and 
 agents that exist. It is equally obvious, that, when 
 nature is opposed to art, the instruments and means of 
 art on the one hand, and the operations of art on the 
 other, are limited to the capacities furnished by nature. 
 We submit, however, that what are called the capacities 
 or constitution of a thing, and even the characteristics 
 or contents of its concept, may as properly include 
 what the thing or agent was intended for, as well as its 
 one or many capacities, which are manifested or em- 
 ployed in actual results. In other words, what a thing 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 165 
 
 is, or the nature of a thing, may signify what it was 
 made or exists for, as truly as what it achieves in fact. 
 
 It is of the nature of a steam-engine to be moved 
 and to generate power by the expansive force of steam, 
 whether it is actually used for this effect or not. It 
 was of the nature of steam to generate power centuries 
 before nature was followed by the use of its properties 
 for this end or result. Whenever nature has been con- 
 ceived of as a guide, or rule, or end of life or action, it 
 has also been uniformly conceived of as a constitution, 
 which was capable of misdirection or neglect, as well 
 as of being followed and obeyed. The end or the 
 natural use of its capacities was also supposed to be in- 
 dicated by its constitution, and therefore to be a part of 
 its nature, and properly to be a constituent element 
 of its contents or definable essence, or, in Mr. Mill's lan- 
 guage, of what it is. Moreover, the nature which the 
 ancient philosophers and the modern jurists and theolo- 
 gians have had prominently if not exclusively in view, 
 in these ethical discussions, has been human nature. 
 This human nature they have regarded as a whole, con- 
 sisting of various impulses or desires, all alike natural, 
 considered singly, and all having a purpose, but capa- 
 ble of failing of the highest result which the human 
 constitution was fitted for, and so of a deviation from 
 the nature or supreme end of man as a whole. A con- 
 flict of these separate impulses was supposed, not only 
 to be possible, but inevitable. In such a conflict, the 
 prevalence of some one impulse, and the consequent 
 subjection of the others, was held to be sanctioned and 
 required by nature, and as therefore pre-eminently 
 natural. For a man to act according to his nature, i.e., 
 his human nature, was, in their view, to fulfil the ends 
 or purposes of his constitution as a man. 
 
 But although the nature of man, or human nature, 
 
166 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 has been prominent in the thoughts of ethical thinkers, 
 it has not exclusively occupied their thoughts. Indeed, 
 inasmuch as man cannot be fully understood, except his 
 relations to his fellows and to the physical universe are 
 also recognized, the properties and the laws of the uni- 
 verse of spirit and matter must needs be considered, in 
 order fully to understand the nature and duty of man. 
 For a man to follow nature, consequently signified, not 
 only to act in harmony with the ends and laws of his 
 own individual being, but also to act in harmony with 
 the laws, and in subjection to the ends, of the universe. 
 It is passing strange that a writer like Mr. Mill, who 
 had been trained in a severe school of logical analysis, 
 and been accustomed from his childhood to state and 
 to scrutinize definitions and arguments, who had more- 
 over written an elaborate treatise on definition and 
 reasoning, and who had given formal notice that he 
 was about to examine with the utmost care the concep- 
 tion in question, for the special purpose of testing the 
 correctness of the reasoning founded upon its defini- 
 tion, and who even included in his plan the purpose to 
 state and examine the various possible senses in which 
 the concept nature, and the precept to follow nature, 
 had been used, should have so completely failed to rec- 
 ognize the only important signification of the term 
 which could have any possible relation to the question 
 in hand. The frequent and familiar use of the term in 
 this sense, it would seem, could not possibly be over- 
 looked by a careful reader of the most popular and best- 
 known treatises on morals. The necessary limitations 
 of Mr. Mill's own psychological theory ought not to 
 have rendered him insensible to the testimony of his- 
 tory, that other men had in fact used terms in other 
 senses than those which his system had provided for. 
 We can easily see how he might, and indeed how he 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 167 
 
 must, test the correctness of the definitions of other 
 men by comparing them with his own. But Mr. Mill 
 does not always adhere to his own theories, as, for ex- 
 ample, in his well-known paroxysm of ethical earnest- 
 ness against Mansel. Not only in this instance, but in 
 many others, he has forgotten his own theories, when 
 hard pushed by the pressure of controversy, and even 
 employed against his antagonists arguments which derive 
 all their cogency from a philosophy which he rejects. 
 We may ordinarily assume, however, whether he is aware 
 of it or not, whether he stands upon his own metaphys- 
 ical ground, or unconsciously shifts his position to the 
 ground of another philosophy, that he is more or less 
 influenced by his own psychological and philosophical 
 theories. For us, it is not easy to see how a writer who 
 defines matter as "a permanent possibility of sensa- 
 tion," and mind as " a series of feelings which is aware 
 of itself as past and future," should be able to conceive 
 of either as having a nature, even in the narrow sense 
 in which Mr. Mill defines it, as that which is. We can 
 very easily see how it would be altogether impossible 
 for him to find in human nature, or physical nature, so 
 defined, or in both combined, any thing which could 
 possibly be followed. To follow also supposes something 
 like deliberation and free action, or choice subsequent to 
 thought and conclusion. But in Mr. Mill's psychology 
 there is no place for freedom, nothing but impulse, 
 furnished by nature, intensified by repetition, fixed by 
 inseparable associations, and admitting no possibility 
 of disinclination to or dissent from, the dominant and 
 necessitated desire. 
 
 It is almost amusing, were not Mill always so solemn, 
 to notice that he condescends to concede that man may 
 be said to follow nature when he intelligently directs 
 his conduct by the laws of nature to the attainment of 
 
168 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 his purposes ; i.e., when he uses one law to counteract 
 another. As if this were not in principle, though not 
 in phraseology, all that had ever been contended for. 
 For how could it be possible for a man intelligently to 
 set up one law or force of nature above another unless 
 some reason for so doing were found in nature itself? 
 But, if a reason could be furnished, it must be found in 
 something higher than any single one of these forces or 
 laws, — higher even than their conspiring or aggregate 
 energy ; i.e., in some relation implying an end which 
 might be followed or neglected. But it is more than 
 amusing, it becomes absolutely farcical, to learn from 
 this venerable and most logical utilitarian, that such a 
 construction of the precept to follow nature would only 
 introduce the prudential as contrasted with the ethical 
 sphere ; his own conceptions of duty having never 
 reached any higher than a somewhat low plane of the 
 prudential. 
 
 As we follow Mr. Mill's analysis still farther, we find 
 him raising the inquiry whether, if nature is used in 
 the second sense, recognized by himself, viz., as the 
 spontaneous in contrast with the artificial, the phrase 
 " to follow nature " becomes any more rational. To 
 this question he answers, that to follow nature when 
 taken in this sense would be palpably absurd, inasmuch 
 as it is the duty of man to improve upon nature, rather 
 than to imitate her. Here again Mr. Mill seems utterly 
 unconscious, that, if it be the duty of man to improve 
 upon nature, this duty must in some way have been 
 made known to man through nature ; which would in- 
 volve the assumption that the what is must somehow 
 or somewhere have contrived to suggest or reveal the 
 what should be, or the ideal possibilities which art should 
 aspire and labor to make real. Overlooking this meta- 
 physical inconsistency, and cleaving to his original nar- 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 169 
 
 row idea, that the only conceivable way of following 
 nature is to imitate her actualities rather than to make 
 real the best possibilities which she provides for, he in- 
 dulges himself in a long series of rambling observa- 
 tions, the aim of which is to set forth the general 
 immorality of unartificial or spontaneous nature on the 
 grand and the small scale, and to prove, that, if there 
 be any such thing as human virtue or human duty, it 
 is attained by deviating from and improving upon 
 nature by means of art. 
 
 Among these observations we find the following : — 
 
 " In sober truth, nearly all the things which men are hanged or 
 imprisoned for doing to one another, are nature's every-day per- 
 formances. Killing, the most criminal act as recognized by human 
 laws, nature does to every being that lives, and, in a large propor- 
 tion of cases, after protracted tortures such as only the greatest 
 monsters whom we read of ever purposely inflicted on their living 
 fellow-creatures. . . . Nature impales men, breaks them as if on 
 the wheel, casts them to be devoured by wild beasts, burns them 
 to death, crushes them with stones, like the first Christian martyr, 
 starves them with hunger, freezes them with cold, poisons them by 
 the quick or slow venom of her exhalations, and has hundreds of 
 other hideous deaths in reserve, such as the ingenious cruelty of a 
 Nabis or a Domitian never surpassed. 
 
 "But it is said, all these things are for wise and good ends. 
 On this I must first remark, that whether they are so or not, is 
 altogether beside the point. Supposing it true, that, contrary to 
 appearances, these horrors, when perpetrated by nature, promote 
 good ends, still, as no one believes that good ends would be pro- 
 moted by our following the example, the course of nature cannot 
 be a proper model for us to imitate. Either it is right that we 
 should kill because nature kills, torture because nature tortures, 
 ruin and devastate because nature does the like, or we ought not 
 to consider at all what nature does, but what it is good to do. If 
 there is such a thing as a reductio ad absurdum, this surely amounts 
 to one." 
 
 To this last sentence we heartily assent; but the 
 question still remains undecided, whether it is a reduc- 
 
170 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 tio ad abmrdum of the author's misconceptions of the 
 position under discussion, or of the position itself when 
 correctly understood. We also submit, that English 
 philosophy contains very few passages which contain 
 grosser or more inexcusable misinterpretations than 
 those which we have quoted. Not only does Mr. Mill 
 overlook the true sense of the direction to follow na- 
 ture, as we have already explained, not only does he 
 substitute another meaning, which no man ever held, 
 but, even if his own interpretation were to be allowed, 
 it would not sustain his inference, that the external 
 operations or actions of nature, such as killing, could 
 possibly be accepted as examples for man by any 
 except the most superficial moralists. The most super- 
 ficial ethical teacher even might be supposed to recog- 
 nize the axiom that the ethical quality of every action 
 lies in the intention, and not in any external doing 
 whatever, — indeed, that external actions as such are 
 of no possible importance except as they exemplify 
 some intention. 
 
 The watchful reader will have observed, that, at this 
 stage of the discussion, Mr. Mill has somehow forsaken 
 the ethical field for that of natural theology. It might 
 be thought too severe to assert that his zeal to depre- 
 ciate nature as an example in ethics, had insensibly 
 prompted him to take the first occasion to dishonor its 
 Creator ; or that, if he should find occasion to do this, he 
 would feel no special objection to believe that a creator 
 of some sort actually exists. If the reader were a saga- 
 cious philosopher, he would not fail to notice that Mr. 
 Mill could not make this transition without enlarging 
 his conceptions of the import of nature, so as to find in 
 what nature is some import of what nature intends. 
 Explain it how we will, we find our author embarked 
 in the solution of one of the gravest problems of natural 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 171 
 
 theology ; viz., that which relates to the divine benevo- 
 lence. This problem is no sooner proposed for solution 
 than it is summarily disposed of, after the briefest 
 discussion, by the conclusion that the only possible 
 method of vindicating the divine goodness, is to sup- 
 pose that God is limited in power. In the author's 
 conduct of this brief argument, we observe a similar 
 incapacity fairly to conceive and state the views of 
 theologians, to that exemplified in his representations 
 of the doctrines of ethical philosophy. We do not care 
 to analyze or criticise his argument. It concludes as 
 follows : " The same perfectly wise and good being had 
 absolute power over the material, and made it, by vol- 
 untary choice, what it is." To admit this might have 
 been supposed impossible to any one who has the sim- 
 plest notions of moral good and evil. " Nor can any 
 such person, whatever kind of religious phrases he may 
 use, fail to believe, that, if nature and man are both the 
 works of a Being of perfect goodness, that Being in- 
 tended nature as a scheme to be amended, not imitated, 
 by man." 
 
 This brings our author back upon the ethical field ; 
 and he resumes the discussion of the question from 
 which he had digressed, having unconsciously learned 
 by the process that design and purpose, as well as 
 capacities and laws, may be affirmed of what is. He 
 now asks whether the Creator's will, i.e., the rule of 
 duty, may not be supposed to be indicated in "the 
 active impulses of human and other animated beings ; " 
 i.e., in their instincts and desires. The question in 
 principle does not differ from the broader question, 
 whether nature indicates their rule of duty, by the 
 capacities and endowments of any existing beings. He 
 replies to his own question, — first, that to hold that 
 desire or instinct manifests the rule of conduct, would 
 
172 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 exalt blind impulse above reason ; and next, that not 
 a single instinct can be discovered in man as he exists 
 in a state of nature, which deserves to be regarded as 
 an impulse to virtue. Courage would, perhaps, be cited 
 first as such an impulse ; but Mill roundly asserts, that 
 by nature man is only a coward. Cleanliness is not a 
 natural virtue, for man is naturally the opposite of 
 cleanly; for is it not notorious that children all the 
 world over delight in filth ? Not one of the social vir- 
 tues is natural. Man is by nature inveracious, selfish, 
 and incapable of self-control. There is no such virtue 
 conceivable as natural justice : justice is an artificial 
 product only, and the growth of social existence. Men 
 are notoriously cruel also, and delight in inflicting pain 
 upon their fellows. If we concede that men have some 
 warm and friendly feelings, still nature or providence 
 has the question to answer, why the animal creation is 
 so completely given up to the havoc of preying and 
 being preyed upon. After discoursing in this fashion, 
 at some length, he sums up the conclusions of his essay 
 as follows : — 
 
 " The word nature has two principal meanings : it either de- 
 notes the entire system of things, with the aggregate of all their 
 properties, or it denotes things as they would be, apart from 
 human intervention. 
 
 " In the first of these senses, the doctrine that man ought to fol- 
 low nature is unmeaning ; since man has no power to do any thing 
 else than follow nature : all his actions are done through, and in 
 obedience to, some one or many of nature's physical or mental 
 laws. 
 
 " In the other sense of the term, the doctrine that man ought 
 to follow nature, or, in other words, ought to make the spontaneous 
 course of things the model of his voluntary actions, is equally irra- 
 tional and immoral. 
 
 "Irrational, because all human action whatever consists in 
 altering, and all useful action in improving, the spontaneous course 
 of nature. 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 173 
 
 "Immoral, because the course of natural phenomena being 
 replete with every thing, which, when committed by human beings, 
 is worthy of abhorrence, any one who endeavored in his actions to 
 imitate the natural course of things would be universally seen and 
 acknowledged to be the wickedest of men. 
 
 "The scheme of nature, regarded in its whole extent, cannot 
 have had for its rOle, or even principal object, the good of human 
 or other sentient beings. What good it brings to them is 
 mostly the result of their own exertions. Whatsoever in nature 
 gives indication of beneficent design proves this beneficence to be 
 armed only with limited power; and the duty of man is to co- 
 operate with the beneficent powers, not by imitating, but by per- 
 petually striving to amend, the course of nature, and bringing that 
 part of it, over which we can exercise control, more nearly into 
 conformity with a high standard of justice and goodness." 
 
 It is scarcely fair to say that this is a summary of the 
 creed of Mr. Mill. It is little more than a series of 
 negations. So far as ethics are concerned, it is purely 
 negative, asserting only what is not true of nature as 
 an instructor and director of duty. It is almost equally 
 negative in respect to theology, asserting, that if God is 
 good, and so far as he can be proved to be good, he 
 does not possess unlimited power ; and, so far as man 
 is good, he should avoid imitating the operations of 
 nature, but should seek to improve upon them. From 
 what source, or by what methods, a man derives the 
 ideas of duty, or the sense of obligation by which he 
 is taught to improve upon nature, and to judge of the 
 beneficence of God, Mr. Mill gives no intimation. 
 
 But, whatever view we take of these conclusions, Mr. 
 Mill has failed to justify them by any solid reasons. 
 His reasonings are all directed against conceptions of 
 nature which were never held by a single individual of 
 the many philosophers, jurists, or theologians, who have 
 proposed nature as an ethical teacher or guide. His 
 conclusions are the unproved and often the unsup- 
 ported assertions of a narrow and splenetic dogmatist, 
 
174 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 who persistently insists on the one hand, that the uni- 
 verse is not completely controlled by a benevolent 
 ruler, and asserts most inconsistently on the other, 
 that there is every reason to hope, that, if man endeav- 
 ors to make the same universe better than he finds it, 
 he has the amplest encouragement for perpetual prog- 
 ress and certain success. 
 
 It might seem to be a useless and thankless under- 
 taking to dwell so long upon an argument which is so 
 perverse and unsatisfactory as this. It is, indeed, in 
 every respect unsatisfactory : it is unsatisfactory as a 
 statement of the theory which the author takes such 
 useless pains to refute ; it is unsatisfactory as an argu- 
 ment for the views which the author asserts ; while, as 
 an argument against the benevolence of an unlimited 
 Creator, it is pre-eminently superficial and dogmatic. 
 In two respects, however, the essay is very significant : 
 (1) the author attaches great importance to its rea- 
 sonings and doctrines, as is most evident from the con- 
 fidence with which he refers to this essay in the two 
 which follow it, as further developments of his religious 
 philosophy ; (2) it also expresses the creed of a school 
 which is becoming not inconsiderable, even among 
 English and American writers, and is likely to prove 
 a somewhat formidable antagonist, even to a wholesome 
 and hopeful theism. 
 
 The essay is also instructive, as we have already inti- 
 mated, as showing how completely inadequate is Mr. 
 Mill's metaphysical system for the construction of a 
 satisfactory or even a fixed philosophy of religion. 
 Mr. Mill makes no show of his philosophical theory in 
 his reasonings. He rather conceals it from view, as he 
 is apt to do. He now and then even abandons it, and 
 reasons from the ordinary principles of conscience and 
 common sense. But he is none the less completely 
 
JOHN STUABT MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN 175 
 
 swayed by its influence. To us it is no matter of 
 wonder that a system made up of associational psy- 
 chology, empirical metaphysics, prudential ethics, and 
 necessitarian fatalism, should be incompetent to lay the 
 foundations or rear the superstructure of a religious 
 theory of the universe. Mr. Mill has no need to ob- 
 trude upon our attention the peculiarities of his instru- 
 ment and method. The results make them but too 
 conspicuous. A telescope which stands upon an un- 
 stable pedestal, and is furnished with imperfect lenses, 
 and moved by imperfect machinery, must of necessity 
 give images with vague outlines and blurred surfaces. 
 Mr. Mill's philosophy appears to bad advantage when 
 it is applied in the service of a science of nature con- 
 sidered as the aggregate of finite, physical, and spiritual 
 existence. It is not surprising that it should fail alto- 
 gether to justify the belief in a self-existent Originator 
 and Moral Ruler of this finite universe, who is un- 
 limited in power and perfect in goodness. 
 
 The weakness of Mr. Mill's philosophy is singularly 
 conspicuous in the reasonings of both father and son 
 in respect to the goodness of God. We learn from the 
 autobiography of the son, that there was no opinion 
 to which the father adhered more positively than that 
 the universe was to a certain extent under the control of 
 some principle or source of evil which limits and inter- 
 feres with the benevolence of the Creator. He was led to 
 this conclusion by the argument in u Butler's Analogy." 
 This argument was, in his view, decisive to the con- 
 clusion that the same difficulties which inhere in the 
 scriptural representations of God are found in the 
 moral administration of the universe. For a while 
 the argument satisfied him that the revelations in the 
 Scriptures were from God, and ought to command his 
 confidence and his complacency. But, on further reflec- 
 
176 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 tion, he found himself drawn back to the more radical 
 conclusion, that the administration of nature itself could 
 not be vindicated to his reason and conscience, except 
 on the theory that the benevolence of God is in some 
 way thwarted and controlled by the limitations of his 
 power. This doctrine was held with fanatical dogma- 
 tism by the father, and was literally inculcated by his 
 hard and positive temper into the receptive and plastic 
 nature of the son. It is the strong and ever re-appear- 
 ing warp of the argument in these essays, into and 
 athwart which are wrought all the minor arguments 
 which make up the tissue. Even at the very close of 
 the last essay, after the ample and almost pathetic con- 
 cessions to Christian theism which he makes, as it 
 would seem, out of the gentle and truth-loving im- 
 pulses of his better nature, he gives as his last thought 
 to the world, that in addition to the other moving influ- 
 ences to love and duty which proceed from God, and 
 Christ, and immortality, the motive should not be over- 
 looked, that, by our personal love and duty, we may give 
 aid and sympathy to God himself in the unequal con- 
 flict which he is maintaining with the inevitable and 
 persistent evil. 
 
 In all this argument, as conducted by both father 
 and son, there seems not to have been the faintest 
 approach to a suspicion that the difficulty in the way 
 of receiving the doctrine of a benevolent God was cre- 
 ated by the bald and outspoken necessitarianism of 
 their psychological philosophy. The associational psy- 
 chology involves by a logical necessity the conclusion 
 that every man's character and actions are the product 
 of circumstances. It necessarily excludes the possi- 
 bility of individual responsibility in any proper sense 
 of the phrase. Any science of sociology, and any phi- 
 losophy of history, would be impossible, in the judgment 
 
JOHN STUABT MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 177 
 
 of Mr. James Mill, Mr. John Stuart Mill, and Mr. John 
 Morley, unless every individual man and all the socie- 
 ties of men were formed by the environment of each 
 according to laws the operation of which is as fixed 
 and inevitable as is the operation of gravitation and 
 chemical affinity. The distinction between fatalism 
 and necessity made by Mr. Stuart Mill is designed to 
 meet a difficulty which is simply practical, and does 
 not alter in the least his theory of man's responsibility, 
 and of his consequent moral liabilities. 
 
 Now, it ought to have been no secret to any of these 
 gentlemen, that the majority of theists who have at- 
 tempted to explain and vindicate the divine goodness, 
 have derived most of their arguments from the essen- 
 tial nature of freedom as the necessary condition of 
 moral responsibility. It was entirely a proper question 
 for them to discuss, whether or not these arguments 
 were pertinent or satisfactory ; but it was not left to 
 their option as courteous or even as well-informed 
 critics to leave this class of arguments unnoticed, or to 
 ignore their existence and importance, as matters of 
 philosophical history. An impartial critic will readily 
 see, that it must make the greatest possible difference 
 in the judgments which we form of God's benevolence, 
 whether we do or do not include, as an essential element 
 to be considered, the reality and the importance of in- 
 dividual responsibility, and that a reasoner who denies 
 the freedom which is its essential condition, and accepts 
 in its place the doctrine of necessity, is driven by a 
 logical necessity to the conclusion, that God is either 
 not supreme in goodness or not unlimited in power. 
 But Mr. Mill had never the capacity to look at any 
 argument from any other point of view than that which 
 his own philosophy permitted. The weak and false and 
 vacillating conclusions which he so often reached, very 
 
178 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 often illustrate nothing so strikingly as the uncertainty 
 or the falseness of his underlying philosophy. 
 
 The second essay, on " The Utility of Religion," is less 
 speculative in its character than the essay on " Nature." 
 And yet it is scarcely less important as an exposition of 
 certain practical features of his religious philosophy. 
 The drift of its argument is against the almost universal 
 impression, that some form of positive religion is useful 
 and even necessary for the moral well-being of man. 
 The author, in opposition to this view, contends that 
 many of the elevating and restraining influences usually 
 ascribed to religion alone, are in fact due to the influence 
 of authority, by which the principles and impulses of 
 men are so largely moulded. Authority, he urges, can be 
 exercised as efficiently without as with religious motives ; 
 overlooking very strangely, as it seems to us, the fact 
 that the force and energy of authority must be intensi- 
 fied when the authority of God is superadded to that 
 of any and all human beings. Even if it were conceded 
 that the force from these two sources was similar in 
 kind, it might still remain true, that the authority of 
 religion is not only useful but indispensable. Mr. Mill 
 urges next, that education has done vastly more than 
 religion in elevating the human race, and that the Gre- 
 cian states especially are examples of what education 
 can do with the least possible assistance from any reli- 
 gious force. He also contends that public opinion exerts 
 a potent formative influence upon the character, over- 
 looking the often unnoticed yet always energetic part 
 which religion has uniformly played in moulding and 
 animating both education and public opinion. Next, he 
 borrows from Mr. Bentham an argument, the object of 
 which is to show, that the influence of religion is con- 
 spicuously weak in deterring men from perjury, duelling, 
 and illicit sexual intercourse, — an argument of which 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 179 
 
 it is difficult to see the force, so long as decisive evi- 
 dence is not adduced, that men who are manifestly 
 swayed by religious influences are as little restrained as 
 other men when tempted to these three forms of sin. 
 That religious motives are very often impotent to deter 
 many from these offences, proves nothing except that 
 temptations to commit them are specially powerful with 
 the majority of the race. The special power of religion 
 to sustain men under severe persecution and even ex- 
 treme torture, is disposed of by referring it to " a divine 
 enthusiasm, — a self-forgetting devotion to an idea; a 
 state of exalted feeling by no means peculiar to religion, 
 but which it is the privilege of every great cause to 
 inspire," — which is met by the query whether religion 
 is not, in its motives and inspiration, the greatest of all 
 causes. From these general considerations the author 
 advances to the special position, that if it be granted, 
 as it should be in all fairness, that, in the past, religion 
 has been efficient and necessary in teaching and enfor- 
 cing morality, its aid is required no longer, for the 
 reason, that, when ethical truth is accepted and ap- 
 proved, it shines by its own light, and attracts by its 
 own radiance. Religion is no longer useful, because 
 the occasion for its influence has been outgrown. Its 
 addresses to the fears of men may be laid aside ; and 
 it is desirable they should be dispensed with as ignoble, 
 and consequently, in the present state of society, as 
 any thing but useful. Its power to elevate and kindle 
 the imagination may be conceded, and its actual influ- 
 ence in this direction may be gratefully acknowledged. 
 But, if the imagination can be stimulated and purified 
 by ideal pictures, the same results will follow. 
 
 " It has still to be considered, whether, in order to obtain this 
 good, it is necessary to travel beyond the boundaries of the world 
 which we inhabit ; or whether the idealization of our earthly life, 
 
180 JOHN STUABT MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 the cultivation of a high conception of what it may be made, is not 
 capable of supplying a poetry, and, in the best sense of the word, a 
 religion, equally fitted to exalt the feelings, and (with the same 
 aid from education) still better calculated to ennoble the conduct 
 than any belief respecting the unseen powers." 
 
 That present and finite objects and motives are capa- 
 ble of producing these effects, is argued as follows : — 
 
 " When we consider how ardent a sentiment, in favorable circum- 
 stances of education, the love of country has become, we cannot 
 judge it impossible that the love of that larger country, the world, 
 may be nursed into similar strength, both as a source of elevated 
 emotion and as a principle of duty." " This exalted morality would 
 not depend for its ascendency on any hope of reward ; but the 
 reward which might be looked for, and the thought of which would 
 be a consolation in suffering and a support in moments of weakness, 
 would not be a problematical future existence, but the approbation, 
 in this, of those whom we respect, and ideally of all those, dead or 
 living, whom we admire or venerate." 
 
 The author therefore infers, that, for all the exigen- 
 cies of men, the Religion of Humanity is better than 
 Supernatural Religion of any kind : — 
 
 " For, in the first place, it is disinterested. It carries the thoughts 
 and feelings out of self, and fixes them on an unselfish object, loved 
 and pursued for its own sake. The religions which deal in prom- 
 ises and threats regarding a future life, do exactly the contrary : 
 they fasten down the thoughts to the person's own posthumous 
 interests," etc. 
 
 " Secondly, it is an immense abatement from the worth of the 
 old religions as a means of elevating and improving human charac- 
 ter, that it is nearly, if not quite, impossible for them to produce 
 their best moral effects, unless we suppose a certain torpidity, if 
 not positive twist, in the intellectual faculties. For it is impossible 
 that any one who habitually thinks, and who is unable to blunt 
 his inquiring intellect by sophistry, should be able without misgiv- 
 ing to go on ascribing absolute perfection to the author and ruler 
 of so clumsily made and capriciously governed a creation as this 
 planet, and the life of its inhabitants." 
 
JOHN STUABT MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 181 
 
 If a man, to adjust the strife between his moral con- 
 victions and his faith, accepts the conclusion that mo- 
 rality in himself and in God are different attributes, — 
 
 " The worship of the Deity ceases to be the adoration of ab- 
 stract moral perfection. It becomes the bowing down to a gigan- 
 tic image of something not fit for us to imitate. It is the worship 
 of power only." 
 
 The religion of humanity has the still further advan- 
 tage, that it relieves men with intellectual and moral 
 independence, from believing that God, as represented 
 in the Scriptures, can possibly be good. 
 
 " He who can believe these [and the characteristics of God as 
 set forth in and through the Scriptures] to be the intentional 
 shortcomings of a perfectly good Being, must impose silence on 
 every prompting of the sense of goodness and justice, as received 
 among men." 
 
 " Only one form of belief in the supernatural — one only theory 
 respecting the origin and government of the universe — stands 
 wholly clear, both of intellectual contradiction and of moral ob- 
 liquity. It is that which, resigning irrevocably the idea of an 
 omnipotent Creator, regards Nature and Life, not as the expression 
 throughout of the moral character and purpose of the Deity, but 
 as the product of a struggle between contriving goodness and an 
 intractable material, as was believed by Plato, or a principle of 
 evil, as was the doctrine of the Manicheans." "Against the moral 
 tendency of this creed no possible objection can lie : it can pro- 
 duce, on whoever can succeed in believing it, no other than an 
 ennobling effect." 
 
 The author concedes that the supernatural religions 
 possess one advantage over the religion of humanity, 
 in the prospect they hold out to the individual of a life 
 after death. But he urges that man has no rational 
 desire for continued existence in itself, and that, as man 
 rises in intellectual culture and in unselfish desire, he 
 will be trained by degrees, rather to prefer annihilation 
 to immortality. Or, as he expresses himself, — 
 
182 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 " It seems to me not only possible but probable, that in a higher, 
 and, above all, in a happier, condition of human life, not annihila- 
 tion but immortality may be the burdensome idea ; and that hu- 
 man nature, though pleased with the present, and by no means 
 impatient to quit it, would find comfort and not sadness in the 
 thought that it is not chained through eternity to a conscious ex- 
 istence, which it cannot be assured that it will always wish to 
 preserve." 
 
 To a conclusion so lame and impotent as this, is the 
 author reduced in order to sustain his position that su- 
 pernatural religion is no longer required for the moral 
 elevation or the happiness of man. As man- does not 
 need religion for his moral culture, because, though he 
 may have risen by means of its aid, he has outgrown the 
 capacity of any longer receiving help from its authority 
 or its inspiration ; so he does not require religion for 
 his comfort, because he does not care for the immor- 
 tality which it reveals and promises. It is a significant 
 fact, that similar sentiments in disdain of immortality 
 are rapidly becoming current among certain literary 
 circles. It is worth notice, how those who cherish and 
 defend them assume that they are more unselfish than 
 the vulgar longings for continued personal existence ; 
 how pantheists and empiricists both unite in rejecting 
 with supercilious pride or affected indifference the gift 
 of eternal life, if it is to be received as a gift of God. 
 Mr. John Morley uses all the pomp of words and the 
 splendor of pictorial imagery to set forth the bless- 
 edness of prospective annihilation and the peace of 
 anticipated non-existence, in a memorable and most 
 eloquent passage, which concludes in these words : — 
 
 " And a man will be already in no mean paradise if, at the hour 
 of sunset, a good hope can fall upon him like harmonies of music, 
 that the earth shall still be fair, and the happiness of every feel- 
 ing creature still receive a constant augmentation, and each good 
 cause yet find worthy defenders, when the memory of his own poor 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 183 
 
 name and personality have long been blotted out of the brief 
 recollection of men forever." 
 
 George Eliot expresses the same in a poetic prayer, 
 the splendid imagery and elevated moral aspirations of 
 which are impotent to weaken the impression upon the 
 reader that the language of inspiring hope is made to 
 do service to depressing despair. 
 
 " Oh may I join the choir invisible 
 Of those immortal dead who live again 
 In minds made better by their presence ! live 
 In pulses stirred to generosity, 
 In deeds of daring rectitude, in scorn 
 For miserable aims that end with self, 
 In thoughts sublime that pierce the night like stars, 
 And with their mild persistence urge man's search 
 To vaster issues . . . 
 
 This is life to come, 
 Which martyred men have made more glorious 
 For us who strive to follow." 
 
 The last and the longest of Mill's Essays is for many 
 reasons the most interesting and significant of the 
 three. Its title is " Theism ; " but it treats also of im- 
 mortality, of revelation, of miracles, of Christianity, 
 and Christ, and of the beneficent and powerful in- 
 fluences of supernatural religion as compared with the 
 religion of humanity. It was written only a few years 
 before the death of Mr. Mill. It indicates a fairer in- 
 tellectual spirit, and a more kindly feeling toward 
 Christ and Christian believers than the first two essays. 
 In respect to many points, the author retains and re-as- 
 serts the same opinions contained in these earlier discus- 
 sions. In respect to others, he very considerably modifies 
 his opinions. The argument for the being and attributes 
 of God is scrutinized with great earnestness and logical 
 acumen from the point of view given in Mr. Mill's phi- 
 
184 JOHN STUABT MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 losophy and psychology as re-enforced by the doctrines 
 of the conservation of force and the struggle for ex- 
 istence. There are philosophers, however, who do 
 not accept his philosophy. There are those who do not 
 believe that the belief in causation and in the unity 
 of the universe is derived from experience or verified 
 by experiment. Such might be willing to concede, that 
 on the basis of any philosophy whatever, whether it be 
 intuitional or experiential, the existence of God cannot 
 be proved by induction or demonstrated by syllogism. 
 To such, Mr. Mill's failure to reach intellectual satisfac- 
 tion by an argument, only adds to the demonstration 
 furnished by many similar failures, that truths like 
 these are incapable of argumentation. But Mr. Mill's 
 objection to accepting the truth as d priori, that it is 
 deduced from an idea or an instinct, would only excite 
 the wonder, if it did not the ridicule, of any intelligent 
 advocate of this theory as held in modern times. For 
 a practised controversialist, Mr. Mill is singularly inca- 
 pable of justly appreciating and faithfully representing 
 the views of any school except his own, and almost uni- 
 formly fails to conceive how any man can possibly 
 reason or think in any other way than he does. That 
 the belief in an intelligent originator is the necessary 
 assumption to the belief in an orderly universe, and 
 therefore the condition of all special induction, is a 
 proposition which Mr. Mill would seem to be incapable 
 of understanding, so far as to conceive how any sane 
 man should hold it. That a man with these limitations 
 should fail to find what he calls an argument decisively 
 proving that God exists, is to us altogether intelligible. 
 Of the natural attributes of God, he asserts that om- 
 nipotence is incompatible with design, — an old asser- 
 tion, which gains no new force as repeated by Mr. Mill. 
 He adds, that if matter and force are eternal, as would 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 185 
 
 seem to be probable, we find in this an additional reason 
 for believing that the power of God is limited. When 
 he adds that there is no decisive proof that God is 
 absolutely omniscient, and that God's foreknowledge 
 need not extend to all future events, he simply expands 
 and enforces what he had already announced in the 
 essay upon " Nature." In respect to the benevolence 
 of God, he re-affirms what he asserted so positively in 
 that essay, but with far less bitterness of spirit. 
 He gives the following as 
 
 " The net results of natural theology on the question of the di- 
 vine attributes. A Being of great but limited power, how or by 
 what limited we cannot even conjecture; of great, and perhaps 
 unlimited, intelligence, but perhaps, also, more narrowly limited 
 than his power ; who desires, and pays some regard to, the happi- 
 ness of his creatures, but who seems to have other motives of action 
 which he cares more for, and who can hardly be supposed to have 
 created the universe for that purpose alone." 
 
 Leaving the doctrine of God as so far established, 
 the author proceeds to the discussion of immortality. 
 The conclusions which he reaches are, that, apart from 
 the designs of the Creator, there is no evidence for the 
 future existence of the soul from its own essence, or 
 from its aspirations or desires. If we reason from the 
 power or goodness of God, both of which have been 
 proved to be limited, we can infer only, that there is 
 room to hope that both the one and the other may pos- 
 sibly grant this gift to man, provided it would really 
 be beneficial to him. 
 
 Strangely enough, Mr. Mill next proposes the prob- 
 lem of revelation in a general sense, including the 
 possibility, the credibility, and the actuality of miracles. 
 The chapter on this topic is singularly fair and even- 
 handed, and in the discussion of this subject the author 
 shows himself an able expounder of the principles 
 
186 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 of evidence. Possibly his philosophical theory of the 
 grounds of our faith in the laws of nature and in the 
 power of God, may have had some influence in deter- 
 mining his positions. The conclusion which he draws 
 is this, " that miracles have no claim whatever to the 
 character of historical facts, and are wholly invalid as 
 evidences of any revelation." 
 
 Thus far Mr. Mill seems to proceed in a line of 
 thought in which he is, with here and there an excep- 
 tion, consistent with himself. But in the "general 
 result," in which he proposes to gather together the 
 several lines of argument, and to bring them to a con- 
 sistent and well-supported conclusion, he opens a new 
 line of thought, and, as it were, turns back upon and 
 reverses his previous course of argumentation. This 
 general result covers less than fifteen pages; but in 
 these few pages Mr. Mill presents himself in a new 
 attitude, and seems to reason from a new point of view r 
 and in a direction which is opposed to that of the entire 
 volume. The sentiments expressed in this general re- 
 sult are doubly interesting from the fact that this is the 
 last utterance of the author upon a subject which had 
 occupied many earnest thoughts during his lifetime. 
 
 The new point of view is what he himself, in the 
 second essay, has somewhat naivety described as " the 
 theism of the imagination and feelings," as not incom- 
 patible with the "scepticism of the understanding." 
 How he could possibly satisfy himself with any conclu- 
 sions reached from this point of view, especially after 
 the abundant and almost passionate protests which he 
 urged in all these essays, against reasoning from what 
 he calls " instincts " and " ideas," it is not our duty to 
 explain. That he did do this is evident in almost every 
 line of this concluding chapter. That he did it delib- 
 erately and upon a theory is manifest from his auto- 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 187 
 
 biography, in which he speaks of his " conversion " 
 to the position that it is absolutely essential to culti- 
 vate and exercise the sensibilities and the imagination for 
 the sake of their effect upon character and happiness. 
 The theory, as he held it, not only entirely overlooks 
 any necessary, or even any conceivable, connection be- 
 tween the sensibilities and the imagination and intellect- 
 ual conviction, but it proceeds on the supposition, that 
 the truth for which the understanding fails to provide, 
 or which it is forced entirely to reject, may be accepted 
 by the imagination and embraced by the feelings. In 
 a similar spirit Tyndall asserts, in the address delivered 
 at Belfast, — 
 
 " For science, however, no exclusive claim is here made : you 
 are not urged to erect it into an idol. The inexorable advance of 
 man's understanding in the path of knowledge, and those un- 
 quenchable claims of his moral and emotional nature which the 
 understanding can never satisfy, are here equally set forth." . . . 
 " ' Fill thy heart with it,' said Goethe, ' and then name it as thou 
 wilt.'" 
 
 It is worth noticing, as a sign of the tendencies of 
 the times, that this gross form of sentimentalism seems 
 to be epidemic among a very large class of anti-super- 
 naturalists and negative thinkers. Even Mr. John 
 Morley, who in the " Fortnightly Review " for Novem- 
 ber, 1874, and January, 1875, argues very earnestly 
 and ably against the sentimental argumentations of 
 Mr. Mill, does yet draw very largely upon the imagi- 
 nation for the gorgeous drapery which he requires to 
 hide and to adorn the repulsive hideousness of his own 
 ghastly creed, and places great reliance upon the no- 
 blest and the tenderest emotions, which in their nature 
 are stronger than death, to persuade the soul that 
 shrinks from the extinction of its being, that it can 
 only attain to the apotheosis of self-forgetfulness by 
 
188 JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 being willing to forego the hope of immortality. George 
 Eliot even, depends upon the richness of her own 
 affluent and soaring imagination, and the pathos of her 
 singularly tender and sympathizing heart; for the splen- 
 did imagery and moving appeals which almost reconcile 
 herself and her reader to the abnegation of the most 
 exalted hopes and the noblest faiths of human nature. 
 
 The conclusions which Mr. Mill sets forth in this 
 remarkable conclusion are, that "the whole domain of 
 the supernatural is removed from the region of belief 
 into that of simple hope ; and in that, for any thing 
 we can see, it is likely always to remain." He then 
 asks, " whether the indulgence of hope, in a region of 
 imagination only," " is irrational, and ought to be dis- 
 couraged as a departure from the rational principle of 
 regulating our feelings, as well as opinions, strictly by 
 evidence?" To this question of his own asking, he 
 replies, that human life stands greatly in need of " a 
 wider range and greater height of aspiration for itself 
 and its destination," " and that it is the part of wisdom 
 to make the most of any, even small, probabilities on 
 the subject, which furnish imagination with any footing 
 to support itself upon." " On these principles, it ap- 
 pears to me that the indulgence of a hope with regard 
 to the universe and the destiny of man after death, 
 while we recognize as a clear truth that we have no 
 ground for more than a hope, is legitimate and philo- 
 sophically defensible." What Mill called only a hope, 
 resting on the slightest and scarcely preponderating 
 probabilities, others regard as so nearly self-evident 
 as to be the most trustworthy truth. The sentiments 
 which he would cherish for the sake of their elevating 
 tendency and their kindling power, others would say 
 were justified by the most obvious and decisive analo- 
 gies. What he would inculcate as worthy and uplifting 
 
JOHN STXJABT MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 189 
 
 sentiments, others would enforce as the natural result 
 of the most elevating truths. The processes which are 
 often dignified by the appellation of faith, as an activity 
 justified by reason, which also quickens the imagination 
 and kindles the sensibility, Mill would lower to the 
 regions of the imagination and sensibility, with the 
 faintest and feeblest suggestions of reason. But, while 
 Mill remands the truths and faiths of religion to the 
 limbo of mere possibility, he fully concedes their benefi- 
 cent influence, even where they are regarded as only 
 imaginary ideals. In the second essay, he had elabo- 
 rately argued the point, that the need of religion is so 
 completely outgrown as to have made it utterly useless. 
 In the conclusion of the third essay, he concedes, that 
 although as a matter of faith, and as requiring and 
 resting on objective truth, religion may be outgrown, 
 yet, even " as presenting definite and elevating ideals 
 to the imagination, it is infinitely precious to man- 
 kind." He dwells upon the familiarity of " the imagi- 
 nation with the conception of a morally perfect Being, 
 and the habit of taking the approbation of such a 
 Being as the norma, or standard, to which to refer, and 
 by which to regulate our own characters and lives." 
 He even concedes "that the undoubting belief of the 
 real existence of a Being who realizes even our best 
 ideas of perfection, and our being in the hands of that 
 Being as the Ruler of the universe, gives an increase of 
 force to these feelings beyond what they can receive 
 from reference to a merely ideal conception." This 
 undoubting belief is not, indeed, warranted by evi- 
 dence. Those who carefully weigh the considerations 
 for and against, must lose somewhat of this " increase 
 of force to these feelings." But what they lose in 
 respect to force, they gain in the purity of their ideal. 
 They find no moral contradictions in the object of 
 
190 JOHN STUAET MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 
 
 their faith. If they cannot believe in a God of infinite 
 power, they can believe in a God who is as good as his 
 limited power will allow. 
 
 Even the absolute unbeliever can avail himself of 
 the ideal Christ which Christianity presents, and which 
 can never be lost to the world, whatever may be thought 
 of the origin of the ideal or of the history which 
 records it. 
 
 " Whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criti- 
 cism, Christ is still left, — a unique figure, not more unlike all his 
 precursors than all his followers." " But Christ stands alone ; for 
 who among his disciples or among their proselytes was capable of 
 inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life 
 and character revealed in the Gospels ? " 
 
 Christ must have been " in the very first rank of the 
 men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast." 
 u When this pre-eminent genius is combined with the 
 qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and 
 martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth, 
 religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in 
 pitching on this man as the ideal representative and 
 guide of humanity ; nor, even now, would it be easy, 
 even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of 
 the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, 
 than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve 
 his life." 
 
 When we add the possibility that Christ was more 
 than this, i.e., u a man charged with a special, express, 
 and unique commission from God, to lead mankind to 
 truth and virtue," we may conclude that the influences 
 of religion on the character are well worth preserving, 
 and that " what they lack in direct strength, as com- 
 pared with those of a firmer belief, is more than com- 
 pensated by the greater truth and rectitude of the 
 morality which they sustain." 
 
JOHN STUART MILL AS A THEOLOGIAN. 191 
 
 With these concessions, Mill leaves his readers. That 
 he should make them, is a far higher and more decisive 
 testimony to the sensibility of Mill, as a man, to the ne- 
 cessities of his own moral nature, than to his sagacity as 
 a philosopher and his self-consistency as a logician. His 
 admiring or apologetic disciples may explain or excuse 
 these concessions as they will ; but his impartial though 
 not unkindly critics cannot fail to find in his last utter- 
 ances upon religion a decisive, because an unconscious 
 and even a reluctant, testimony to the truth and impor- 
 tance of Christian theism. 
 
 The autobiography of Mr. Mill, and those three 
 Essays upon Religion, are his last legacies of thought 
 and feeling. The autobiography leaves him " in a cot- 
 tage as close as possible to the place where Mrs. Mill 
 was buried ; " declaring that her memory was to him a 
 religion, and her approbation the standard by which he 
 endeavored to regulate his life. His Essays on Religion 
 conclude with his honest testimony to the value of 
 faith in a personal God, and a glowing tribute to Christ, 
 as the perfect ideal of human excellence, and possibly 
 as an extraordinarily furnished and commissioned mes- 
 senger from God to man. Both these volumes are re- 
 markable for many things, but for none which are more 
 worthy to be pondered than these passages. 
 
VII. 
 
 PROFESSOR TYNDALL' S LAST DELIVER- 
 ANCE. 1 
 
 Professor Tyndall has the reputation, and deserv- 
 edly, of being one of the most brilliant expounders of 
 modern physics among living Englishmen. He is clear 
 and condensed, vivacious and eloquent. It were hard 
 to say whether insight or imagination, method or dic- 
 tion, has the most to do with his success. Though his 
 themes are limited, he rarely repeats himself. The 
 order of his thoughts is usually novel, and his illustra- 
 tions and language are always fresh and varied. For 
 these reasons he is always welcome as a lecturer, and 
 he rarely disappoints his hearers. He shares with Mr. 
 Huxley the honor of having demonstrated, each in his 
 own way, that a discipline of classical culture, or of 
 early literary studies, is by no means essential to the 
 training of an effective popular speaker or lecturer upon 
 the severest ^topics of science. We say each in his way ; 
 for the excellencies of Mr. Tyndall and Mr. Huxley 
 are unlike, — Mr. Tyndall being strong in illustration, 
 ornament, and suggestiveness ; while Mr. Huxley excels 
 in directness, simplicity, and force. 
 
 The specialty of Mr. Tyndall, as is well known, is 
 that department of physics which includes the kindred 
 
 1 Science and Man. Presidential Address, delivered before the 
 Birmingham and Midland Institute, Oct. 1, 1877, with additions. By- 
 Professor John Tyndall, LL.D., F.R.S. Fortnightly Review, Nov. 1, 
 1877. —The New Englander, January, 1878. 
 192 
 
PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 193 
 
 agents of light, heat, and electricity. Mr. Huxley is 
 eminently a physiologist, — both human and compara- 
 tive. Neither of the two, however, confines himself to 
 the specialties named, especially in their popular lec- 
 tures and addresses ; both being more than usually fond 
 of following out the suggestions of physics and physi- 
 ology in respect to the nature of the soul, the progress 
 and destiny of man, and the origin and end of the 
 physical universe. In plain English, both these gentle- 
 men are very fond of teaching the public metaphysics 
 and theology after what they please to call the methods 
 and conclusions of physical science. We do not alto- 
 gether blame them for this. The desire and effort show 
 a generous recognition of other phenomena than those 
 which are included within their own departments, and 
 the rooted conviction that all truth is one, and there- 
 fore it is impossible that any science of nature should 
 conflict with the other forms of scientific truth, or offend 
 any rational conviction. Professor Tyndall has appro- 
 priated to himself a somewhat wider field of discussion 
 than Professor Huxley ; having discussed very frequently 
 the method of scientific inquiry with a sagacious ap- 
 preciation of the problem, and with commendable, if not 
 always consistent, sagacity in solving it. From the 
 metaphysics of induction, he has very naturally pro- 
 ceeded to discuss the nature and essence of the soul, 
 and has consequently yielded to the further impulse to 
 inquire what science teaches concerning freedom, mo- 
 rality, immortality, prayer, and God. All this has been 
 done under the impulse of an implicit faith in what he 
 calls science. His confidence concerning his mastery of 
 what he calls the known, and the analogies which it sug- 
 gests in respect to the unknown ; his predictions of what 
 is the inevitable tendency of modern thinking in respect 
 to every one of the topics named, and the eager haste 
 
194 PROFESSOR TTNDALL 'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 with which he seeks to place himself among the fore- 
 most of its heralds, — are contagiously exhilarating, even 
 to the looker-on who neither accepts his data nor his 
 inferences. How much more must the lecturer himself 
 enjoy the glowing excitement with which he sweeps 
 along his triumphant course, and the responsive enthu- 
 siasm of his confiding and admiring audiences. It is 
 not surprising, as from year to year he grows more con- 
 fident in his psychological and theological faith, and is 
 more and more aware of the power which he wields, 
 that he should take occasion as often as once a year to 
 announce with befitting eloquence and ardor the ad- 
 vances by which the thoughtful men of the age are fast 
 proceeding towards the mastery of the universe by 
 scientific thought after truly scientific methods. On 
 the 1st of October last he gave one of these confessions 
 of his faith before the Birmingham and Midland Insti- 
 tute, of which he is president. It was characterized by 
 his usual gracefulness in the introduction, and by his 
 never-failing ingenuity in the development, and by 
 more than usually startling frankness in the conclusion. 
 In reading such a discourse, we very naturally ask, Of 
 what topic does it treat? We confess that this is a 
 question which it is not easy to answer. It might al- 
 most seem at first that it treats de omni scibili et qui- 
 busdam aliis, so wide is the range of subjects which it 
 passes in review. It will be safe to say, in the author's 
 own words, that he begins by asserting " that it is now 
 generally admitted that the man of to-day is the child 
 and product of incalculable antecedent time : his 
 physical and intellectual textures have been woven for 
 him during his passage through phases of history and 
 forms of existence which lead the mind back to an 
 abysmal past," and that he concludes with the equally 
 confident assertions, " Thus following the lead of phys- 
 
PROFESSOR TYNDALL >S LAST DELIVERANCE. 195 
 
 ical science, we are brought without solution of con- 
 tinuity into the presence of problems, which, as usually 
 classified, lie entirely outside the domain of physics. 
 To these problems thoughtful and penetrative minds 
 are now applying those methods of research which in 
 physical science have proved their truth by their fruits. 
 There is on all hands a growing repugnance to invoke 
 the supernatural in accounting for the phenomena of 
 human life ; and the thoughtful minds just referred to, 
 finding no trace of any other origin, are driven to seek 
 in the interaction of social forces the genesis and devel- 
 opment of man's moral nature. If they succeed in 
 their search, — and I think they are sure to succeed, — 
 social duty will be raised to a higher level of significance ; 
 and the deepening sense of social duty will, it is to be 
 hoped, lessen, if not obliterate, the strife and heart-burn- 
 ings which now beset and disfigure our social life." The 
 terminus a quo is evolution as an admitted fact of the 
 widest conceivable application. The terminus ad quern 
 is a rounded scientific theory which excludes all faith 
 in the supernatural, and any possible scientific occasion 
 for God ; involving, as a corollary, the development from 
 society of all the relations and sanctions of moral obli- 
 gation. This faith is fitted to elevate practical morality, 
 and to deliver social life forever from its strifes and 
 hatreds. All these positions except one had been 
 asserted or implied in Mr. Tyndall's previous deliver- 
 ances. The only advanced position which he takes in 
 this discourse is the very familiar dogma of Hobbes, 
 which has been transfigured by Herbert Spencer, that 
 moral distinctions are created or evolved from social 
 relations, and are sanctioned by social forces. " But, if 
 this is all that is new in this address, why notice it at 
 all ? We have had enough of all this at Belfast and on 
 other occasions, and the staple of such reasoning has 
 
196 PBOFESSOR TYNDALL >S LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 been so often used that it is becoming somewhat thread- 
 bare." But this does not follow. Mr. Tyndall never 
 repeats himself. If his logic is in principle unchanged, 
 the form in which it is presented always varies. Every 
 time he rises to argue on these extra-physical themes, 
 he adduces what he considers new facts, and employs 
 fresh and novel illustrations. He invariably aims to 
 strengthen the most familiar and oftenest-used chain of 
 argument by some links freshly forged. Moreover, he 
 is sensitively alive to what the men of these times are 
 thinking of, — so sensitively, that he cannot rest content 
 with old arguments when new ones are required. He is 
 too ingenuous not to confess, or at least not to betray, 
 his sense of the weakness of some of the positions which 
 he had previously taken, and too ingenious not to at- 
 tempt to strengthen them. The occasional discourses 
 of so sensitive and frank a thinker as he, are also in a 
 sort the outspeaking of what is going on in the minds of 
 scores and hundreds of men who want the honesty or the 
 opportunity to speak their minds as freely as he speaks 
 for them. What is more to the purpose, they declare 
 the secret misgivings and the more than half-formed 
 creed of multitudes of younger men who know not how 
 to answer the reasons of an argument from the conclu- 
 sions of which they shrink. These are the reasons why 
 we think it worth while to subject this eloquent dis- 
 course to a careful examination. We shall do this with 
 the same frankness which our excellent friend, the 
 author, always exhibits, and we hope with equal fidelity 
 to the scientific spirit by which he is animated. 
 
 We observe, before the argument begins, a little skir- 
 mishing, the design of which is not at first view very 
 obvious. In speaking of the dependence of the indi- 
 vidual upon the forces of the past, Professor Tyndall 
 says that Boyle regarded the universe as a machine, but 
 
PBOFESSOR TTNBALL 'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 197 
 
 Mr. Carlyle prefers to regard it as a tree, and adds, " A 
 machine may be denned as an organism with life and 
 direction outside a tree may be defined as an organism 
 with life and direction within." This language seems 
 novel. Can a machine be an organism, — and an organ- 
 ism with life ? Surely the common speech of Mr. Tyn- 
 dall has made him forget his philosophy. It seems a 
 pity that his German studies did not suggest to him the 
 well-worn definition from Kant, — from whom he is 
 somewhat fond of quoting commonplaces, — that u an 
 organism is that in which the parts and the whole are 
 respectively means and ends." x How marvellous that 
 this commonplace and yet fundamental conception of 
 physiology should have been so strangely misconceived, 
 through the apparent haste of Mr. Tyndall to give, as he 
 does in the next sentence, an atheistic turn to his very 
 inadequate conception of what an organism is. " I 
 close with the conception of Carlyle. The order and 
 energy of the universe I hold to be inherent, and not 
 imposed from without, — the expression of fixed law, and 
 not of arbitrary will." In this, also, he forgets the patent 
 truth, that, in the judgment of the great majority of 
 scientific thinkers, an organism in its very conception 
 implies intelligence without itself. His confusion of 
 mechanical with organic relations is still more apparent, 
 as he traces the growth of scientific theories from vague 
 anticipations into verified discoveries and fixed methods, 
 and concludes with the remark, which is least of all 
 true in respect to the science of organized existence, 
 that " the interdependence of our day has become quan- 
 
 1 " Ein organisches Product der Natur ist das in welchem alles Zweck 
 und wechselseitig auch Mittel ist." Kritik der Urtheils-Kraft , § 66. To 
 understand the complete significance of this phraseology, the reader 
 must bear in mind that Kant denies that a work of art, i.e., a machine 
 of any sort, can properly be said to be organic or organized. In this 
 doctrine most scientists would agree with him. 
 
198 PBOFESSOB TYNBALL »8 LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 titative, — expressible by numbers, — leading, it must be 
 added, directly into that inexorable reign of law which 
 so many gentle people regard with dread." 
 
 In one aspect, as we have said, the intent of these 
 preliminary movements is not very obvious; but in 
 another it is clear, that they are designed to prepare his 
 hearers for the conclusion to which he directs every 
 position of his subsequent argument, — that the uni- 
 verse of matter and spirit, including, as he concedes, 
 the phenomena of moral conviction and feeling, as also 
 of religious emotion and religious faith, is in every 
 process and manifestation subject to no other than 
 mechanical laws. 
 
 Thus far the movements have been preliminary. The 
 author begins the argument proper with a theme very 
 familiar to himself; viz., the correlation of physical 
 forces. He traces the growth of this theory from the 
 first felicitous conjecture to the demonstrated conclu- 
 sion. He illustrates it by the relations of heat to 
 mechanical work, and their mutual interchange, in ex- 
 amples with which the readers of his other essays and 
 lectures are entirely familiar. He considers next the 
 analogous interchange of decomposition and combustion 
 in the use of the galvanic battery for chemical results ; 
 illustrating by several examples the truth that chemi- 
 cal elements, say hydrogen and oxygen, which are 
 united in combustion at one point in the circuit, are 
 liberated in exact equivalents at the other. Having 
 taken two steps in his argument, he essays a third, and 
 suggests that the same process under similar laws may 
 go on in the body of man. Having demonstrated that 
 heat is interchangeable backwards and forwards with 
 mechanical energy in mathematical equivalents, and 
 that combustion involving heat is in like manner inter- 
 changeable with chemical decompositions, he abruptly 
 
PROFESSOR TYNDALL >S LAST DELIVERANCE, 199 
 
 asks, " Is the animal body, then, to be classed among 
 machines?" The friction-wheel or the galvanic bat- 
 tery only distribute force, — transferring it from one 
 point to another, and varying its manifestations to the 
 senses, — but never creating it. Does the animal body 
 do any thing more ? " When I lift a weight, or throw 
 a stone, or climb a mountain, or wrestle with my com- 
 rade, am I not conscious of actually creating and ex- 
 pending force?" The ingenuity of thus putting his 
 case is altogether admirable. It is as though he had 
 said, The question whether the body is or is not a 
 machine must be decided by the question whether it is 
 capable of generating muscular or mechanical energy. 
 The man who asserts that it only transfers force must 
 own that it is a machine : the man who denies that it 
 is a machine must hold that it can of itself generate, 
 i.e., originate, muscular force. The tyro in logic would 
 recognize the possible fallacy which may lie in the 
 major premise of Mr. Tyndall's disjunctive syllogism. 
 Even did he know little about the subject-matter, he 
 might at least be wary enough to say, I am not pre- 
 pared to say that A is either B or C ; for it may possibly 
 be either B, C, or C -f- D. That is, the human body 
 may be something else than either a generator or a 
 transmuter of force, — it may, perhaps, perform other 
 offices than a friction-wheel or a galvanic battery. 
 Whether Mr. Tyndall does not himself concede this a 
 little farther on, we shall ask in due time. But Mr. 
 Tyndall, having shaped his major premise to suit him- 
 self, proceeds to discuss the minor premise by asking 
 whether the human body originates, i.e., generates, me- 
 chanical force. He answers his own question by an 
 elaborate and varied series of illustrations, all of which 
 are designed to show that mechanical force and heat 
 and chemism are related to one another in the human 
 
200 PROFESSOR TYNDALL 'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 body precisely as in the use of the friction-wheel or 
 the voltaic battery ; i.e., that eating and breathing are 
 simply more refined forms of combustion and decompo- 
 sition, with which heat and motion are correlated. "All 
 this points to the conclusion, that the force we employ 
 in muscular exertion is the force of burning fuel and 
 not of creative will." "The body, in other words, 
 falls into the category of machines." u The matter of 
 the human body is the same as that of the world with- 
 out us, and here we find the forces of the body identi- 
 cal with those of inorganic nature. Just as little as 
 the voltaic battery, is the human body a creator of 
 force. It is an apparatus exquisite and effectual be- 
 yond all others in transforming and distributing the 
 energy with which it is supplied, but it possesses no 
 creative power." We have no disposition to dispute 
 this. We concede, that so far as the production of mus- 
 cular power is concerned, and its transmutation into 
 heat, all this may be true. We question very much, 
 indeed, whether the experiments have been conducted 
 with mathematical exactness, or whether the laws 
 have been formulated with scientific precision, or, as 
 Tyndall phrases it, whether u the interdependence " 
 between the several factors has " become quantitative, 
 — expressible by numbers." But making nothing of 
 this, and conceding that the law of conservation and 
 correlation of muscular force operates as Mr. Tyndall 
 contends, we cannot but inquire whether the human 
 body performs no other offices than these two ; i.e., 
 whether all the functions of life are resolvable into 
 digestion, breathing, walking, climbing, and lifting 
 weights? Mr. Tyndall himself, it would seem, more 
 than half suspects that his machine does something 
 more than transmute force by eating and breathing. 
 After having said, "Thus far every action of the 
 
PROFESSOR TYNDALL >S LAST DELIVERANCE. 201 
 
 organism belongs either to the domain of physics or 
 chemistry," he bethinks himself that the nerves have 
 something to do with the application and direction of 
 force, if not with its generation. These are sensor and 
 motor. But these do not create force, — they do not 
 originate energy, — they simply direct it, " as Mayer says, 
 with admirable lucidity : as an engineer by the motion 
 of his finger in opening a valve, or loosening a detent, 
 can liberate an amount of mechanical energy almost 
 infinite, compared with its exciting cause ; so the nerves, 
 acting on the muscles, can unlock an amount of power 
 out of all proportion to the work done by the nerves 
 themselves. The nerves, according to Mayer, pull the 
 trigger ; but the gunpowder which they ignite is stored 
 in the muscles. This is the view now universally en- 
 tertained." We pass over the concession that has 
 inadvertently dropped from the lips of our author, that 
 work of some sort is done by the nerves themselves, 
 which he had not noticed, and certainly has not shown 
 to be the accumulation or transmission of some occult 
 transformation of heat. We simply observe, that ac- 
 cording to Tyndall and Mayer, and all the scientific 
 world, a special function is accorded to the nerves, — 
 over and above any which the correlation of forces can 
 illustrate, by either mechanical law in the machine, or 
 chemical decomposition in the battery, — and this is a 
 function of directing, i.e., of liberating and detaining, 
 muscular force ; which is illustrated by lifting a valve 
 or pulling a trigger. It were far better illustrated, as 
 it seems to our unsophisticated minds, by the power of 
 a band or gearing to carry motion in a machine, or of a 
 wire to transfer potential motion or potential heat in 
 a battery. It is very evident, that when Mr. Tyndall 
 began his argument, which was to prove that "the 
 body falls under the category of machines," and that 
 
202 PBOFESSOB TYNBALL >S LAST DELIVEBANCE. 
 
 as a machine it generates no force, he does not seem to 
 have thought of any other function as possible except 
 the two, — of generating or transforming force. Not 
 seeing that his animal body, his homme machine, does 
 through the nerves perform the additional functions of 
 directing or transferring force, that is, of determining 
 when and where it should act, it is not surprising that 
 he meets this indefinitely conceived demand by the 
 convenient image or picture of a valve, a detent in a 
 machine, or a trigger in a musket. He ought to have 
 bethought himself, and corrected the premises of his 
 disjunctive ; and, instead of asserting the animal body 
 either creates force or transforms force, he should have 
 said, the human body either creates force, or transforms 
 force, or also directs force. Then, in order to prove 
 that it is a machine, he must prove that it directs force 
 through the nerves, by either mechanical or chemical 
 agency. This last he does not attempt to do. He does, 
 indeed, assume that nerve substance is wasted by use, 
 and implies that heat is probably evolved in nerve 
 activity, and illustrates this by a rod of antimony, ren- 
 dered sensitive by electrolysis, as it carries forward 
 heat and smoke from one end to another. From this 
 he would doubtless leave us to infer that the nerves, 
 like the muscles, never act, except under the general con- 
 ditions of correlation. But in all this there is not the 
 slightest attempt to explain by what mechanical process 
 the nerves direct or transfer motion. He does, indeed, 
 tell a somewhat long story about experiments which 
 show that the process of movement or other change 
 in the nerves, sensor, and motor, to and from the brain, 
 requires an appreciable lapse of time, so that a second 
 must elapse before a whale seventy feet long would feel 
 a wound in his tail ; but he is sublimely unconscious of 
 the fact, that the new function of shifting motion, by 
 
PROFESSOR TYNDALL >S LAST DELIVERANCE. 203 
 
 valve, detent, or trigger, during this second, makes the 
 machine somewhat more complicated than he had at 
 first supposed. But, this slight difficulty not having oc- 
 curred to him, the animal body is accepted as a finished 
 machine, which is now ready for the " kindling of con- 
 sciousness ; " and this he confidently anticipates may 
 turn out to be a more refined form of heat evolved by 
 mechanical laws. With this impression, he marches 
 boldly up to the new line of inquiry, which relates to 
 the connection between this machine and a highly 
 poetical or idealized force, sometimes called the soul. 
 To say nothing of these little difficulties, which have 
 hindered us from going forward with him at the rapid 
 pace which he has assumed, there are others, which also 
 compel us to follow him haud passibus cequis. We are 
 not satisfied that he has disposed of sundry other ques- 
 tions which may be asked in respect to the " animal 
 body." Conceding, that, in breathing and eating and 
 muscular action, this body is a machine or a voltaic 
 battery, and not insisting on the peculiarity of the 
 function by which the nerves transfer or liberate mo- 
 tion, which Mr. Tyndall has scarcely recognized and 
 imperfectly explained, we hold that this body performs 
 other functions, which the doctrine of the conservation 
 of force does not at all account for, and which are not 
 proved to be mechanical by Mr. Tyndall's argument, 
 or the analogies which it suggests. We need only refer 
 to these. This body grows by a peculiar method, 
 through cellular accession from within, from living 
 food, making thereby new and peculiar tissues in great 
 variety. Many of these tissues become organs which 
 are capable of secreting special fluids or substances, 
 which themselves pass by an orderly succession into 
 the various permanent substances of the body. Each 
 organ secretes that which finally returns to itself, in- 
 
204 PROFESSOR TYNDALL *S LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 creasing its bulk, following its form, and fitting for its 
 function. These parts grow after a plan, which is gen- 
 eral in likeness of form, size, and symmetry, so far as 
 it is common to all living bodies, special so far as it 
 is peculiar to each species, and individual so far as it is 
 fitted to each individual. Not any one of these effects 
 has ever been accounted for by the joint operation of 
 any known mechanical or chemical laws, much less by 
 their sole or separate activity; least of all with the 
 slightest approximation to that mathematical rigor 
 which Mr. Tyndall contends is the indispensable requi- 
 site of scientific certainty. All that can be said has 
 been said by Mr. Tyndall, that so far as heat and mus- 
 cular activity are concerned, there is probable correla- 
 tion between the two ; that in living matter, as truly 
 as in inorganic matter, the combinations in growth and 
 the decompositions of waste are chemical in their ingre- 
 dients and chemical in their relations. This is not 
 surprising : did not the living body consist of materials 
 which obey mechanical and chemical laws, this body 
 would so far not be material. This is not at all in ques- 
 tion ; and, so far as a correct conception of an animal 
 body is concerned, it is superfluous to argue the point. 
 What is in question is, whether this body is capable of 
 no other functions than these, not whether it is a ma- 
 chine or a voltaic battery, but whether it is not some- 
 thing more. The question is, not whether so far as it is 
 material it is subject to material laws, but whether it 
 is not also a living body, and what forces, relations, and 
 laws the conception of life implies. 1 
 
 1 Since writing the above, we happened to open the often-read dis- 
 course of Du Bois Reymond, of Aug. 14, 1872, on the limits of the knowl- 
 edge of nature. On p. 26, speaking of a supposed ideal knowledge of 
 the physiological processes, analogous to our actual knowledge of astro- 
 nomical movements and laws, he says, In that case, " muscular con- 
 traction, glandular secretion, electrical pulsation, optical illumination, 
 
PBOFESSOB TYNDALL 'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 205 
 
 What is most surprising is, not that a certain class 
 of scientific men do not see this distinction, but that 
 so many insist in one breath, that no scientific theory- 
 can be accepted which is incapable of mathematical 
 formulization and experimental verification, and in the 
 next breath adopt a theory of life on a mechanical and 
 chemical basis, the laws of which they do not profess 
 to have formulated in numbers, nor to have tested the 
 alleged facts by experiment. Mr. Tyndall insists that 
 " the interdependence of our day has become quantita- 
 tive, — expressible by numbers," — and that, where law 
 cannot be formulated by numbers, there is no science. 
 We insist, that if, under this definition, psychology, 
 morals, and theology are excluded from the domain of 
 science, physiology should be excluded also ; and yet the 
 whole doctrine of development, with heredity and its 
 variations and integrations, and all the nomenclature 
 by which the soul is demonstrated to be but a higher 
 potency of matter, and personality to be an ideal fiction, 
 and God an entirely superfluous hypothesis, is derived 
 from the very operations of life, scarcely a single one 
 of which, if tried by the criterion in question, has been 
 scientifically fixed or formulated. 1 
 
 ciliary movement, the growth and chimism of plant-cells, the impreg- 
 nation and development of the egg, all these noio hopelessly dark pro- 
 cesses, would then he as transparent as the movements of the planets." 
 It would seem that these processes are no longer dark to Professor Tyn- 
 dall's illuminated vision. 
 
 1 Professor Tyndall asserts not infrequently, with unqualified posi- 
 tiveness, that science ceases where mechanical relations cannot he 
 mathematically determined. He objects to any scientific recognition of 
 the phenomena of spirit, in such language as this: " If we are true to these 
 canons, we must deny to subjective phenomena all influence on physical 
 processes. Observation proves that they interact; but, in passing from 
 the one to the other, we meet a blank, which mechanical deduction 
 cannot fill." He seems to overlook the fact, that, tried by this test, 
 physiology itself, as conceived by the great majority of its devotees, is 
 as little a science as psychology. His own conjectures, that the animal 
 body is a machine, are as far from any mathematical formulization as 
 
206 PROFESSOR TYNDALL 'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 But leaving this consideration, and conceding for the 
 moment all that Mr. Tyndall violently and unscientifi- 
 cally assumes, viz., that the animal body is a machine, 
 let us follow him up to the line where its supposed 
 relations to the soul begin. We accept the case sug- 
 gested by himself: "An aerial wave, the energy of 
 which would not reach a minute fraction of that neces- 
 sary to raise the thousandth of a grain through the 
 thousandth of an inch, can throw the human frame 
 into a powerful mechanical spasm, followed by violent 
 respiration and palpitation." We give the illustration 
 which he quotes from Lange : " A merchant sits quietly 
 in his chair; he reads a letter; it makes him spring 
 to his feet ; he calls his carriage, gives orders in haste to 
 all his clerks and servants, rushes on 'Change, buys 
 and sells, and signs a few papers, and in a half-hour 
 has saved his fortune from wreck ; he comes back, and, 
 throwing himself into his chair, says, * Now I can 
 breathe.' " " This complex mass of action, emotional, 
 intellectual, and mechanical, is evoked by the impact 
 upon the retina of the infinitesimal waves of light com- 
 ing from a few pencil-marks on a bit of paper." " What 
 caused the merchant to spring out of his chair? The 
 contraction of his muscles. What made his muscles 
 contract ? An impulse of the nerves which lifted the 
 proper latch, and liberated the muscular power. Whence 
 this impulse ? From the centre of the nervous system. 
 But how did it originate there ? This is the critical 
 question." It is, indeed, the critical question. And 
 how does Mr. Tyndall answer it? We should first 
 
 the not dissimilar theory of Descartes. The psychological theories 
 of the school of Herhart are more solidly and consistently mathematical 
 than are the headlong guesses of Professor Tyndall's physiology. Tried 
 "by Tyndall's test, the new chemistry is also in some danger of being pro- 
 nounced unscientific. See Du Bois Reymond. — Ueber die Grenzen des 
 Naturerkennens, pp. 4, 5. 
 
PROFESSOR TYNBALL 'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 207 
 
 inquire, how does he ask it; for it is important to 
 notice, that as with lawyers, so with philosophers, it 
 often happens that the way in which they phrase their 
 questions reveals the answers which they expect or 
 desire, and in some sort compel. Mr. Tyndall does not 
 deny that other phenomena come in besides those of the 
 ordinary nervous, digestive, and breathing mechanism. 
 He admits that terror and hope, sensation and calcula- 
 tion, before impending ruin, all succeed one another be- 
 tween the impact on the retina and the lifting the latch 
 which releases the last re-action which proceeds from the 
 centre of the nervous system. But he assumes, that, 
 whatever is the nature of these phenomena, they are 
 caused by the impact of the undulating light upon the 
 responsive retina, that this imparts another impact to a 
 somewhat causing terror, which in its turn, by another 
 stroke or impact, is transformed into hope, till at last the 
 latch is lifted, and the muscular power is set free. This 
 assumption concerning all these processes resolves 
 them into mechanism, and subjects them to the law 
 of necessity. It takes for granted, that whatever the 
 soul may be, whether it is a set of friction-wheels or 
 a voltaic battery, whether brain or a poetical expres- 
 sion for an ideal x, its phenomena are caused at first by 
 the impact of a material object, and follow in succes- 
 sion according to mechanical necessity. Every thinker 
 should earnestly protest against every such assumption 
 as this, and the language which asserts or implies it. 
 The true and wary philosopher should say just at this 
 point, I do not accept your version of these intervening 
 phenomena : they are in no sense evoked by the object 
 striking upon the man, but they are performed by the 
 man with reference to the object. It is not the letter 
 which strikes its impacts upon the man ; but it is the 
 man who reads the letter, and thereafter acts in calcula- 
 
208 PROFESSOR TYNDALL *8 LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 tion and hope until the latch is lifted and the muscular 
 motion is set free. We know that this view is very- 
 strange to Mr. Tyndall's method of philosophizing, and 
 is fatal to all his conclusions ; but, in our view, it is true 
 to the facts : and we must protest against this stealthy, 
 if it be an unconscious, way of disguising the facts by 
 the mode of asking the question, Whence the impulse, 
 and how did it originate, that directs or liberates mo- 
 tion in the various methods so vividly described ? This 
 is, indeed, the critical question. It is none other than 
 whether there is any other agent than matter, and 
 whether this agent, be it material or aught besides, acts 
 according to mechanical laws and under mechanical 
 necessity? How does Mr. Tyndall answer this ques- 
 tion ? He remarks first of all, " The aim and effort of 
 science is to explain the unknown in terms of the 
 known. Explanation, therefore, is conditioned by knowl- 
 edge." This truth he proceeds to illustrate by the story 
 of a German peasant, who, when he saw a locomotive 
 for the first time, having never known any other than 
 animal power, after long reflection solemnly said, "Us 
 milssen Pferde darin seyn ! " (" There are horses inside ! ") 
 The story, in Mr. Tyndall's opinion, illustrates a deep- 
 lying truth. It strikes us, that the deep-lying truth 
 which Mr. Tyndall finds in it admits of an application 
 of which he was not fully aware, or he would scarcely 
 have introduced the story. Had the peasant known no 
 other locomotive-power than that by horses, he had 
 reasoned wisely, provided the peculiarity of the effect 
 was not fitted to awaken the suspicion that there were 
 more things in heaven and earth than were dreamt of 
 in his philosophy. Otherwise his confident dogmatism 
 should be ascribed to his stolid- incapacity or his narrow 
 posiliveness. We certainly see no objection, if Mr. 
 Tyndall feels none, to his recognizing in the peasant the 
 
PROFESSOR TYNDALL 'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 209 
 
 ideal of a true philosopher, and placing himself by his 
 side, as one who, like him, can only interpret the un- 
 known by the known. When Mr. Tyndall insists that 
 all the functions of the animal body can be explained 
 by mechanical or galvanic agency, he seems to us to 
 say, there are horses inside. Motion and heat, and 
 breathing and eating, are the forces which I recognize 
 and believe in ; and these are the only forces which I 
 accept. Were the German peasant told of steam and 
 its expansive power, of its capacity of quick genera- 
 tion by heat and of condensation, and were there shown 
 to him the steam-boiler and the furnace, he would doubt- 
 less say, The force and the laws of which you speak are 
 both to me unknown, and I can only explain the un- 
 known in terms of the known. Similarly when the 
 attention of Mr. Tyndall is directed to the activities of 
 spirit, he replies, All these are practically unknown to 
 me, for I believe in nothing except the mechanics of 
 friction or the voltaic battery. That is to say, if we 
 know or could know any thing about terror and hope 
 and calculation and resolve, and all the other phenom- 
 ena that were evoked between the first impact of the 
 light, and the re-action on the muscles, we might ex- 
 plain the intervening phenomena ; but, inasmuch as we 
 cannot, we must assume that they do not exist. They 
 are to science a set of unknown quantities, which have 
 no claims to be scientifically recognized, and can neither 
 explain other phenomena nor be explained themselves. 
 Mr. Tyndall, by his subsequent concessions, is far less 
 excusable and far less philosophical than his associate 
 philosopher. For Mr. Tyndall is frank enough to say 
 that there are peculiar phenomena (he does not say 
 there is a force), such as terror, hope, sensation, calcula- 
 tion, etc., which are associated with or attendant on the 
 molecular motions set up by the waves of light in a 
 
210 PBOFESSOB TYNDALL 'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 previously prepared brain. But he denies that there is 
 any causal connection between them. He rejects the 
 explanation given by Mr. Bain, once partially admitted 
 by himself, that the two are objective and subjective 
 sides of the same phenomenon. He repeats, however, 
 his position, that the reason why we cannot unite them 
 in a causal connection is, that while we can form a 
 coherent picture of physical processes, as the stirring 
 of the brain, the thrilling of the nerves (a new idea), 
 the discharging of the muscles (previously the lifting 
 of a latch), we can form no picture of a molecule pro- 
 ducing a state of consciousness, or of a state of con- 
 sciousness acting on a molecule. Physical science 
 offers no justification for either of these connections, 
 the ordinary canons of science fail to extricate us from 
 our difficulties, and therefore we conclude that there 
 can be nothing but horses inside the locomotive. Even 
 the facts, as terror, hope, calculation, etc., are almost as 
 difficult to seize as the idea of the soul as their cause. 
 But, "if you are content to make your soul a poetic 
 rendering of a phenomenon which refuses the yoke of 
 ordinary mechanical laws, I for one would not object to 
 this exercise of ideality." 
 
 The reader will be able by this time to form some 
 idea of what Mr. Tyndall intends, when he says that 
 the phenomena of the soul, the soul itself, the possible 
 action of matter on the soul, and of the action of the 
 soul upon matter, are facts and phenomena which are 
 scientifically unknown. They are unknown because 
 they cannot be pictured to the mind ; i.e., united in a 
 mental picture with one another or with physical facts. 
 If by picturing the soul or the mind is intended that it 
 cannot be pictured as occupying space and as affect- 
 ing the bodily senses, i.e., cannot be imagined as material 
 substance, this is true ; but, if it is contended that the 
 
PKOFESSOB TYNDALL' S LAST DELIVERANCE. 211 
 
 mind cannot be pictured as the mind finds itself in its 
 own operations, then it is untrue ; and that it is untrue 
 is affirmed by Mr. Tyndall himself every time in this 
 discourse he says I see, or know, or remember, or believe. 
 If he means that he cannot picture the mind as acting, 
 we reply he can picture the acting of the mind as truly 
 as he can picture the acting of the body. If he attempts 
 to picture what he means by force, whether galvanic 
 or mechanical, he will find this as difficult as when he 
 attempts to picture mental force. If he cannot picture 
 mind as acting on matter, or matter acting on mind, no 
 more can he picture matter acting on matter. If he 
 says that he knows nothing about mind, and that there- 
 fore psychical existence and psychical action cannot be 
 used to explain any phenomenon, because this would be 
 to explain the unknown by that which is more unknown, 
 he refutes himself every time that the word to know 
 escapes from his lips. The brilliant essay by Mr. 
 Tyndall himself, " On the Scientific Uses of the Imagi- 
 nation," and the many sagacious and brilliant remarks 
 which he has made from time to time upon the processes 
 and grounds of induction, are themselves decisive evi- 
 dences that many phenomena in his own mind have 
 been well considered by himself and causally connected. 
 The entire Theory of Modern Science, in which he so 
 much glories, and which in so many respects he so well 
 understands, and expounds so skilfully, is an exposition 
 of the operations of an agent within that body, which, 
 for the sake of scientific consistency, he calls a machine. 
 If this agent or force within is nothing more than an 
 idealized abstraction, this abstraction discoursed most 
 eloquently from the chair of the Midland Institute on 
 the 1st of October. Again : If we know nothing about 
 the knowing process or the knowing agent, then what 
 confidence have we in what it knows of matter? If 
 
212 PROFESSOR TYNDALL >S LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 physical science and its methods are to furnish bounds 
 to what we know, and to impose law as to how we are 
 to know it, then we know something about the spiritual 
 activity which we call knowledge, and the agent which 
 exercises its functions. To say that the only species of 
 existence which this agent can know is matter and its 
 laws, and that every kind of activity which we can 
 explain must be explained by material relations, or the 
 so-called methods of physical science, is to beg the 
 question to begin with ; but, in the very terms in which 
 we beg it, we assume that that function which we call 
 knowledge has supreme authority, and gives law and 
 authority to itself, and to the science which it creates. 
 
 But here Mr. Tyndall takes another step in advance. 
 He graciously concedes to those who desire to do so, 
 the liberty to think and speak of the soul as the poetic 
 rendering of peculiar phenomena when abstractly con- 
 ceived, provided only that they will admit, that, in all 
 these phenomena, it obeys the laws of necessity which 
 rule in the world of matter. This, indeed, is the last 
 point which he makes ; and upon this he dwells at very 
 great length. He introduces the discussion by saying, 
 "Amid all our speculative uncertainty, there is one 
 practical point as clear as the day ; namely, that the 
 brightness and the usefulness of life, as well as its dark- 
 ness and disaster, depend to a great extent upon our 
 own use of this miraculous organ ; " i.e., the brain. This 
 means, that, whether we are spirit or no, it is certain we 
 are brain, and what we are and what we become depend 
 upon the use or abuse of tins organ. But does not this 
 imply that we are free ? for, if we are not free, how can 
 we be responsible ? Here " we stand face to face with 
 the final problem. It is this : Are the brain, and the 
 moral and intellectual processes known to be associated 
 with the brain, . . . subjected to the laws which we find 
 
PROFESSOR TYNDALL >S LAST DELIVERANCE. 213 
 
 paramount in physical nature ? " To this inquiry he 
 gives the following as his answer, in a rambling series 
 of remarks, which we shall seek to follow and condense 
 as best we may. 
 
 First, he observes, that Fichte recoiled from the 
 thought of necessity in a well-known volume which 
 records the struggle between his head and his heart. 
 His recoil was so violent, that, rather than subject man 
 to nature, he made nature subject to man ; creating 
 nature out of the free actings of the spirit. But all 
 men do not share in this recoil of Fichte. Even Bishop 
 Butler teaches, that, so far as human conduct is con- 
 cerned, the theories of free will and necessity bring us 
 to the same practical issue. But even free will cannot 
 imply the production of events without antecedents. 
 Free will must be consistent with reasons. And, on 
 the other hand, the voice of this united assembly would 
 say that I can lift my arm if I wish to do so. The wish, 
 then, or, if you please, the man, is the decisive element. 
 But what and whence is the wish or the man ? At the 
 starting of this question Mr. Tyndall falls back upon 
 the axiomatic affirmation with which he began. " As 
 stated at the beginning of this discourse, my physical 
 and intellectual textures were woven for me, not by me. 
 Processes in the conduct or regulation of which I had 
 no share have made me what I am. Here surely, if 
 anywhere, we are as clay in the hands of the potter." 
 The age finds each man to be the product of all the 
 ages before : it will make of us what the combined 
 forces of all the present can make out of that past added 
 to this present. Robert Owen's doctrine, that man is 
 the product of circumstances, was correct if you count 
 the past, circumstances along with the present. Every 
 court of justice makes allowances for hereditary ten- 
 dency to insanity. An acute governor of one of the 
 
214 PROFESSOR TYNDALL'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 largest prisons in England informed Professor Tyndall 
 that he should divide all prisoners into three classes, — 
 the good, who ought not to have been convicted ; the 
 hopeful, who, under more favorable training, may be 
 moulded to something good; and the hopeless, who 
 might as well be " put compendiously under water " as 
 tortured with punishment of any kind. The observa- 
 tions and testimony of such men with individuals are, 
 however, of little significance compared with Darwin's 
 speculations, which have at last convinced even " the 
 clerical world," that " the progenitors of this assembly," 
 when traced very far into the past, " could not be called 
 human." "These changes, to which each generation 
 adds its slender contribution, are owing to what we in 
 our ignorance are obliged to call 4 accidental variation,' 
 and secondly, to a law of heredity, in the passing of 
 which our suffrages were not collected." That the 
 process is one of amelioration is ascribed by Matthew 
 Arnold to " a power not ourselves which works for 
 righteousness," " when with characteristic felicity and 
 precision he lifts the question into the free air of poetry, 
 but not out of the atmosphere of truth." But does not 
 this law of progress under hereditary influences give 
 free sanction to crime by removing all exposure to pun- 
 ishment? Not in the least. Society says frankly to 
 the unfortunate inheritor of irresistible proclivities to 
 evil, We must imprison or hang you, that we may give 
 greater energy to the tendencies against evil, if not in 
 you, at least with other men, even though we accept 
 with Darwin the doctrine of accidental variation as 
 well as of fixing environment. " Practically, then, as 
 Bishop Butler predicted, we act as the world acted 
 when it supposed the evil deeds of its criminals to 
 be the products of free will. We even continue to 
 preach, for the preacher's words of enlightenment and 
 
PROFESSOR TYNDALL >S LAST DELIVERANCE. 215 
 
 courage and admonition enter into the list of forces 
 employed by nature for man's amelioration ; " as the 
 speaker himself remembers to have been helped by 
 George Dawson thirty-two years ago, as he exhorted to 
 industry and self-control, " when he made himself the 
 mouth-piece of Nature, which secures advance by the 
 encouragement of what is best." Last of all, will not 
 all religious or theological influences be enfeebled by 
 this theory ? will not society be given over to demor- 
 alization and crime ? Not in the least ; for even George 
 Holyoake, avowed atheist as he is, preaches against low 
 views of life, and incites to the higher ends and aims 
 of civilization and character. It is, however, a serious 
 mistake to suppose that theologic belief has been a very 
 potent element in working for man's amelioration. 
 Very many fundamental differences of character " de- 
 pend upon primary distinctions of character, which 
 religion does not remove." Faraday, whom he describes 
 in a passage of elaborate eulogy, added since the 
 address was originally written, though depending upon 
 his Christian and even his Sandemanian tenets for his 
 spiritual life and comfort and peace, was singularly like 
 Charles Darwin, "who neither shared the theologic 
 views nor the religious emotions which formed so 
 dominant a factor in Faraday's life." " Facts rather 
 than dogmas have been the ministers " of the power 
 not ourselves working for righteousness, " hunger and 
 thirst, heat and cold, pleasure and pain, sympathy, 
 shame, pride, love, hate, terror, and awe ; " and yet "it 
 cannot be denied that the beliefs of religion, including 
 the dogmas of theology and the freedom of the will, 
 have had some effect in moulding the moral world." 
 " Granted ; but I do not think that this goes to the 
 root of the matter. Are you quite sure that these 
 beliefs and dogmas are primary and not derived, — that 
 
216 PROFESSOR TTNDALL >S LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 they are not the products instead of being the creators 
 of the moral nature ? " In support of this view he refers 
 to Carlyle, and quotes a familiar passage from one of 
 Emerson's poems, both to the effect that religious faiths 
 and rites are the products rather than the creative factors 
 of this moral nature. He ventures to ask, " Does the 
 song of the herald angels, ' Glory to God in the highest, 
 and on earth peace, good will towards men,' express the 
 exaltation and the yearning of a human soul, or does it 
 describe an optical, acoustical, fact, — a visible host 
 and an audible song ? " "If the former, the exaltation 
 and the yearning are man's imperishable possession." 
 " If the latter, the belief in the entire transaction is 
 wrecked by non-fulfilment." 
 
 This furnishes the argument, if argument it may be 
 called. The conclusion is summed up as already quoted : 
 " Thus, following the lead of physical science, we are 
 brought without solution of continuity into the presence 
 of problems, which, as usually classified, lie entirely 
 outside the domain of physics. To these problems 
 thoughtful and penetrative minds are now applying 
 those methods of research which in physical science have 
 proved their truth by their fruit. There is on all hands 
 a growing repugnance to invoke the supernatural in 
 accounting for the phenomena of human life ; and the 
 thoughtful minds just referred to, finding no trace of 
 evidence in favor of any other origin, are driven to 
 seek in the interaction of social forces the genesis and 
 development of man's moral nature." The careful reader 
 will observe in these concluding words the affirma- 
 tion for the first time in any of Mr. Tyndall's writings, 
 of the tenet that moral distinctions are the product of 
 social agencies. That be must of necessity hold this 
 opinion was clearly enough to be seen by any one who 
 follows the logic of Atheistic Evolutionism, to which 
 
PROFESSOR TYNDALL' S LAST DELIVERANCE. 217 
 
 Professor Tyndall professes that he has been led with 
 so many other thoughtful minds by scientific necessity. 
 
 We have endeavored to trace the successive steps by 
 which Mr. Tyndall declares that he has been led to these 
 conclusions. We have carefully stated his points, that 
 we might candidly judge of the logical coherence and 
 convincing force of the facts and analogies by which, 
 "following the lead of physical science," he has been 
 brought first to face these problems, and then to solve 
 them in these appalling answers: Negatively there is 
 no spirit, no freedom, no God, and no immortality ; and 
 positively the scientific and practical explanation of the 
 past, and the promise of the future, lie in a blind force 
 working under the law of progress for man's ameliora- 
 tion, as the result of whose workings the idea of moral 
 good is in due time developed, in whose name law is 
 administered without justice. Moralit}^ as a social prod- 
 uct creates religion, which rules by relentless force 
 without personal sympathy. As the result of the new 
 solutions of these old problems, according to "those 
 methods of research which in physical science have 
 proved their truth by their fruit," we are told that 
 " social duty will be raised to a higher level of signifi- 
 cance ; and the deepening sense of social duty will, it 
 is to be hoped, lessen, if not obliterate, the strifes and 
 heart-burnings which now beset and disfigure our social 
 life." 
 
 The argument which we have analyzed consists of 
 four divisions. Of these divisions the first recapitu- 
 lates the history and evidence of the conservation and 
 correlation of force in the domain of physics. In this 
 argument Professor Tyndall is at home. His statements 
 are clear, his examples are pertinent, and the experi- 
 ments are manifold. We will admit that the argument 
 is decisive, without interposing a single one of the ex- 
 
218 PROFESSOR TYNDALL >S LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 ceptions which we should reserve, were the case to be 
 tried before another tribunal. The second division is 
 that in which he argues that the animal body is a ma- 
 chine, which is controlled by those forces and only 
 those forces, and obeys those laws and only those laws, 
 which are found in the inorganic sphere. This argu- 
 ment seems to us obviously defective, in that it omits 
 many of the phenomena which are most characteristic of 
 the animal body, and transfers analogies from one phys- 
 iological function to another, with an intellectual haste 
 and audacity which are utterly foreign to the methods 
 of physical science, or indeed of any science, whether 
 pure or applied. The third division declares that all 
 those phenomena commonly called psychical should be 
 treated by the scientific man as utterly unknown, — as 
 incapable themselves of being explained by any other 
 than material forces and laws, and of being stated in 
 any other than figures of poetic ideality. This position 
 he does not argue. He simply begs the conclusion, 
 and not only this, but he dishonors science itself by 
 this very assumption, because he dishonors the agent 
 which is the creator of science, and by its own sov- 
 ereignty is the lawgiver of science, imposing upon its 
 own work the methods of procedure, and declaring the 
 manifold services, Mr. Tyndall himself being witness, 
 which theory, question, imagination, and experiment 
 have contributed towards its triumphs. Moreover, he 
 asserts that the soul, though potent and sovereign in 
 these creations, is nothing but an idealized abstraction ; 
 although, when he forgets his theory, he himself gives 
 fervent and eloquent testimony to the spiritual light 
 and comfort and peace of his great teacher Faraday, 
 and the simple and sturdy honor of " Mr. Charles Dar- 
 win, the Abraham of scientific men, — a searcher as 
 obedient to the command of truth as was the patriarch 
 
PROFESSOR TYNBALL'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 219 
 
 to the command of God." The fourth division consists 
 of the rambling and somewhat incoherent argument, 
 which we have endeavored to condense, upon the higher 
 themes of man's responsibility to himself, his fellow- 
 men, and to God. In all this part of the discourse 
 there is not the slightest suggestion of the methods of 
 induction or experiment, such as are pursued in physi- 
 cal science. There is not a single example of those 
 analogies which open to the sagacious interpretations 
 of scientific genius glimpses of a brilliant speculative 
 theory. The author gathers the scraps of his readings 
 and the shreds of his reflections in literature and theol- 
 ogy, and sets them forth with no force except such as 
 startling paradoxes always obtain when they fall from 
 lips as eloquent as those of this attractive speaker. 
 All recognition of the methods of physical science 
 seems to have departed from his memory. The four 
 divisions of the argument are held together by the 
 foregone conclusion of the author, that the devotee of 
 science may recognize nothing in the universe but 
 matter and fate and evolution, and requires for the ex- 
 planation of the existence and history of this universe 
 neither intelligence nor goodness. 
 
 In the first of these divisions, Professor Tyndall 
 writes as a physicist. As a physicist he never fails to 
 be clear, consistent, and eloquent, even when he is not 
 convincing. In the second he is a physiologist. Here 
 he is limited in his recognition of vital phenomena, 
 and committed to the foregone conclusion, that life can 
 be explained by mechanism. In the third he is a psy- 
 chologist. In this role he is a sturdy materialist in his 
 reasonings, and a poetical abstractionist in his conces- 
 sions. In the fourth division he is a moralist, metaphy- 
 sician, and theologian. As a moralist he accepts the 
 hard theory of Hobbes as made flexible by Darwin 
 
220 PROFESSOR TYNDALL' S LAST DELIVERANCE. 
 
 and Spencer. As a metaphysician he is a fatalistic 
 evolutionist with a dash of imaginative optimism. As 
 a theologian he is a sentimental atheist or an imagi- 
 native agnostic. In each of these several capacities 
 he dexterously shifts from one phase to the other of 
 his sensitive many-sidedness of opinion and phraseol- 
 ogy, according to the varying needs and aspects of his 
 argument and his audience. 
 
 We have read many things from Professor Tyndall, 
 with sincere admiration for the sagacity of his insight, 
 the skill of his expositions, and the splendor of his gen- 
 eralizations. We must confess, that, in the perusal of 
 this address, our admiration has passed into wonder, and 
 our wonder into astonishment. If this is science, then 
 science has ceased to be scientific. No man has insisted 
 more energetically than Professor Tyndall upon the 
 necessity of mathematical formalization to fix whatever 
 laws are surmised, and of rigid experiment to test and 
 confirm the most plausible of generalizations. In this 
 address, he seems to us to have forgotten to exemplify 
 the first article of his own philosophic creed, and to 
 have wholly failed to apply the tests of experimental 
 verification. 
 
 As we have read the occasional addresses of Professor 
 Tyndall with unabated interest, and noticed that they 
 have usually represented the results of the meditations 
 of his summer holidays, we have learned to conceive of 
 them as the romantic essays of an imagination sur- 
 charged with the ferment of philosophical speculations, 
 and kindled to a midsummer excitement by the glow 
 of his inward fervor. We have been more than once 
 reminded of similar utterances of the philosophic Ham- 
 let, as he also mused upon Science and Man : " I have 
 of late foregone all custom of exercises ; and it goes so 
 heavily with my disposition, that this goodly frame, the 
 
PROFESSOR TYNDALL 'S LAST DELIVERANCE. 221 
 
 earth, seems to me a sterile promontory ; this most ex- 
 cellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o'erhang- 
 ing firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden 
 fire, — why, it appears no other thing to me than afoul and 
 pestilent congregation of vapors. What a piece of work 
 is a man ! how noble in reason ! how infinite in facul- 
 ties ! in form and moving, how express and admirable I 
 in action, how like an angel ! in apprehension, how like 
 a god ! the beauty of the world ! the paragon of ani- 
 mals ! And yet, to me, what is this quintessence of dust ? " 
 In common with many others in this country, we 
 have not only admired Professor Tyndall as a philoso- 
 pher, but have been delighted with him as a kindly and 
 courteous gentleman, and welcomed him as a friend. 
 The friendly interest which we still retain for him only 
 deepens our regret that he should have been misled so 
 far as to mistake the brilliant analogies of a teeming 
 imagination for the sober verities of scientific truth. 
 
VIII. 
 
 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OR, THE 
 APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE, 1 
 
 A PHILOSOPHICAL MEDITATION". 
 
 The phrase Physiological Metaphysics is selected 
 for precision only, because no other term expresses our 
 meaning so well. We do not intend by it any single 
 or special science, as when we speak of the science 
 of mechanics, or optics, or chemistry, or geology, or of 
 any other subject-matter, whether physical or psychical. 
 Nor do we use the word collectively for the systema- 
 tized or interpreted knowledge of several classes of 
 objects, as when modern science is spoken of, and usu- 
 ally though improperly made to include only those 
 sciences which have matter for their sphere. We be- 
 lieve most fervently in science, in each and all of these 
 senses; we rejoice in its progress; we confide in its 
 methods, and are in no sense afraid of the direct or 
 indirect results of any of its discoveries, whether they 
 relate to man, the universe, or God. Moreover, we 
 loyally accord to it independence and supreme au- 
 thority within its sphere. 
 
 Nor do we intend by it physiological science, or that 
 science which has life and living beings for its sphere 
 of inquiry. This science we most delight in of all the 
 sciences of nature ; finding that the scientific study of 
 life is the best preparation for, and the best introduc- 
 tion to, the study of the soul, inasmuch as it effectually 
 
 1 The Princeton Review, November, 1878. 
 
PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS. 223 
 
 disciplines man to do justice to psychical phenomena 
 and the beliefs and relations which they involve, by 
 first confronting him with the mysteries of life, and 
 thus preparing him for those higher phenomena of con- 
 scious experience and activity from which they are yet 
 sharply distinguished. 
 
 We would not be suspected for a moment, by the use 
 of this phrase, of throwing any discredit upon meta- 
 physics proper ; which term, and the science which it 
 designates, both need all the good words which can be 
 said of them in the evil days of criticism and disesteem 
 on which they have fallen in many so-called scientific 
 circles. 
 
 We believe in metaphysics or philosophy, both in 
 the narrow and the enlarged conceptions of the same, 
 whether the words signify the conceptions and princi- 
 ples which must be assumed as the foundations of 
 every special science, or whether they stand for a still 
 more extensive sphere of truths concerning man, na- 
 ture, space, time, and God, which are partly necessary 
 and partly inductive. We would not, therefore, be 
 understood as calling in question metaphysics as such, 
 or of availing ourselves of any general disesteem in 
 which this term is often used, to the damage of that 
 form of speculation which we have in mind, and which 
 is properly termed metaphysics by eminence. 
 
 Our theme is Physiological Metaphysics. We call 
 this science metaphysics because it proposes a system 
 of ultimate formulae for the explanation of the origin 
 and history of the universe, and uses the same as the 
 foundation for our scientific knowledge of the same. 
 We call it physiological because the special science of 
 physiology has furnished its distinctive conceptions 
 and principles, and fixed its terminology. Its repre- 
 sentatives and defenders have stigmatized much of the 
 
224 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OR, 
 
 current metaphysics as theological, on the assumption, 
 that in some sense it had illegitimately borrowed its 
 principles and methods from positive or Christian theo- 
 logy. With much greater propriety we may use the 
 phrase physiological metaphysics as a system in which 
 physiological relations are made supreme, and for which, 
 to a large extent, they have furnished the terminology. 
 We certainly do not object to the recognition of physi- 
 ological conceptions within the domain of metaphysics. 
 Every science, so far as its subject-matter is unique, 
 and furnishes conceptions and relations which are pecul- 
 iar to itself, must have what we may relatively call a 
 metaphysics of its own. Accordingly, we speak with 
 entire precision and propriety of a mathematical, a 
 chemical, and a physiological metaphysics. Used in 
 this sense, the term has a legitimate signification. Nor 
 do we in the least except against the recognition of 
 development or evolution as a legitimate conception or 
 law of any class or sphere of phenomena, so far as its 
 presence and agency are sustained by observation or 
 verified by experiment. The true philosopher will as 
 rationally and as readily believe in development or 
 evolution, either as a force or a law, as he will believe 
 in mechanical adhesion or chemical combinations, or 
 the laws which govern either. He will not even object 
 to the explication of any number of phenomena by 
 means of evolution, provided the evidence for this ap- 
 plication is satisfactory, and the experiments are deci- 
 sive. Nor will he object to relying on analogy as a 
 ground of believing in evolution beyond the range of 
 observation or experiment, provided the data of facts 
 are sufficiently numerous, and the analogies compel to 
 this sole conclusion. 
 
 It is only when evolution, or development, is taken out 
 of its definite and legitimate applications within the 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 225 
 
 domain of life, and extended to every description of 
 beings and phenomena, from the inorganic on the one 
 hand to the self-existent on the other, that we question 
 the warrant for applying the relation so widely, and to 
 a subject-matter from which it is wholly foreign. That 
 a form of metaphysics is current, which, in the sense 
 defined, may properly be called physiological, cannot be 
 questioned by any person who is superficial^ acquainted 
 with the philosophizing of our times. Its growth has 
 been rapid ; and its development has been, to use its own 
 favorite imagery, almost as sudden as was the first rush- 
 ing of star-dust into the first solid orb. The elements 
 of which it is composed are singularly incongruous, and 
 the writers who have contributed to its popularity and 
 its acceptance are strangely unlike. Some of the prin- 
 ciples and philosophies which it has contrived to sub- 
 due to its own vital power are seemingly irreconcilable ; 
 and yet they all have been gathered somehow into a 
 common school of thought, which is regarded by many 
 as mechanical, materialistic, and atheistic on the one 
 hand, while it claims on the other to do full justice to 
 the phenomena of spirit and the mystery of the Infi- 
 nite. The menstruum which it employs as a solvent for 
 these apparently unrelated and intractable elements, is 
 its doctrine of life. Whatever may be the defects or 
 incongruities of this bold and sweeping theory, what- 
 ever are the dangers it brings to faith and morals, to 
 social order and religion, it partially hides by the ele- 
 vated associations which the mystery of life never 
 fails to suggest. Development and evolution have be- 
 come terms convenient for the enchanter or juggler to 
 conjure with in the haunted caves of metaphysical sub- 
 tlety ; and it would seem at times as though, whether 
 it be by enchantment or jugglery, the first victim of 
 either is usually the operator himself. 
 
226 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OB, 
 
 The writers who have most effectually contributed to 
 the maturity and exposition of this system are James 
 Mill the father, and John Stuart Mill the son, Alex- 
 ander Bain, John Tyndall, Thomas H. Huxley, Charles 
 W. Darwin, Herbert Spencer, George H. Lewes, and 
 John Fiske. 
 
 Besides these we ought not to overlook the crowd of 
 naturalists, both the solid and romantic, who, having 
 accepted the evidence for evolution within certain lim- 
 its, are ready to extend it indefinitely over all regions 
 of knowledge which are unfamiliar to themselves, or in 
 their nature not easily grasped, and are content to make 
 it the substitute for the absolute, the infinite, and the 
 living God. Were we to assign to each of these writers 
 we have named the element which he has contributed 
 to this new metaphysics, and the agency which he ex- 
 cited, we must needs write a careful criticism and a 
 philosophical history of the theories of each of these 
 eminent men. It will be enough to say, that James 
 Mill's bald and yet half-digested sensationalism ; John 
 Stuart Mill's exposition of induction, and his Comtian 
 theory of causality, together with his necessitarian and 
 sociological ethics, and his doctrine of associationalism 
 as contained in his criticism of Hamilton ; Alexander 
 Bain's gross physiological cerebralism, and his thorough- 
 paced associationalism, in which he surpasses even Stu- 
 art Mill himself ; Thomas H. Huxley's doctrine of pro- 
 toplasm as the physical basis of life ; Michael Faraday's 
 brilliant suggestion of the correlation of force, con- 
 firmed by numerous experiments on the part of careful 
 followers, which has been so brilliantly expounded and 
 so audaciously applied by the eloquent John Tyndall ; 
 Charles Darwin's doctrine of the origination of species 
 by the law of natural selection under the conditions of 
 a favorable or hostile environment, and his doctrine of 
 
TUE APOTIIEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 227 
 
 heredity as subsequently enounced ; Herschel and La- 
 place's nebular hypothesis ; the Kantian doctrine of the 
 relativity of knowledge as interpreted by Hamilton and 
 applied by Mansel, — were all more or less distinctly 
 before the mind of Mr. Herbert Spencer when he ma- 
 tured the romantic generalization by which he explains 
 the generation of the universe of beings — mechanical, 
 physical, spiritual — under the formula of development 
 or evolution, and assumed for it a steady and continu- 
 ous progress from the simple to the complex, attended 
 by a constant tendency to integration, which gives rela- 
 tive permanency to its transitory phases. This law he 
 makes to extend to every thing which exists and to 
 every event which occurs ; to beings material, vital, 
 spiritual ; to every occurrence or change which befalls 
 them ; to the gathering of the cosmical masses, and the 
 falling of a sparrow, to the suggestion of every thought, 
 and the inspiration of every emotion. He extends it to 
 the subtle relations which underlie all science, and 
 declares that these are first evolved by manifold expe- 
 riences, then hardened in the brain by the repeated 
 blendings or consentient activities of many brain-cells, 
 and finally transmitted as the necessary forms and reg- 
 ulators of the psychical, i.e., the cerebral, activities of 
 subsequent generations. The system thus perfected 
 has been expounded in more or less detail by not a few 
 zealous disciples, who have now and then sought to 
 apply it with greater confidence than their master. It 
 has been accepted in part by some who would hesitate 
 to assent to it as a whole, but who, nevertheless, confid- 
 ingly reason as though the formula of evolution were 
 the ready solution of many a problem, and find in con- 
 tinuity, heredity, and development the keys which 
 open many a lock. It is not essential to follow it in 
 detail in order to judge of its characteristic peculiari- 
 
228 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; 0R t 
 
 ties. We are only concerned to show that the meta- 
 physics which makes such magnificent claims, and in 
 one sense has reached such magnificent proportions, is 
 essentially physiological in its fundamental conceptions. 
 This is distinctly asserted by Mr. Spencer himself. 
 
 " And now let me point out that which really has exercised a 
 profound influence over my course of thought. The truth which 
 Harvey's emhryological inquiries first dimly indicated, which was 
 more clearly perceived by Wolff and Goethe, and which was put 
 into a definite shape by Von Baer, — the truth that all organic 
 development is a change from a state of homogeneity to a state of 
 heterogeneity, — this it is from which very many conclusions which 
 I now hold have indirectly resulted. In ' Social Statics ' there is 
 everywhere manifested a dominant belief in the evolution of man 
 and of society. There is also manifested the belief, that this evo- 
 lution is in both cases determined by the incidence of conditions, — 
 the actions of circumstances. And there is further, in the sections 
 above referred to, a recognition of the fact, that organic and social 
 evolutions conform to the same law. . . . The extension of it to 
 other kinds of phenomena than those of individual and social or- 
 ganization is traceable through successive stages. . . . Afterwards 
 there came the recognition of the need for further limitation of 
 this formula ; "next the inquiry into those general laws of force 
 from which this universal transformation necessarily results ; next 
 the deduction of these from the ultimate law of the persistence 
 of force ; next the perception that there is everywhere a process of 
 dissolution complementary to that of evolution ; and, finally, the 
 determinations of the conditions (specified in the foregoing essay) 
 under which evolution and dissolution respectively occur. The 
 filiation of these results is, I think, tolerably manifest. The pro- 
 cess has been one of continuous development, set up by the addition 
 of Von Baer's law to a number of ideas that were in harmony 
 with it." 1 
 
 This distinct avowal would decide the question, if 
 any question were possible, that the relations which 
 are characteristic of Spencer's system are prevailingly 
 physiological. 
 
 1 Essay on Reasons for Dissenting from the Philosophy of Comte, 
 appended to an Essay on the Classification of the Sciences (pp. 4G, 47). 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 229 
 
 Whether Spencer's view of what life is, and of its 
 genesis and conditions, may not be seriously defective, 
 we shall not at present inquire. Whether he may not 
 have formed an inexact and superficial view of devel- 
 opment itself, as held by Goethe and Von Baer, or 
 made an illegitimate and unauthorized application of 
 the term as understood by them, we need not ask. It 
 is enough for us to know, that the conception as at pres- 
 ent employed was derived from the processes of life, 
 and was originally limited to the sphere of organic ex- 
 istence. While we take Spencer as the representative 
 of the extremest views, we are aware that multitudes 
 agree with him in partially accepting the physiological 
 metaphysics, who would shrink from making so bold 
 an application of the principles which they involve. 
 But we think it not unjust to subject to the same test 
 the principles which they all hold in common. 
 
 This system claims to be the apotheosis of science and 
 of philosophy, in that it has brought it to its final cul- 
 mination and its ultimate possible perfection. As such, 
 it asserts that it has invested the universe with the 
 radiance of a single interpreting formula, and has pene- 
 trated its darkest abysses with scientific light. It 
 resolves all the phases of its past ; tracing them in order 
 from the beginning, when star-dust was found to be 
 moving out of chaos from a rarer to a denser medium, 
 onwards to the end when all the possible cycles of de- 
 velopment having been completed, and every stadium 
 of progressive integration and differentiation having 
 been accomplished, the ultimate particles shall be re- 
 leased from these bonds, when the scene is to shift, and 
 star-dust somehow shall re-appear on the arena, to rush 
 again from a rarer to a denser medium, and the cycle 
 of development shall again be renewed. 
 
 We do not propose to enter into an extended dis- 
 
230 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OB, 
 
 cussion of this system. We are well aware that the 
 public, for several reasons, are weary of these minute 
 and extended criticisms. Prominent among these rea- 
 sons is this : that few are so familiar with each of the 
 several lines of argument in which lies its strength if 
 it be true, and its weakness if it is false, as to be able 
 to judge of any considerable number of them. Fewer 
 still are competent to pronounce upon the relation of 
 each part to every other, and the cumulative force of 
 all as they bear upon the grand conclusion. What is 
 within the sphere of each man's specialty he can under- 
 stand. What is derived from the sphere of another's 
 observation or thought he must take in some sense 
 upon trust. But the general similarity between the 
 several relations and facts of the several spheres any 
 man can vaguely appreciate ; and hence the generaliza- 
 tions of the theory seem plausible at their first impres- 
 sion, though the impression is vague, and perhaps 
 because it is vague. Meanwhile the confiding student 
 trusts to the brilliant suggestions of the confident theo- 
 rist, and his more confident asseverations. So long as 
 he is in the attitude of a learner, the path is easy ; but, 
 so soon as he is summoned to the duty of the critic, his 
 task is difficult and irksome, because he must of neces- 
 sity pass judgment upon facts and analogies with which 
 he is not familiar, and in respect to which he feels that 
 he is incompetent to act as a judge. That many phys- 
 iologists should favor a system of philosophy which 
 finds development everywhere is not very surprising. 
 That those who are not physiologists in special should 
 at first hesitate, and know not what to say, and then 
 be dazed by the imposing plausibility of the general- 
 izations which they cannot fully appreciate, and finally 
 relapse into a "silence which is taken for consent," 
 seems at first thought surprising, but on second thought 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 231 
 
 is altogether natural. Explain the fact as we may, the 
 theory takes captive many a general student and other- 
 wise critical thinker, simply because he is unable to 
 reply to those reasonings on many points which are out 
 of the range of his studies. And yet the breadth of 
 the generalizations, the confidence with which they are 
 urged, the nonchalance with which difficulties are sur- 
 mounted, the vast number of facts which the expounder 
 has at his command, the ease with which he marshals 
 them under groups, and, above all, the mysterious fas- 
 cination with which the phenomena of growth and 
 change are invested to every imaginative mind, — all 
 these account, in part, for the unquestioning acceptance 
 of this theory by many quick-minded thinkers, who 
 would confess themselves altogether disqualified closely 
 to scrutinize its claims. It is obvious, that those who, 
 for the reasons given, cannot understand the arguments 
 for, are disqualified to understand the arguments 
 against; and hence special and minute criticisms of 
 these pretentious and portentous theories attract atten- 
 tion from but few. 
 
 There is one line of argument, however, which is 
 accessible to every mind. It concerns itself with the 
 relation of this theory to the certainty and the trust- 
 worthiness of science itself. If it can be clearly proved 
 that the physiological metaphysics, by its own showing, 
 is fatal to the authority and trustworthiness of knowl- 
 edge itself in all its forms, and especially in the pro- 
 cesses and the conditions which are essential to science, 
 it would seem that a system which had claimed for itself, 
 and had seemed to many to be, the apotheosis of science, 
 has committed theoretical suicide. It is our purpose to 
 show this by arguments and illustrations, which are open 
 to the understanding of any one who is capable of judg- 
 ing of subjects of this kind, or will be likely to be inter- 
 
232 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OR, 
 
 ested in the question. So far as the teachings of this 
 system are concerned with the authority of and trust- 
 worthiness of science, they relate to four distinct topics ; 
 viz., the process of knowledge, the agent in knowledge, the 
 conditions of knowledge, and the sphere of knowledge, — 
 whether this last be the finite universe or the some- 
 thing more, called the infinite, the absolute, or God. 
 
 (1) We begin with the process of knowledge, because 
 science as a process is a form of knowing which passes 
 into a product. It is also, as process and product, one 
 of the highest and noblest. Any view of the process 
 which is seriously defective in any particular must vitiate 
 our conceptions of the product by weakening or destroy- 
 ing the grounds of our confidence in the structure which 
 it builds for us. A fatally defective or inconsistent 
 theory of the act of knowledge must be suicidal to 
 science. It is, then, a matter of fundamental interest 
 to know what the physiological view of knowledge must 
 be according to the fundamental theory of the evolu- 
 tionists, as it is defined to be by themselves. 
 
 We ask, first, what knowledge is, after the theory 
 of the evolutionist? We answer, it must be a phenome- 
 non resulting from the differentiation and integration of 
 two preceding phenomena, — less complex than itself. 
 We may not refer to a knowing agent as its sole origi- 
 nator; because such an agent, exercising the function 
 of certainty, and distinguishing, it may be, the object 
 known, from itself the knowing spirit, is an inadmissible 
 conception. Evolution recognizes no single agent in 
 any process. It requires at least two simpler forms or 
 phenomena ; i.e., modes of the unknown and unknowable 
 force. These must interact, as seed and sunshine, as 
 the nucleus and protoplasm, as nerve-cell or stimulant, 
 in such a way as to evolve a tertium quid different from 
 and more complex than either. Let us suppose that a 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 233 
 
 phenomenon of this kind, thus evoked by its consenting 
 forces, and sustained in being only so long as they con- 
 spire in energy, has reached so high a position of differ- 
 entiated integration in a happily constituted and thor- 
 oughly cultivated brain, as to take the form of a com- 
 pleted theory of evolution. The theory is demonstrated 
 to the mind of an ingenious philosopher. In scientific 
 language, it floats in a delightful equipoise of consilient 
 if not jubilant brain-cells in the roomy head of its forever 
 famous originator. It also finds entrance and makes 
 place for itself in very many other nervous organizations 
 sufficiently differentiated to give it an answering response 
 of favor. As long as these agencies are in this state of 
 consentient re-action, the science of evolution is ac- 
 cepted as true. But the progress of development, by its 
 own showing, can never rest. No more can any pro- 
 cess which we commonly call certainty or conviction of 
 truth. The exciting agents which in the vulgar speech 
 men call evidence, but in scientific nomenclature we 
 must call highly differentiated and compactly integrated 
 nerve-cells, which represent the theory to be received, 
 and the responsive molecules which in common speech 
 are unphysiologically supposed to represent a conviction 
 of its truth, — neither of these agencies can linger long 
 in the happy condition of equilibrium which they have 
 attained. Under the onward and upward pressure of 
 manifest destiny, they must proceed to other integra- 
 tions and differentiations which, whether they be beings 
 or phenomena, must be unlike those which have pre- 
 ceded them. That phenomenon which may remain for a 
 while, — call it certainty, conviction, knowledge, science, 
 — long enough to buoy up the magnificent theory of 
 evolution, according to the theory and under the opera- 
 tion of evolution itself, can have no permanent exist- 
 ence, and of course no final and universal authority. 
 
234 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OB, 
 
 Or if certainty is still accorded to the lower rank of 
 agencies just left behind, the knowledge and the truth, 
 the subjective conviction and the objective reality, may 
 both be superseded by some other combination of agen- 
 cies, which is totally unlike that which has previously 
 come into being. This is no caricature of the theory, 
 but the strictly scientific application of its principles. 
 For, according to its teachings, every thing is phenome- 
 nal, even the function of knowledge itself. Every phe- 
 nomenon is brought into being, and sustained in being, 
 and is what it is as a being, by the consentient action 
 of the agencies which are concerned in its production. 
 Beneath every act of knowledge, and within every act 
 of knowledge, the whole universe of force somehow is 
 present. What the phenomenon is, must depend on 
 the character of the agencies from which it is evolved. 
 If the agents change in their so-called constitution, the 
 re-actions must change with them. This must be true 
 of all the forms of knowledge, from the lowest to the 
 highest. It must be pre-eminently true of the highest 
 as yet attained by man, that knowledge which is science 
 and which gives science. 
 
 Should this view of the matter strike any of our 
 readers as singular and strained, it must be because they 
 have not reflected on the reach and import of this theory 
 of evolution when it is applied to the function of knowl- 
 edge. This positive function, as we know it in our experi- 
 ence, is so totally unlike any thing of this sort, that we 
 cannot believe that any theory can teach so defective a 
 conception of its nature as the one we have described. 
 Or it may be we carry the convictions which we derive 
 from our conscious exercise of the act of knowledge over 
 into our interpretations of the consequences which any 
 theory would logically involve. It must also be con- 
 fessed, that the language and representations of much, if 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 235 
 
 not of most, of our English psychology give more or less 
 sanction to those views of knowledge which the physio- 
 logical metaphysics have only carried to an extreme in 
 one direction, which they somehow have thought to cor- 
 rect in the other by introducing from the world of life 
 the more elevating conceptions of development. It is 
 notorious that the drift of English psychology since the 
 time of Hobbes has set very strongly in the direction of 
 the passivity of the intellect. The well-known fact, that 
 in sense-perception physical agents or objects must act 
 upon the sense-organs and the sensorium, in order that 
 the material world may be known, and the prominence 
 given to the operations of the passive memory and 
 imagination in the cerebral and associational schools, 
 have sanctioned these gross misconceptions of the na- 
 ture of knowledge itself. These in turn have prepared 
 the way for theories which conceive the act either as an 
 effect produced by the object known upon the knowing 
 mind, — in this reversing the order of nature and of 
 experience, — or represent it as a function in which the 
 object and mind co-act ; the result being the outcome of 
 their conspiring energies, as when the ball follows the 
 diagonal between two impulses at right angles to one 
 other, or as oxygen and hydrogen are developed by 
 union into water. Certainly those evolutionists who 
 venture any opinions on psychology do not hesitate to 
 avow the grossest explanations of the mental processes 
 which are matters of the commonest experience. Both 
 Mr. Spencer and Mr. Huxley go so far as to accept the 
 doctrine of Hume, that the processes of knowledge are 
 best expressed by Hume's " impressions and ideas," and 
 seem to be sublimely unconscious that anybody who 
 presumes to be a philosopher can hesitate to accept 
 these as the last words upon the subject. These gross 
 misconceptions are not relieved from their logical con- 
 
236 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OB, 
 
 sequences by being clothed in the more attractive garb 
 of that development, or evolution, which is borrowed 
 from the sphere of life, especially if development itself 
 is conceived as a progress from lower to higher poten- 
 cies of mechanical aggregation, beginning with a crystal 
 and ending with a spirit. Development, moreover, sug- 
 gests associations which are elevated and spiritual. For 
 this reason it can be used more readily to displace and 
 dignify mechanical relations and laws. It suggests the 
 variety, the resources, the beauty, the intelligence, the 
 joy, and the rapture of jubilant life beings. It is invested 
 with the associations of mystery, of independence, and 
 of self-reliance, which are connected with living beings, 
 even of lower types. These associations serve very 
 largely to explain the otherwise inexplicable fact, that 
 evolution, even when it has become atheistic or agnostic 
 in its philosophy, has entered so easily and been enter- 
 tained so graciously in scientific circles which are even 
 high in moral tone and devout in religious aspiration. 
 
 It is more than probable, that the construction which 
 we have placed upon the evolutionist theory of knowl- 
 edge as necessarily suicidal to science, will be regarded 
 as forced and unfair. The reductio ad absurdum from 
 the logical consequences or consistencies of a defini- 
 tion or theory, though acknowledged to be theoretically 
 just, is often rejected as practically unfair, especially if 
 it can be urged that the advocate of a theory may per- 
 haps not accept the definition, or the construction which 
 the critic imposes upon the doctrine which he assails. 
 The defender or looker-on will not unfrequently inter- 
 pose in the interest of fair play, and insist that the rep- 
 resentative of the theory assailed shall be allowed to 
 define and apply his own conceptions. It is always 
 courteous and usually just to concede this claim. In 
 the present instance the demand can be readily met, 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 237 
 
 and the challenge may be most gratefully accepted. 
 Fortunately we have in his own language the theory of 
 knowledge which is accepted and expounded by the 
 great advocate of physiological metaphysics. In Her- 
 bert Spencer's " Principles of Psychology " (Part I. 
 chaps, v., vi., and vii. ; i. c. i.), this theory may be 
 found by any person who will use the patience to search 
 out its fragmentary and loosely scattered elements, and 
 carefully adjust them into a coherent whole. At first 
 the concession is made, and, as it would seem, with 
 astonishing naivete, which almost wins the heart of the 
 critic, not only that psychical phenomena are known by 
 consciousness or introspection alone, but that science 
 can neither discern nor prove any connection between 
 these and any changes in the organism. It is almost 
 incredible, that after this naive concession of Mr. Spen- 
 cer, which sends us to consciousness as the sole and 
 final arbiter of what it is to know, he should rob it of all 
 its authority by asserting, that even in sensation all that 
 we can know of the relation of the changes in the ner- 
 vous organism to its related conscious activities must be 
 learned through the light which is derived from the ope- 
 rations of evolution in other spheres of being. This is 
 at once to set aside the final testimony of consciousness 
 in respect to the lowest form of knowledge in sense-per- 
 ception, by referring the decision to a metaphysical or 
 physiological theory. It is to set up a theory which 
 professes to be founded on facts which are confessed 
 to have no possible relation to the facts in question, to 
 settle questions of fact and experience which are as- 
 serted to be utterly unlike those from which the induc- 
 tion is derived. 
 
 The conclusion which he derives from this induction 
 is very clearly, though very indirectly, stated thus: 
 44 Though accumulated observations and experiments 
 
238 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OB, 
 
 have led us, by a very indirect series of inferences, to 
 the belief that mind and nervous action are the sub- 
 jective and objective forces of the same thing, we re- 
 main utterly incapable of seeing, and even of imagining, 
 how the two are related " (§ 56, " Principles of Psy- 
 chology "). This conclusion being reached, the author 
 proceeds to show how they are related in sense-percep- 
 tion ; i.e., how knowledge may be developed from or 
 expressed in terms of nervous action. " Knowing im- 
 plies something acted upon and something acting upon 
 it." " That which in the act of knowing is affected by 
 the thing known, must itself be the substance of the 
 mind. The substance of the mind escapes into some 
 new form in recognizing some form under which it has 
 just existed." He then argues, that what seem to be the 
 simplest sense-perceptions — i.e., alterations of the sub- 
 stance of the mind, or subjective phenomena of nervous 
 activity — cannot be simple, because in sound we distin- 
 guish quality, timbre, and volume. In this, obviously, 
 he mistakes an ultimate or indecomposable experience 
 of consciousness for one of several relations which it may 
 have to other experiences or acts. As we cannot find 
 in consciousness the simplest element of this experience, 
 conceived by him to be complex, we must look for it 
 elsewhere. We finally find, or conclude, or conjecture, 
 that it must be akin to a simple " nervous shock." We 
 next find, or infer, that many simple nervous shocks are 
 the essential counterpart, or objective side, to which the 
 simplest experience of consciousness in sensation corre- 
 sponds. We concede, then, that " the nerve-pulses and 
 the pulses of feeling clearly answer to one another ; and 
 it can scarcely be doubted that they do so throughout." 
 If next we apply to the teachings of chemistry con- 
 cerning matter in order to gain light as to the way in 
 which these complex pulses of feeling may be accounted 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 239 
 
 for, we find that complex and dissimilar material agen- 
 cies are produced from various combinations of simple 
 particles, and that in the last analysis all the so-called 
 simple substances are resolved into different modes 
 of one primordial form of matter. This leads us to 
 conclude by analogy, that " the multitudinous forms of 
 mind known as different feelings may be composed of 
 simpler units of feeling, and even of units fundamen- 
 tally of one kind." To the objection that this would 
 obliterate and set aside the distinction between mind 
 and matter, the author replies, that, as we know nothing 
 of the essence of either, it is of little consequence 
 whether we define the phenomena of matter in terms of 
 mind, or the phenomena of mind in terms of matter. 
 Upon this we make the single comment, that, whether 
 this be so or not, it is of the utmost consequence that 
 that process or operation which we usually call knowl- 
 edge — the process by which science is built up, and 
 upon the trustworthiness and authority of which science 
 depends — should be rightly conceived. If knowledge, 
 when rightly interpreted, is resolved into a series of ner- 
 vous shocks, to which correspond a series of experiences 
 which are felt, we very naturally inquire what meaning 
 or authority there is in such shocks and accompanying 
 feelings as are expressed in the words, " I know by anal- 
 ogy, or believe, that the doctrine of evolution is true ; " 
 or what assurance we have, that what we call our pres- 
 ent conviction on this subject, which we are informed 
 is rapidly becoming the accepted creed of the present 
 generation, will be retained in the generation which is 
 to follow ? 
 
 Our misgivings are increased as we follow Mr. Spen- 
 cer's analysis of knowledge as experienced in con- 
 sciousness. u The proximate components of mind," he 
 tells us, u are of two broadly contrasted kinds, — feel- 
 
240 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OR, 
 
 ings, and the relations between feelings." We accept 
 this without questioning, as enabling us to understand 
 what the nature of the act is by which we accept Mr. 
 Spencer's doctrine of evolution as true. We apprehend 
 certain conceptions in certain relations; the concep- 
 tions being the subject-matter, the relations being the 
 discovered truth or probability of this subject-matter. 
 We are also almost overjoyed by the anticipation that 
 we are to learn at last what he thinks of the operations 
 of the higher intellect in discerning relations. It is a 
 commonplace with other philosophers, and pre-eminently 
 with all modern scientists, that the relations of phe- 
 nomena are all with which science concerns itself, and 
 that the higher intelligence is employed solely in dis- 
 covering and comparing them. We turn over the leaf 
 with eager if not with agitated curiosity, to learn what 
 the physiological metaphysics may have to say upon this 
 point. We scarcely pause to notice Spencer's definition 
 of the feelings as constituting the materials between 
 which relations are discerned. We observe in passing, 
 however, that " a feeling, as we here define it, is any 
 portion of consciousness which occupies a place suffi- 
 ciently large to give it a perceivable individuality ; " 
 i.e., in common speech, it is the act of apprehending 
 the minutest element or object which can be distin- 
 guished. But what is a relation, as of likeness or 
 identity, of causation, or adaptation or end? What 
 does this philosophy make of these subtle links of sig- 
 nificance by which facts — called feelings by Spencer — 
 are connected together into those combinations, and 
 grow into those structures, which men call science, chief 
 and noblest of which is the science of sciences, the 
 physiological metaphysics, of which Development is the 
 charmed word? Listen to the answer: "A relation 
 between feelings is, on the contrary, characterized by 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. . 241 
 
 occupying no appreciable part of consciousness. Take 
 away the terms it unites, and it disappears along with 
 them ; having no independent place, no individuality of 
 its own. It is true, that, under an ultimate analysis, 
 what we call a relation proves to be itself a kind of feeling, 
 — the momentary feeling accompanying the transition 
 from one conspicuous feeling to an adjacent conspicuous 
 feeling" (§ 65, "Principles of Psychology"). Here 
 we have the key to the physiological metaphysics ! 
 The acts of discerning relations, the related objects, 
 and the relations discerned, are feelings, and, moreover, 
 "such feelings as accompany the transition from one 
 conspicuous feeling to an adjacent conspicuous feeling ! " 
 The sublime interpretations of the scientific mind, such 
 as Kepler and Newton and Davy and Faraday and 
 Kirchhoff have now and then achieved, and which have 
 elevated them to such triumphant joy as only befits a 
 moment of divine inspiration, and the analogies which 
 they have discovered and applied, — these, physiologi- 
 cally explained, are the briefly and yet faintly appreci- 
 ated emotions experienced in the transitions from one 
 feeling to another. But what is science if she accepts 
 relations which are conceived after this fashion ? Let 
 the student of her history who knows what science has 
 done and is now doing, ask whether this chemico-physio- 
 logical explanation does justice to those acts of saga- 
 cious insight by which science has ascended to that lofty 
 seat from which she dares either proudly to dispense 
 with God, or confidently yet humbly to read the thoughts 
 of God. We conclude, that, whatever else may be true 
 of the solutions which the physiological metaphysics 
 give of other problems, they furnish no satisfactory ex- 
 planation of the processes by which science herself has 
 been evolved into being, or of the authoritv by which 
 she commands the assent of mankind. 
 
242 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OB, 
 
 (2) Equally unsatisfactory are the representations of 
 the agent of science, whether it be called the human 
 intelligence or the human soul. It would seem as 
 though any satisfactory metaphysics would of necessity 
 exalt the agent of all these achievements to the highest 
 possible position, and accord to it the noblest ' endow- 
 ments and capacities. To do this has been the tempta- 
 tion of scientific thinkers in other ages. It has been 
 reserved for the science of our time to show its ex- 
 tremest daring by its attempts to degrade these activi- 
 ties, and to crown that daring by efforts to dishonor or 
 destroy the agent which performs them. It would seem 
 that none but a modern scientist could be moved to 
 sublime delight in looking back upon his individual self 
 as once floating in the whirl of the original fire-mists, 
 or rise to a feeling of exultation in looking forward to 
 himself as flashing in the azure tints which drape a 
 magnificent sunset. Nor have these conceptions of 
 man's spiritual being been confined to the soarings of 
 the scientific imagination. The reason has also used its 
 utmost refinement of analysis, and stretched its analogies 
 into the boldest theories, in order to reduce the knowing 
 agent to " a physiological expression,'' or a metaphysi- 
 cal abstraction. It is true, that, in order to be success- 
 ful, it must first avail itself of the mystery and magic 
 which the common mind finds in the processes of life 
 exalting and magnifying them so high as to make them 
 capable of spiritual functions, and then give both life 
 and spirit a downward plunge by its mechanical theory 
 of " nervous shocks." If our readers will assure them- 
 selves that this representation is no exaggeration, let 
 them carefully study the representations of the soul as 
 they are reasoned out by Bain or Spencer, or Lewes or 
 Fiske. Let them not be imposed on by the apparently 
 candid and considerate admissions which they find in 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 243 
 
 all these writers of the difference between physiological 
 and psychological experiences, nor of the incommen- 
 surability of the one with the other. They will find, 
 that, in the last analysis, the so-called psychological ex- 
 periences are only other names for states of the nervous 
 system which, in the very terms by which they are de- 
 scribed, are only removed by the faintest nuances from 
 mechanism and chimism, either in thought or language. 
 As to the mind itself as known to itself, as exercising 
 the authority of judgment, or being convinced in cer- 
 tainty, there is not the hint that this is not only essen- 
 tial but conspicuous in the operations of scientific 
 knowledge. The suspicion or conviction that there is 
 or can be an agent which exists or acts in them all, is set 
 aside by the suggestion, that mental acts, and the agent 
 which knows, are but fleeting states or phenomena of 
 the unknown force which now appears as a knowable 
 phase of what we call matter, and now as the knowing 
 act of what we call mind ; while of the nature of this 
 two-faced force we can know nothing more than is given 
 in these transient phenomena, while the permanent exist- 
 ence of the subject of either is simply the longer per- 
 sistence of the force which manifests itself through 
 either aspect of these bi-polar phenomena. To reach 
 any scientific conviction would seem to require a mind 
 to be convinced : but this philosophy knows no mind, 
 but only a state which is correlated to a phase of the 
 nervous system ; and this is but another phase of other 
 agents sublimated to or through higher removes of re- 
 finement, from the preceding simpler elements, or the 
 simpler phenomena which went before. No explanation 
 can be given of the plausibility of such a theory except 
 that its theory of the soul is purely physiological. None 
 of these most dexterous word substitutions or subtle in- 
 terchanges of thought can be accepted as the equiva- 
 
244 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OB, 
 
 lent for that emphatic assertion of its own being which 
 the soul makes to itself in every step of its knowing, 
 and which it emphasizes more positively the higher it 
 rises in scientific achievement. 
 
 (3) We pass next to the conditions of knowledge in 
 the apprehension of which the physiological metaphysics 
 claims special advantages. It has learned, on the one 
 hand, to recognize the necessity of certain categories 
 which must be assumed as unquestioned and primitive 
 in order that science may be possible, but it will not 
 recognize them as either forms of being or forms of 
 mind ; because, according to the physiological theory, 
 beings and mind are varying forms or phenomena of the 
 unknown force themselves, which are more or less per- 
 sistent, evolved into one another by differences which di- 
 vide and combinations which unite. There are relations, 
 however, ever recurring, which mix with all our knowing, 
 and enter into all our experiences, and which accom- 
 pany all our beliefs, and are especially conspicuous in 
 the high generalizations of scientific thought. It is true, 
 that physiologically conceived, as has already been ex- 
 plained, relations are only feelings, more -transient than 
 the feelings between which they are said to exist; 
 i.e., they are experienced in the mind's transition from 
 one feeling to another. There are relations between 
 complexes of feelings and also between complexes of 
 relations. These relations, like all other mental expe- 
 riences, involve certain definite activities of the nervous 
 organism, which, if often repeated, tend to perpetuation. 
 Let it now be supposed that certain relations, as of 
 causation, or time and space, both in their specialized 
 and more general forms, should often be repeated, 
 and that the molecular condition of the brain should 
 be gradually adjusted. By the law of heredity, the 
 tendencies to these adjustments must pass over into 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 245 
 
 the brains of the succeeding generation. By con- 
 stant exercise, these adjustments would be so fixed 
 as invariably to recur when their appropriate con- 
 ditions should require, attended by their accompanying 
 psychical experiences, till at last, as the result of the 
 accumulated energy of these recurring and inherited 
 experiences, it has become absolutely necessary to the 
 intellectual activity of the human race, as we find it, to 
 think under them as accepted categories of scientific 
 knowledge. The physiological origin and character of 
 this theory of the conditions of science are sufficiently 
 obvious. Every element in it is purely physiological, 
 — the nervous activity with its counterpart in mental 
 activity ; tendencies often awakened and fixed in the 
 brain by repetition ; heredity by physiological transmis- 
 sion, and unconscious and necessary revival under every 
 possible occasion. We do not assert that the theory, 
 when physiologically viewed, is altogether coherent. 
 Even though we should allow its principal assumptions 
 to pass unquestioned, we do not find that it explains 
 why so few of these relations between complex feelings 
 or complex relations should originally present them- 
 selves so frequently as to thrust aside many others ; e.g., 
 why the relations of time and space or causation should 
 gain any advantage by their frequency, were there not 
 some original necessity which determined them to be fre- 
 quently and even uniformly present to the discerning 
 mind. But, if any such necessity for their frequent oc- 
 currence be admitted, then it must have existed before 
 the intermediate action of the physiological agencies 
 which are introduced to explain the permanence and the 
 universality of the categories which have thus become 
 the intellectual outfit of the race. Then, again, hered- 
 ity, while it transmits with strength and certainty, also 
 transmits with tendencies to variation; and the environ- 
 
246 
 
 ment which receives the transmitted legacy of the past 
 also fixes it after some discernible change. But this is 
 contrary to the theory which holds the categories to be 
 axiomatic and permanent. 
 
 If, on the other hand, we suppose the theory to be 
 true, the consequences must be fatal to the authority 
 of science itself. We see not why, under the operation 
 of the physiological agencies supposed, new categories 
 must not come into existence, which may displace or 
 perhaps contradict those already recognized — nor in- 
 deed, why any conceivable species of so-called relations 
 may not come into being ; nor why, under the operation 
 of the inevitable tendency to change, the entire struc- 
 ture of axiomatic relations which are now accepted 
 should not be outgrown ; nor why, in short, science 
 itself, as we know it, with its space and time, its 
 number and magnitude, its causation and its adapta- 
 tions, should not finally be dissipated into intellectual 
 or material star-dust. 
 
 It would seem as though any system of metaphysics 
 ought at least to provide for its own permanence, and 
 the solidity of the sciences which rest upon it. But 
 when, instead of this, it supplies the materials and 
 provides for the necessity of its own displacement, we 
 cannot see why it does not commit a deliberate hari- 
 kari, with no less certain and dreadful fatality because 
 of the solemn state and heroic dignity with which it 
 inflicts and accepts the final stroke. 
 
 One category or axiom is fundamental to the physio- 
 logical theory which seems especially endangered ; and 
 that is, the assumption of the law of evolution itself as 
 necessarily permanent. No man should claim to be a 
 philosopher who has not asked himself the question, 
 and attempted to answer it, Why do I believe that 
 the law of development which I observe to exist within 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 247 
 
 a limited sphere of living beings, extends through the 
 universe of being, or why do I assume that a mode of 
 operation which has held good for many ages will con- 
 tinue for all the ages, or even has prevailed from the 
 first ? The question is not answered satisfactorily by 
 the plrysiologieal explanation of our fundamental be- 
 liefs. Mr. Spencer does not phrase it in the form which 
 we have adopted ; although he does very often concede 
 that the evidence for our acceptance of the theory as 
 universal and all-enduring is to be found in its uni- 
 versal presence, and its capacity to explain all observed 
 phenomena. But where this last criterion of truth has 
 originated he does not seem to consider. On his own 
 theory, it is a chance brain-growth, which has become 
 a fixed growth, — an axiom of the mind, broad enough 
 to underlie all forms of scientific research, and deep 
 enough to sustain the structure into which they are 
 wrought ; but how a conviction so fundamental should 
 have gained convincing power by the simple repetition 
 of its discerned exemplifications, it is not easy to see. 
 But a metaphysics which does not seek to explain our 
 belief in the fixedness of the course of nature can never 
 satisfy a truly scientific mind. Such a system is not 
 enlightened enough to ask all the questions which 
 should suggest themselves to such a mind. It is not 
 surprising, that, if it fails to ask them with intelligence, 
 it should be unable to answer them satisfactorily. So 
 far as it may be said to ask any questions respecting the 
 foundation of our faith in the physiological relation of 
 evolution, it answers by phenomena and analogies which 
 are purely physiological, and even resolves these physio- 
 logical data into forces and laws which are purely me- 
 chanical; translating our very faith in evolution into 
 the harmonized movements of the brain-cells of the 
 philosopher, and explains the movements of these brain- 
 
248 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OR, 
 
 cells by the mechanical movements of the particles of 
 which they are composed. 
 
 (4) We notice, last of all, that the physiological met- 
 aphysics makes no provision for, or recognition of, the 
 sphere of scientific inquiry in its full extent and com- 
 pleteness. There are certain conceptions and relations 
 for the actual presence of which to the mind it can give 
 no account ; much less can it explain our beliefs and 
 reasonings in regard to them. If it be conceded, that it 
 is adequate to the demands of the finite universe of 
 matter and spirit in that it can mirror its facts and 
 relations by those processes of responsive intelligence 
 which its physiological theories provide, it fails alto- 
 gether to explain the presence of our ideas of space, 
 time, and God, and their relations to finite beings. 
 That these conceptions are often present to the minds 
 of men cannot be denied. We do not insist that they 
 believe in them as realities. All that we need to as- 
 sume is, that they can and do think of them. The 
 physiological metaphysics can in some sense explain 
 the presence to the mind of finite objects, and their 
 pictures, and their generalized notions, and, after its 
 fashion, of their relations ; but it cannot possibly con- 
 jure into being any nervous responses, any combinations 
 or reflex actions which shall explain the notion of time 
 or space as unbounded, or of God as self-existent and 
 everywhere knowing and acting. Indeed, unless we 
 greatly misunderstand Mr. Spencer's avowals, he limits 
 the power of human ideation to the capacity to picture 
 a certain extent of finite material, which must break 
 down under its impotent efforts to grasp more than a 
 limited quantum of combined and expanded objects and 
 their relations. He very naturally attempts to dispose 
 of space and time and the infinite by sending them 
 to the limbo of pseudo-ideas ; but he does not send them 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 249 
 
 so far from the border-line of those thoughts and ideas 
 which bask in the clear sunlight, that they do not now 
 and then obtrude their dusky shadows along and over 
 the horizon which bounds our every-day human thinking. 
 He rightly judges that he has no place for these ideas 
 in his system ; for if all thinking is but the charging and 
 discharging of so much nervous force, or the disloca- 
 tion and relocation of so many brain-cells, then it is 
 evident that there is no apparatus which can picture to 
 man any but finite objects. The physiological meta- 
 physics furnishes no such apparatus ; for, by its own 
 showing, the highest capacity into which the intellect 
 of man can be developed can never rise beyond the 
 actions and re-actions of a definite quantum of nervous 
 matter, as it is acted on by a definite quantum of exist- 
 ing stimuli. How can such a mind know space, or 
 time, or God ? How can it even think of them ? Or 
 how, with the materials which are furnished for it to 
 work upon, can it construct for itself the conceptions of 
 such entities ? We are well aware that Spencer, with a 
 na'ivetS that is charming, often breaks from the logical 
 chain which should bind him to his system, and flies 
 and even soars above it, in speculations concerning the 
 mysterious unknown which is symbolized to men by its 
 perpetual approximations to reality, which are doomed 
 ever to change because they must ever fail to do justice 
 to the unreachable and inexpressible truth. We know 
 very well that he represents it as the crowning glory of 
 his system of development, that it satisfies man's belief 
 that there is an unknowable object of longing and wor- 
 ship, and that his conceptions of its nature must be 
 forever changing because inadequate. But we cannot 
 see how, upon his own theory, he finds any place even 
 for the conceptions of what he says cannot be known, 
 for the reason that he makes the very conception im- 
 
250 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS; OB, 
 
 possible. It would seem to us, that, in order to know 
 that we cannot know it, we must know what the some- 
 thing is which we cannot know ; and, for the power to 
 conceive such an entity, his theory literally and figura- 
 tively provides no place in the human brain. It is doubt- 
 less grateful to him now and then to break from the 
 limits of his own principles to contemplate some of the 
 many things in heaven and earth which are not dreamed 
 of in his philosophy ; but his friends should never allow 
 him to stray beyond the enclosure within which he has 
 confined himself, lest he impale himself upon some of 
 the stakes with which he has hedged himself about. A 
 philosophy which cannot even think of time, or space, 
 or God, has already doomed itself to self-destruction, 
 however ambitious it may be to settle questions which 
 it has demonstrated its incompetency to entertain. 
 
 But we ought to bring our meditation to a close. 
 No phenomenon of modern thinking is more marvellous 
 than the suddenness with which the physiological meta- 
 physics has taken form and attracted to itself public 
 attention. It is far more wonderful that it should have 
 been accepted with so little scrutiny, and been assented 
 to with so blind and headlong an allegiance by large 
 classes of men who claim to be little more than laymen 
 in both physiology and philosophy. It is more wonder- 
 ful still that the attempt to challenge its assumptions 
 and to scrutinize its evidence, especially by philosophers 
 or theologians, should have been resented as bigoted 
 and ignorant intrusions into the domains of pure science, 
 and have fixed its devotees in a more blind and unques- 
 tioning faith in the extremest conclusions, or have even 
 determined the sympathy of some towards the most 
 reckless assertions of principles which are grossly incon- 
 sistent with religion, morality, and social order. 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 251 
 
 The doctrine of development in the sphere of life, 
 whether vegetable or animal, is familiar to the experi- 
 ences of the most superficial student of natural history. 
 The distinct assertion of it in a wider reach and applica- 
 tion, after a fixed order or plan, when propounded by 
 modern naturalists, had a highly poetic and even a reli- 
 gious tinge, such as at first exposed it to suspicion in 
 the judgment of sober analysists. Only devout theists, 
 or mystic pantheists, or imaginative naturalists, would 
 favorably regard the theory of germs as containing 
 within themselves the promise and potency of so won- 
 drous a life which was waiting to be developed from 
 within, and which, in its turn, held within itself the 
 capacity to produce germs of still greater promise and 
 potency. The extension of development to the produc- 
 tion of new species required only a larger faith and a 
 more extensive observation. It was not till the ten- 
 dency to variation was conceived of as in some sort a 
 mechanical force, and capable of approximative mathe- 
 matical formulization, of course without warrant, that 
 the theory gained a hearing from the schools. The 
 emphasizing of the influence of environment as co-act- 
 ing rigidly and severely with the tendency to variation, 
 and the addition of the struggle for existence and the 
 survival of the fittest, tended to abate still more of the 
 poetical and religious aspects of simple development. 
 Even then there was no necessary inconsistency with 
 the belief that intelligence originated and controls the 
 operations of life in the individual and the species. 
 Indeed, the theory rightly viewed, if you take intelli- 
 gence and spirit out from its domain, supposes a plan 
 and prevision with the amplest resources for combina- 
 tion and selection, and is not inconsistent with the 
 devoutest theism. The very word development in the 
 minds of most men, and in the unconscious speech of 
 
252 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OB, 
 
 even atheists and naturalists, supposes a plan after 
 which phenomena are evolved into view. Unluckily, 
 when the theory and relations were extended across the 
 boundaries of living beings, it was taken up by men 
 who believed that life is only a more complex form of 
 mechanism, and spirit a more complex form of life, who 
 held, moreover, that mechanism rules the universe, and 
 that all its wondrous phenomena, from attraction to 
 thinking and loving, depend simply on the collocations 
 and motions of particles which are in themselves inert, 
 and, compared with one another, are indistinguishable. 
 As soon as this construction was accepted, the poetico- 
 religious theory of development became only a stupid 
 game of permutation and combination. The progress 
 of the universe was as uninteresting and as uninstruc- 
 tive as the evolution of logarithmic indices which are 
 never applied; and, what is worst of all, the system 
 which derived all its plausibility and interest from the 
 phenomena of life provided for its own refutation and 
 abandonment by the suicide to which it was self-doomed. 
 It affirmed that the ultimate molecules or simplest forms 
 of matter have not only the capacity for, but are self- 
 moved to, acts of combining into more complex unions, 
 each of which is capable of phenomena higher in the 
 scale of existence. When the highest forms of the inor- 
 ganic pass, by insensible gradations, into the lowest 
 forms of life, the higher forms of life begin to put on 
 the lower forms of sentiency and intelligence. It follows 
 by strict necessity, that all the spirit of which we are 
 cognizant — all finite spirit — is only some highly devel- 
 oped form of matter. It would seem that a universe 
 like this, with germs like these, endowed with such 
 varied capacities of co-action and development, and cer- 
 tain to proceed with advancing steps through an ascend- 
 ing line of higher possibilities, must require as its sup- 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 253 
 
 plement and explanation a plan, — a thought implying 
 a thinker. We have seen that the logic of the system 
 must exclude even the conception, and makes no provis- 
 ion for the belief, of such an agent. The contempt and 
 scorn, however, with which this belief has been rejected 
 by so many evolutionists, can only be pardoned in view 
 of their profound ignorance that teleological views have 
 been held by some of the profoundest philosophers, who 
 have made the most valuable contributions to positive 
 knowledge. It would seem also, that in proportion to 
 the earnestness with which fact and experiment have 
 been insisted on as the only verifications of hypothesis, 
 and the more distinctly mathematical determinations of 
 law have been exacted, the more romantic and gratui- 
 tous has been the faith in forces wholly incapable of 
 mathematical promulgation, and to which experiments, 
 even of the most general character, could not possibly be 
 applied. As we follow out the system into other appli- 
 cations, we find that the theories of ethics and politics 
 derived from it are as offensive as the materialism and 
 atheism which it involves or supposes. Perhaps we 
 may say that they are more immediately dangerous and 
 offensive because they are capable of being more directly 
 destructive in their consequences. And yet so gener- 
 ally has literature accepted this physiological philosophy 
 as alone rational and certain, that it is assumed by many 
 who know little of physiology, that this science of life, 
 thus misunderstood and misapplied, is the foundation for 
 and introduction to ethicaland political philosophy. 
 That the science of man in his actual nature and in all 
 his capacities is the proper introduction to ethics and 
 politics is true ; but it is quite another thing to hold that 
 the sense of duty and the recognition of right are the 
 products of social interactions, and may be resolved 
 into the conceptions of interest which have been devel- 
 
254 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS; OR, 
 
 oped by a brutal struggle for supremacy, and wrought 
 into the brain by the manifold repetitions of force, 
 prompted by the selfish and sensual desires which were 
 the only impulses by which man was originally moved. 
 
 It is somewhat surprising, moreover, that any protest 
 against such a system, which is founded on its practical 
 tendencies, should be resented so sensitively by a certain 
 and a large class of critics as necessarily proceeding from 
 theological traditions or prejudices. 
 
 We are more surprised, that the learned presidents of 
 academies of science are sometimes more anxious to 
 avow their adhesion to the doctrine of evolution than 
 to state in which of its many senses they understand 
 and accept it. Or is it possible that they do not under- 
 stand that there is a theory of development which not 
 only consists with the belief in thought and a plan in 
 the history of the universe, but requires for its begin- 
 nings an intelligent and interpreting spirit in man as 
 truly as it does an originating and sustaining spirit in 
 God ? Is it possible that they can be so ignorant as not 
 to know that evolution does not necessarily mean a 
 blind force acting by mathematical laws, which of them- 
 selves are the products of highly sublimated star-dust, 
 according to a law of progression which is itself pre- 
 scribed and assented to by other phenomena somewhat 
 more persistent than the rest, and whose attenuated 
 skeleton of materialism is made to seem plethoric and 
 buoyant by fine feathers like heredity, development, 
 differentiation, and integration, some of which are not 
 yet legitimized by definition or verification, and others 
 of which are confessedly borrowed from a philosophy 
 that is as mathematical and analytic on the one hand as 
 it is poetic and devout on the other? We would also 
 express our surprise that these leaders of scientific opin- 
 ion, who happen to have the reputation of believing in 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 255 
 
 such spiritual agencies in the universe as man and God, 
 should deem it necessary so carefully on scientific occa- 
 sions to affirm that science concerns itself only with the 
 laws of nature and the phenomena which these laws 
 explain, and never care to inquire whether spirit is not 
 as truly an agent in nature as matter, and whether, 
 both as created and creator, it may not determine 
 phenomena without violating law and order in the uni- 
 verse. We know that theologians and metaphysicians 
 are foolishly sensitive and intermeddling, and that they 
 are alarmed by uncommon phrases ; but we see no reason 
 why, because a man is a scientist, he should have so 
 many negative protests for theistic theologians, and so 
 few for atheistic materialists, who in their way are 
 equally blind and romantic in their fondness for high- 
 sounding phraseology. 
 
 But what surprises us most of all, is that the logic of 
 the system itself has not oftener been scrutinized and 
 more decidedly rejected by scientists. Surely there is 
 a difference between vague and distant affinities and 
 significant likenesses, between analogies which compel 
 and so-called analogies which amuse the fancy but ex- 
 clude conviction. It would seem that science ought to 
 be as sensitive to unlikeness in phenomena as to like- 
 ness, and, more than all, should be foremost to declare 
 that a metaphysics which destroys itself by its own 
 logic, with every science which it professes to sustain 
 and account for, ought by common consent to be rele- 
 gated at once to the limbo of the many speculations 
 which have died by their own hands. 
 
 P.S. The preceding meditation, if it has served no 
 other purpose, may have made conspicuous the diffi- 
 culty of treating in a popular manner a subject, the 
 fundamental conceptions of which are liable to vague- 
 
256 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OB, 
 
 ness of use and diversity of interpretation. In view of 
 this liability, the writer subjoins a brief sketch of the 
 history of the terms evolution and development in 
 modern science, which, since writing the above, he finds 
 in R. Euckens's u Geschichte und Kritik der Grund- 
 begrirTe der Gegenwart," Leipzig, 1878. Subsequently 
 translated by Professor M. Stuart Phelps. D. Apple- 
 ton & Co., 1881. 
 
 JExplicatio first appears interchangeably with evolutio 
 in Nicolas of Cusa, but used in a real and not simply a 
 logical application. Kepler applies it to the production 
 of thoughts as well as things. Development — Germ., 
 Entwickelung, in the modern application or proximately 
 — is used occasionally by Kant in his early writings. 
 Through Herder, with whom it took the modern defi- 
 nite meaning, and was a favorite word, and Tetens, it 
 was adopted into general use, and has now become 
 almost trite. The term development, strictly con- 
 strued, did not at first correspond to the modern ac- 
 ceptation. Originally it supposed an outfit of proper- 
 ties and powers, which are unfolded in process of time. 
 The modern use supposes the fitting out or providing 
 the subject with powers to be itself the product of 
 development, carrying us back to certain fundamental 
 powers from which these secondary capacities proceed. 
 
 This genetic interpretation was well known to the 
 Greeks, pre-eminently to Aristotle, who, following 
 Plato, makes the whole to precede the parts ; the type 
 determining by its presence and agency their formation 
 and working. This view remained current through 
 later antiquity, the early Christian times, and the Mid- 
 dle Ages, with here and there an exception. It was not, 
 however, till modern philosophy taught us to compre- 
 hend being by means of causation that the genetic 
 method of defining and explaining phenomena was in- 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 257 
 
 troduced. This explained how analysis into elements, 
 conceived as living powers, gives at once the historical 
 progress and the philosophical explanation of events. 
 But the first in time is not necessarily the simplest and 
 the ultimate : and development by tracing the historical 
 order is still obliged to ask what is developed, and how 
 and to what ; that is, it must go back to causes and 
 their results. 
 
 Nor may we overlook the fact, that the genetic 
 method may be applied in every one of the significa- 
 tions which development, both as term and conception, 
 has assumed in modern philosophy. These are many. 
 On the one side, the universe is made to come from a 
 single ground-force ; on the other, several are assumed 
 as necessary. One holds to matter as the beginning, 
 another to spirit ; one proceeds from unity to multi- 
 plicity, another from the simple to the complex ; one 
 makes it a formation from within outwards, another a 
 superposition from without. The one class of tenden- 
 cies begins with Nicolas of Cusa and culminates with 
 Hegel, who develops all forms of being by the move- 
 ment of the concept ; the other begins, as it were, with 
 Descartes and ends with Darwin, which last theory has 
 in some circles almost appropriated the conception of 
 the word development in his own special interpreta- 
 tion. The term without qualification should be avoided, 
 as involving confusion and vagueness of thought. Or, 
 if we give to it a definite meaning, we should interpret 
 it in the sense of some special theory. 
 
 The Darwinian theory knows nothing of inward dis- 
 positions or tendencies. Its strength lies in the defi- 
 niteness with which it states its elements or forces, and 
 its entire rejection of all inner agencies ; but its weak- 
 ness lies in the obligation which it assumes to explain 
 phenomena in causal as well as in historical relations. 
 
258 PHYSIOLOGICAL METAPHYSICS ; OR, 
 
 To do this successfully, it must give the laws of the 
 workings of its causes ; and, as it only knows mechanical 
 laws, it often is unable to do this. The next difficulty 
 is, to account for the permanence of these effects in sus- 
 tained forms of being, under the co-action of so many 
 counteracting and co-acting causal agencies. To fall 
 back on simple heredity is to fasten to nothing, and to 
 fail to see that this includes all these difficulties within 
 itself. To fail to regard permanent forms as effects to 
 be accounted for, is to give up the most important 
 problem of all, and to be content with elements only, 
 and to abandon that with which development has to do 
 by the wonderful complication of the universe as it is 
 at present. All these difficulties gather strength, the 
 wider and more varied the field is which is covered, 
 especially when as now this method is applied to the 
 sphere of spirit. Doubtless it has thrown some light 
 upon some of its phenomena, but for spiritual phe- 
 nomena it is most misleading when it assumes to judge 
 wholly by material analogies. Especially would it be 
 to assume that all which the spirit has or does comes to 
 it from without. Great ingenuity has been expended 
 in the attempt to show how this is possible ; e.g., how 
 customary combinations can be fixed as permanent 
 laws, and how the instinct of self-preservation has been 
 transformed into a moral law. Against all these in- 
 genious explanations we should ask whether the method 
 itself is not inconceivable and self-destructive ? What 
 conception can we have of a soul with no powers of its- 
 own ? Can there be an effect without a counter-work- 
 ing ? We can escape these difficulties only by simple 
 materialism, but this brings difficulties of its own. If 
 we believe in spirit, we cannot escape original tenden- 
 cies. If we resort to custom, we must assume an origi- 
 nal capacity for habit as a causal force acting under 
 
THE APOTHEOSIS OF SCIENCE BY SUICIDE. 259 
 
 law. Similarly with judgments of worth. We gain 
 nothing by resorting to the unconscious except to solve 
 a problem by getting rid of it. We gain nothing by 
 analyzing phenomena into minute elements ; for the 
 question returns, How are the ultimate elements en- 
 dowed, and what can they effect ? If we deny original 
 activity working according to law to the spiritual life, 
 we must deny all permanent truths, and with it the 
 causal force of the genetic method itself. With these 
 denials goes the denial of science itself. It were ridicu- 
 lous to concern ourselves with the problems of reason, 
 after reason were banished from the world. The whole 
 force of modern thought has arrayed itself against 
 this materialistic sophistry, — prominently, Kant and 
 Goethe : Kant has opposed to false analysis the true by 
 showing that an original spiritual activity must be 
 assumed, to render it possible to hold any thing to be 
 simple and ultimate ; Goethe in a memorable passage 
 in his correspondence with Schiller, against that class 
 of Frenchmen who think a whole is explained by the 
 division of its analyzed parts. It follows from all this, 
 that the doctrine of development is full of blessing or 
 of bane, according to the presence or absence of other 
 fundamental conceptions and relations. 
 
IX. 
 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 A PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY FOR NON-PHILOSOPHICAL 
 READERS. 1 
 
 "Force," "Law," and "Design " are words which in 
 these days are often in the mouths of men. Sharp 
 discussions, confident assertions, and grave conclusions 
 turn upon the meaning and applications in which they 
 are used. By some, Force and Purpose are held to be 
 natural enemies, each bent on the destruction of the 
 other. If Law attempts to intervene, she runs the 
 risk of being torn in pieces between the two. The 
 questions concerning these terms are not new, though 
 they seem new to us. In the schools of science they 
 are as old or older than Socrates. Does blind force, or 
 intelligent purpose, rule the universe ? Are the laws of 
 the universe self-poised and self-balancing tendencies, 
 which hold one another in accidental equipoise ? or are 
 they simply the media by which the forces originated 
 by the Creator's power manifest His thoughts, so that 
 man may understand and obey them ? In modern 
 physics, " Force " and " Law " are great words, as all 
 instructed men know ; deservedly great, as all candid 
 men confess ; so great and self-sufficing in the opinion 
 of some as to hold no definite relations to " Purpose." 
 While others hold that they indicate no design, others 
 teach that they exclude all thought in nature and all 
 belief in a thinker behind; others, that they are the 
 
 1 Princeton Review, May, 1879. 
 260 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 261 
 
 more radiant with thought, just in proportion as they 
 reveal new facts to the penetrating eye of Science. 
 
 In these conflicts and uncertainties of opinion, it may 
 not be amiss to look these terms in the face, in order to 
 gain a definite notion of their import, and their effect 
 upon our views of nature, of man, and of God. Three 
 questions suggest themselves for the present study : 
 (1) What conceptions of Force, Law, and Purpose are 
 held by the man of average intelligence without scien- 
 tific culture ? and, (2) How far do the discoveries of 
 modern science modify these opinions ? (3) What dif- 
 ferences in our views of nature, man, and God, follow 
 the rejection or recognition of design by science ? 
 
 We ask first, what are the views which are accepted 
 by the unscientific man. Every human being believes 
 that he can do something, — that by action he can pro- 
 duce some change in the material world. He can strike 
 a tree with a stick, or stamp the earth with his feet, or 
 beat the air with his vocal organs. He can break a 
 rock in pieces, or grind it to powder: he can produce 
 heat and flame by rubbing two sticks together. The 
 capacity to effect a change is known as force. We 
 need not ask whether man has a name for the power 
 which he knows he possesses. That he knows he pos- 
 sesses force, is obvious from the fact that he puts it 
 into exercise on any, even the slightest, occasion ; that 
 he increases it by exercise ; that he defies his antagonist 
 to measure strength with himself; that he even prides 
 himself upon the simple possession of it, without put- 
 ting it to the proof. We do not ask whether he origi- 
 nally refers power to himself as a spirit or only to his 
 body, or to both as undistinguished in his conscious 
 self-inspection : it is enough that he knows what power 
 is by the consciousness of using it. He also distin- 
 guishes the several forms of power, as to run, to hear, 
 
262 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 to see, to read, to push, to pull, to kindle a fire, etc., to 
 all of which several capacities he would give but a 
 single name, had he the power to gather them under 
 a single generalization. 
 
 But he does not limit the possession of force to him- 
 self. He believes that other men and animals possess 
 similar capacities. He does not know this directly of 
 them as he does of himself, but he knows it by the ef- 
 fects which both achieve. How he knows this, it is not 
 my business here to explain. It is enough that he does 
 know it, and knows it as positively as that he possesses 
 these powers for himself. That he believes this of man 
 and animal, no man doubts, nor that he believes this 
 with a positiveness which is stronger than demonstration 
 can impart. We do not undertake to explain the pro- 
 cess, nor to give the reasons for this assurance, but only 
 to state the fact as beyond dispute. 
 
 Man also finds force in nature. He sees effects 
 achieved which neither himself, nor any nor all of his 
 fellows, nor all of the animals, can produce, how much 
 soever either may desire to reproduce or to avert them. 
 The wind resists his progress, takes away his breath, 
 howls around his cabin, or scatters it in wrath. The 
 great natural agents, water and fire, the earth and the 
 air, are now his smiling friends, scattering blessings 
 beyond his hopes, or his wrathful foes, surpassing his 
 extremest terrors. We do not ask whether he personi- 
 fies the force or forces of nature, making each separate 
 part or the whole to be alive, nor, if he does, by what 
 processes he dispels his illusions : we only affirm, that 
 he finds force and forces in nature, even after he has 
 ceased to believe every bush and rock and tree to be 
 alive. At what point in his history he reaches this 
 position we need not ask, nor how definitely he holds it : 
 we only assert, that at some time he gains and holds an 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN, 263 
 
 intelligent belief that force or the forces of nature do 
 not directly proceed from a living animal, but belong to 
 insentient matter. 
 
 He also begins very soon to learn that these forces 
 produce their effects under uniform conditions. Friction, 
 however long continued, does not set a stick on fire un- 
 less the wood is dry. The wind does not impel a boat 
 unless the sail is firmly held at an angle which varies 
 with its force and direction, and unless the boat is 
 headed in a certain direction by the oar. The missile 
 does not strike the mark, unless its aim is changed with 
 the force of the wind and the distance of the mark. 
 The untamed child, full of untried and untaught 
 strength, goes forth to subdue the universe, and 
 expects that it will bend and yield to his will. But it 
 finds the universe ready to give back blow for blow. 
 The harder the child pushes, the more stiffly does the 
 universe push back. The first lesson which he learns 
 is, that he cannot effect all which he desires to do, that 
 there is force in other beings like himself; the next, 
 that nature is strong as well as himself ; and the next, 
 that, in order to accomplish any thing, he must use his 
 own force in certain relations to the forces with which he 
 contends ; in other words, that he must stoop if he would 
 conquer, and must study the conditions under which 
 and under which alone nature will grant him any favor. 
 
 The infant is not long in learning that nature acts 
 according to laws. He does not cry after the moon a 
 very long while. He does not beat his fist in anger 
 against the door which stands in his way more than a 
 few times. He learns how it can be opened. He looks 
 into the face of this universe which confronts him with 
 its battery of forces ; and, as fast as he finds out the con- 
 ditions and ways after which each will act, he acts ac- 
 cordingly. The wild man does the same : he subdues the 
 
264 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 earth, the air, and the sea, just as he entraps the beast, 
 and tames the dog, and breaks the horse, and subjects 
 the elephant, by learning how each will act, and acting 
 himself accordingly, either with or against. Just as 
 soon and just so far as man believes that any force in 
 nature is uniform in its actings, just so soon and just so 
 far does he understand that force produces effects under 
 varying conditions. 
 
 Last of all, the common man believes there is purpose 
 in nature. The forces which he finds in himself are 
 capacities to produce effects. These effects are objects 
 of desire or dread. As he would gain or avoid them, he 
 regulates his own actions by what he knows of the un- 
 changing laws which he has learned are the conditions 
 of success. Just as often as he acts thus intelligently, 
 he acts for a purpose. So far as he is rational, he is 
 controlled by some design. Force controlled by law 
 always supposes some end. When it is thus employed 
 and the design is worthy, the cycle of all the relations 
 by which man knows and acts is complete ; and his 
 whole being is filled with light and joy. If this is true 
 of himself, it must be true of the universe of force and 
 law without himself. He cannot doubt that the living 
 beings who are like himself must be impelled by design 
 so far as they are rational. 
 
 But how is it with the universe which is not living, 
 — the universe of earth and sky, of forest and sea, of 
 mountain and abyss, of sunshine and storm, of light- 
 ning and earthquake, of the jocund dawn and the pen- 
 sive evening, of fruitful showers and starving drought, 
 of healthful breezes and the blasts of death ? How does 
 this universe appear to the wild man or the unscientific 
 man so soon as he ceases to believe it to be a living 
 monster, or half living, half dead, — so soon, in short, as 
 he regards it as an aggregate of insensate force or 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 265 
 
 forces ? — especially if he finds law in it, which regu- 
 lates the operation of these forces, and holds them to 
 orderly and certain results. We do not inquire whether 
 he asks was it created by another, or does it exist of 
 itself. We do not care whether he believes there were 
 one or ten or ten thousand spirits engaged in the mak- 
 ing of it, or whether it was made at all. We ask simply, 
 whether he believes that purpose or design controls in 
 the action of its forces so far as they are seen to be 
 regulated in uniform methods to uniform results. No 
 sooner does he ask the question, Is there thought and 
 intention here ? than he replies at once, Of course there 
 is. He is but a fool who thinks otherwise, — who, 
 knowing that so far as he himself is rational he controls 
 forces by their laws, does not also believe that the 
 steady and, so to speak, the regulated and controlled 
 actings of nature manifest intention and design. 
 Whether this is or is not the way in which unscientific 
 men ought to conclude, there can be no question that 
 they do interpret nature after this fashion, and cannot 
 easily be persuaded to the contrary. We may not be 
 able to explain how men in common life reach this con- 
 viction, but we cannot doubt that they do. We cannot 
 trace the working of the mind of the infant, who finds 
 in the face of its mother the thoughts and feelings which 
 flit across her features, which beam from her eye, and 
 leap from her lips. We may not be able to understand 
 how the first slender thread is thrown from mind to mind 
 and heart to heart when man meets his fellow, nor how 
 these many threads are united into strand after strand, 
 till, almost sooner than we can tell it, a strong cable 
 binds the two, and then another, and soon a sure and 
 steady bridge is fixed, along which thoughts come and 
 go, almost without the intervention of words. In like 
 manner we may not be able to untwist the subtle 
 
266 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 threads of that logic, if logic it be, by which the 
 material world is known by the spirit to exist, with its 
 relations to space, and yet to be diverse from the spirit, 
 and to be endued with powers whose energy it measures 
 and whose designs it divines ; but the fact cannot be 
 shaken, that the man of common sense holds these beliefs 
 in respect to the fellow-men with whom he has to do, 
 and in respect to the nature whom he seeks to interpret 
 in order that he may control and obey her. Deny to 
 man the capacity for interpreting the thoughts of his 
 fellow-men, and you make him a hermit and an imbecile. 
 Society, with its language and the arts, with its civili- 
 zation and its amenities, becomes impossible. In like 
 manner, if you deny to him the power to find law and 
 purpose in nature, his power to understand nature and 
 to use nature is at once shut off. But enough of the 
 man of common sense and common life. No one can 
 doubt that he believes in force and law and purpose in 
 the senses explained. All his language speaks it, all his 
 actions manifest it, all his movements are controlled and 
 interpreted by this threefold faith. 
 
 We pass to our second inquiry : we ask how far the 
 discoveries and lessons of science modify this natural 
 and necessary faith of common life? And first, in 
 respect to force, does science teach us any less or very 
 much more than we know already? Does the scientist 
 abandon, or outgrow, or overgrow, the views of force in 
 nature which the common man accepts as that some- 
 thing by which agents produce changes and effects, and 
 to which these changes are ascribed as their cause and 
 explanation ? 
 
 We say in reply, First, Science at first multiplies 
 the forces of nature. We mean what are taken to be 
 separate forces, and had been previously unknown. 
 Gravitation is discovered by Newton as a force never 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 267 
 
 before recognized, whether far or near. Electricity is 
 established by Franklin. The galvanic agency is re- 
 vealed by its great discoverer. New chemical agents 
 are brought out from their hiding-places, and for the 
 first time show their hitherto unsuspected capacities, 
 which anon cause their discoverer to dance with delight 
 over the new agent which for the first time plays some 
 magic trick, or prostrates him upon the earth by an 
 unlooked-for explosion. The number of separate chem- 
 ical elements, each with its peculiar effects, is set 
 down for the time being as sixty or more. There are 
 mechanical forces of masses and molecules, modified 
 in gases and liquids ; the chemical agencies already 
 spoken of ; the crystalline ; the vital forces so conceived 
 in plants and animals, involving origination from some- 
 thing living, nourishment from prepared material, 
 growth after a plan, irritability, and in animals sensi- 
 tivity and intelligence ; and, highest of all, the forces of 
 the human soul, the intellectual, sensitive, and volun- 
 tary, involving the moral. Thus does science proceed, 
 recognizing differences before unnoticed in the various 
 effects in matter and mind, and ascribing to each of 
 these effects its producing cause, till it has marshalled 
 about itself and learned to recognize the several forces 
 which we have rather, roughly enumerated. 
 
 Second, The next effort of science is, to unite these 
 forces by finding likenesses in their modes of action, or 
 by transforming them into one another. Science very 
 early recognized as a test of the sameness of a force, 
 that it should produce its effects under common con- 
 ditions, or so-called laws. Thus, Newton would not 
 for years accept his own theory of gravitation until he 
 had proved that this so-called force in the distant plan- 
 ets acted with a varying energy, just as a supposed 
 similar agency was known to act upon bodies near the 
 
268 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 earth. It was an immense step in chemical discovery 
 to be assured that chemical agents enter into composi- 
 tion only in definite proportions. Another important, 
 advance was made when it was discovered that chemi- 
 cal elements, however closely united, could be separated 
 by the galvanic agency. This warranted the conclu- 
 sion, that the force which held them together was a spe- 
 cial method of the acting of this newly discovered force. 
 It was not long before the force called galvanic was 
 seen also to manifest the phenomena of electricity 
 proper, then those of magnetism, then those of heat, 
 then those of light, then those of mechanical force ; and 
 all these were found to be interchangeable. Nor was 
 it very long before all these so-called forces were 
 accepted as modes of motion, now breaking out in 
 velocity and momentum, and then disguising them- 
 selves in the unceasing but unseen play and counter- 
 play of molecular vibrations. This was the beginning 
 of the new doctrine of the correlation or transformation 
 of force, according to which the forces in question were 
 held to be only different names for different manifesta- 
 tions of the same agency, and that, as molecules in 
 motion, each could be made to appear as the other, 
 backwards and forwards, and the quantum and inten- 
 sity of either could be measured by the mechanical 
 work which each could do. This discovery was very 
 generally accepted. Up to this time scientific men had 
 been inclined to find many forces in nature, grouping 
 them together in classes by common relationships. 
 Henceforward the protean agent which appeared and 
 re-appeared in these several so-called forces was regarded 
 as single and supreme, whose nature was declared to 
 be unknown, but whose presence was marked by rela- 
 tions of motion in space. Every one of these groups 
 of phenomena was henceforth explained as a mode of 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 269 
 
 motion. We do not criticise the logic by which this 
 significant conclusion was reached. We only record 
 the fact. 
 
 The transformation of mechanical force prepared the 
 way for the doctrine of the possible transformation of 
 the species of plants and animals. Hitherto it had 
 been held that some hidden agency dwelt in every indi- 
 vidual living being, whether plant or animal, which kept 
 it true to its kind, with some room for variation indeed, 
 but with a prevailing tendency to return to the origi- 
 nal type. Science begins to conjecture, and learns soon 
 to declare, that there are no fixed species, and no force 
 to hold their progeny to their kinds ; that the law of 
 living beings is a law of change and progress, from the 
 simpler to the complex ; and that all the present spe- 
 cies now living are the products of agencies which for 
 uncounted generations had been developing higher and 
 nobler forms of life from the lower and less perfect. 
 Some had been so bold as to assert that the lowest 
 forms of life had, in fact, been developed from the inor- 
 ganic. Two difficulties stood in the way of the accept- 
 ance of this extreme doctrine. The first was, that no 
 experiment could be brought to prove it decisively 
 and satisfactorily. And yet both Mr. Huxley and Mr. 
 Tyndall are strongly inclined to anticipate it as certain 
 to be established. Mr. Huxley says that the scientist 
 is no reasoner who does not accept it as a theory. Mr. 
 Tyndall says it is a magnificent generalization, too 
 splendid not to captivate the scientific imagination. 
 But Mr. Huxley and Mr. Tyndall both say that every 
 experiment which professes to have developed living 
 out of dead matter has been a palpable failure. The 
 second difficulty is, that no laws that are worthy of 
 the demands of science have been discovered for the 
 forces that conspire in the development of the living 
 
270 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 from the non-living, or from lower to higher forms, 
 much less in the great transitions which the theory 
 assumes. As applied to living species, however, devel- 
 opment has been accepted by very many naturalists on 
 grounds of what are called decisive analogies, derived 
 from observation of plants and animals which are now 
 living, and the fossil relics of the generations which are 
 dead. The force or forces, however, which have acted 
 in this wonderful story of progress, have a very low 
 scientific value, whether estimated by a mathematical 
 standard or any scientific formula. The first of these 
 forces is a tendency to vary, such as every man has 
 been aware of who has raised a seedling from a grape 
 or an apple, or every boy who has bred from a pair of 
 pigeons ; but this tendency cannot be definitely formu- 
 lated. The second is the re-action of environment to 
 confirm a variation that is gained, whether air or soil 
 or food, in hostile or favoring conjunction ; but this 
 is equally indeterminable, and in its very nature inca- 
 pable of being formulated. The forces and laws are 
 only indefinite generalizations, founded on vague or 
 imagined analogies between the working of every kind 
 of force with every other, and their relations to heat, 
 light, and kindred agents, or their supposed dependence 
 upon particles of matter in varying forms and move- 
 ments. Inasmuch as these agents are supposed to de- 
 pend on differing modes of motion or on different 
 molecular textures, it is inferred, that every agency 
 concerned in the development of the living from the 
 living, and the living from the dead, must depend upon 
 some change in the arrangement or motion of mole- 
 cules. Hence it is concluded that all the wonderful 
 functions and processes of living beings, including 
 their capacity for development, are brought about by 
 mechanical changes in the matter of which they con- 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 271 
 
 sist. By logic of this sort, all the forces which we call 
 vital, in all their varieties of function and of form, of 
 nutriment and growth, of alleged development and of 
 future progress, are reduced by a single generalization 
 to some supposed mode of motion or some adjustment 
 of material particles. 
 
 Having established evolution in the production of 
 every thing living, it is not difficult to affirm it of 
 the formation and masses, and the structure and the 
 motions, of the cosmical bodies. A beginning is of 
 necessity assumed of particles of star-dust in a certain 
 condition of motion and with a hypothetical arrange- 
 ment. This being given, every thing else follows — the 
 massing of the earth in all its phases, its revolutions, the 
 formation of clouds, the generation of light and heat, 
 the consolidation of the melting rocks, the melting and 
 cooling and transformations of the same, the separa- 
 tion of land and water, the generation of plants and 
 animals, etc., — in the way already described. Man 
 himself, and all that pertains to him, his form and 
 structure, his organs and their functions, his brain and 
 his mind, his heart and his will, his character, his civil- 
 ization, his history, his institutions, his morals and his 
 manners, his aims and his destiny, are all held to be 
 the products of certain particles which originally found 
 themselves in motion, from a rarer to a dense medium. 
 
 These extreme views are far from being accepted by 
 the majority of scientific men. Very many of the most 
 eminent reject them as romantic dreams. They are the 
 extremest doctrines which could possibly be reached by 
 science in its reach after unity; i.e., in its effort to 
 resolve into a single force the many which science at 
 first seemed to discover. It falls not within my pur- 
 pose to examine the truth of these views. I have 
 simply to ask what new light, so far as they are true, do 
 
272 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 they cast upon the scientific conception of force ? In 
 other words, what change is made by science in the 
 views of force which are held by the man of common 
 sense ? So far as I can see, it makes no change at all. 
 Conceding that all phenomena are to be referred to 
 changes in the particles of matter, and that these 
 changes have succeeded one another in a progressive 
 order from the simple to the complex, then all the 
 forces of the universe are resolved into the capacity of 
 these atoms to move in certain directions and at certain 
 rates. I need not say that the capacity of matter for 
 motion is the first form in which force is known to the 
 child, and continues to be known to the man. So far 
 as science explains phenomena by this single force, it 
 employs a conception which is thoroughly familiar to 
 the common man. Men of science are ready to confess 
 that they cannot define force, and are nearly agreed, 
 that after searching the universe to master its secret, 
 by sense, imagination, and reasoning, they are forced to 
 come back to the simple conceptions with which they 
 set off when they crossed the threshold of science. 
 
 Leaving force, we proceed to law. We have seen 
 that the child and the savage have a correct notion of 
 law, so far as they have occasion to apply it. They 
 believe that effects may be produced by combining the 
 agencies of nature after a certain fashion. The boy 
 flies a kite and sails a boat by uniting two forces. The 
 man applies a lever by a similar process. As we learn 
 new forces, we invent new methods of combining them, 
 in order to reach definite effects : when unusual effects 
 or phenomena occur, we endeavor to explain them by 
 supposing a combination of forces which we have never 
 observed. By and by we learn to measure by number 
 the energy of the forces which we employ, and then the 
 directions in which they are applied, and the spheres 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 213 
 
 to which they extend. In other words, we begin to 
 express the laws of force in mathematical relations. 
 Herein lies the secret of the progress of modern science, 
 that it estimates and defines the conditions of phe- 
 nomena in terms of number and magnitude. To this, 
 astronomy owes all its precision and nearly all its dis- 
 coveries. Mechanics and gunnery, hydrostatics and 
 engineering, chemistry and molecular physics, all de- 
 pend on the magic of algebra and geometry. These 
 abstract relations make the conditions absolutely defi- 
 nite and precise. The application of mathematical 
 tests has established whatever truth there is in the doc- 
 trine of the correlation of forces, and given plausibility 
 to the hypothesis that all the qualities of matter, 
 whether organic or inorganic, whether chemical or 
 vital, are owing to the different rates and directions in 
 which the ultimate atoms move. Let one example suf- 
 fice. The ultimate molecule of oxygen has its well- 
 known sensible properties, and its different capabilities 
 when united with the other elements or bases with 
 which it is known to unite in different proportions. 
 Let it only be admitted for a moment, that all these 
 various capacities of combustion, detonation, acidifica- 
 tion, corrosion, etc., are owing to the number of ulti- 
 mate atoms of which the ultimate molecule is composed, 
 to the rapidity of the tension or the vibration of each, 
 or, it may be, to their gyrations or revolutions ; let it 
 also be supposed that all these are capable of being 
 expressed in mathematical symbols, — and you have an 
 example of what many believe to be the ultimate expla- 
 nation of all the cosmical phenomena. That this is the 
 farthest possible from being proved as yet of the forces 
 that are assumed by the evolutionist, even of the most 
 moderate school, has already been explained. So much 
 for the conception of law, which is rightly conceived as 
 
274 FORCE, 
 
 the distinctive characteristic of modern science. Law 
 is not a force, but it supposes a force already existing. 
 It expresses a regular mode in which a force acts in 
 producing an effect, either alone or with other forces. 
 Inasmuch as no effect in nature is produced by a single 
 force acting alone, but is always the result of the joint 
 action of several, the known action of one force is often 
 spoken of as conditionating the other. In this way it 
 happens that a law of nature is often conceived of as 
 though it were a force in nature ; because, forsooth, the 
 presence of the second force, or the particular manner 
 or direction of the action of the first, is a condition of 
 a definite result. These conditions are believed to be 
 fixed. It is only as fixed that they are called laws, 
 only as unchanging that they are said to regulate the 
 processes of nature and the actions of men with respect 
 to them. All science assumes that these laws are un- 
 changeable and trustworthy. For all these reasons, it 
 is not surprising that by many the laws of nature have 
 been conceived as separate and independent agents, not 
 laws given or imposed upon force, but law-givers and 
 law-makers of themselves, independent and irresponsi- 
 ble actors, owing allegiance to nothing higher, and 
 exacting allegiance from every other thing and being. 
 So much has science learned concerning law in nature. 
 What more does she teach than the common man, 
 than the common boy, has already recognized? We 
 answer, nothing new in kind. The boy who flies a kite 
 knows that the force which he employs to lift his kite 
 will only help him on certain conditions: the savage 
 who uses a bow or a rifle knows, that, when the wind is 
 high, he must aim in accordance with the force which 
 would blow his missile aside. The boy and the hunter 
 believe these conditions to be uniform and fixed. The 
 accomplished scientist enlarges the rude formulae of 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 275 
 
 each into intricate propositions concerning the compo- 
 sition of forces, which he applies, not only to projectiles, 
 but to pressure and resistance, to the tension of solids 
 and liquids and gases. The only difference between 
 the two is, that, where the boy and hunter know one 
 law, the scientist knows a thousand ; where the former 
 can only rudely apply their rules to a few cases in their 
 own practice, the scientist formulates them in mathemat- 
 ical expressions, and applies them in a myriad of cases ; 
 whereas the knowledge of the one terminates with 
 themselves, or some rude traditions which they hand on 
 to the next generation, science in some sense gives the 
 next generation the advantage of starting at the goal 
 which the preceding had already reached. But, as to 
 the nature of law and its relations to force, there is no 
 considerable difference between the unscientific and the 
 scientific man : the one understands each as completely 
 as the other. Perhaps the scientific man, for the reasons 
 already given, is of the two more likely to misconceive 
 law, and to esteem it an independent and self-acting 
 force, to personify it as a demi-god, half intelligent and 
 half impersonal, or deify an hypostasized abstraction. 
 
 We come last to the belief in purpose or design in 
 nature, and ask what changes in our notions of it or 
 our confidence in it are wrought by science. Let us 
 recall to mind the truth that the unscientifie man as- 
 sumes that every thing which is done in nature is done 
 for a purpose. He does not learn this from experience, 
 but he requires this belief in order to learn any thing 
 from nature. It is with his belief in purpose, as it is 
 with his belief in force and law. He does not weigh 
 the evidence for and against, and at last decide that the 
 evidence preponderates in favor of both ; but he opens 
 his eye and mind, and inquires what force or forces pro- 
 duced them, and under what laws or conditions these 
 
276 FOBCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 forces acted to this result. Similarly he inquires for 
 what . end do they take place. He may not be able to 
 answer any of these three questions in respect to many 
 events or phenomena, but nevertheless he is compelled 
 to ask them all by his belief that an answer to them all 
 is reasonable. This is the position of the unscientific 
 men in respect to purpose. We inquire next, Does 
 science teach man to take another position ? and, if so, 
 what is it ? Are the facts of science or the discipline of 
 science fitted to lead the student of nature to believe 
 more or less firmly that nature is controlled by design ? 
 This is the one question for which this study was under- 
 taken. What is our answer ? 
 
 In reply, we notice first of all, that, if modern science 
 by its own confession has learned nothing and can teach 
 us nothing in respect to the nature of force, it has 
 divided and subdivided the points from which every 
 form of force proceeds to an extent which severely taxes 
 our faith, if not our credulity. The molecules which are 
 packed into a cubic inch of any species of matter are 
 now counted by the million, and the atoms into which 
 each is subdivided are counted by we know not how 
 many more ; and these atoms, if we adopt one theory, 
 are capable of manifold motions. Upon these motions, 
 if we believe one theory, the special qualities of the 
 molecules depend : if we accept another, each molecule 
 or atom is endued with a capacity of its own to act in 
 accordance or antagonism with manifold others ; having 
 the aspect, to use Clerk-Maxwell's phrase, borrowed 
 from Sir John Herschel, of being manufactured articles. 
 Of course, if this is true, every one was manufactured 
 with some definite design. Let this mass of matter be 
 heated, every one of this myriad of particles is set in 
 motion in a peculiar way ; pressing against one another 
 so as to expand the bulk of the mass, and with such 
 
FOBCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 277 
 
 irresistible energy as to set in motion the particles of 
 all the bodies near itself. If it is a cubic inch of water, 
 they are separated into steam ; or, if some unstable 
 chemical compound, the mass is at once decomposed 
 into its constituent elements. If it is transparent, its 
 particles' are interpenetrated by an undulating ether, 
 whose undulations are variously affected by its substance 
 giving to the eye which is near all the refracted colors, 
 or, moving onward for miles, they excite another eye 
 which is waiting to respond. How many countless 
 actions and interactions between these moving particles 
 or points of force within so narrow a space ! So far as 
 we can see, every particle meets with a response in 
 every other after a definite manner and a uniform law, 
 the same here as there, the same now as then ; whether 
 the here is in this apartment, and the there is in the 
 remotest fixed star, or in the earth's unvisited centre ; 
 whether the now is at this instant, or was in that morn- 
 ing when the stars sang together in their first harmoni- 
 ous note, when all these conspiring atoms greeted one 
 another as friends. If we think of the energy of these 
 agents, as well as their variety and number, our con- 
 victions are deepened that they were designed for one 
 another ; that is, were fitted to act upon and with one 
 another in definite methods and to definite results. A 
 cartridge of dynamite makes us shudder to look at it. 
 Our terror is allayed by the thought, that its power to do 
 mischief is limited to the presence of one or two con- 
 ditions, and that these conditions of its exploding will 
 never change. Had we no belief that every agent was 
 thus fitted to every other, we could not but tremble at any 
 possible catastrophe which the seemingly most harmless 
 object might occasion. Modern science has, by its dis- 
 coveries, multiplied the suggestions of possible disorder 
 a million-fold by the insight she has afforded into the 
 
278 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 constitution of the earth and the air and water, and their 
 relations to light and heat. She calms our terrors effect- 
 ually by confirming our confidence in the fixedness of 
 law. But she best establishes our faith in law by assur- 
 ing us that every agent and every force was designed to 
 act with every other for some rational end. Some of us 
 at evening have encountered a knot of midges moving 
 hither and thither in a compact and yet severed mass, 
 winding backward and forward along their mazy paths, 
 as though they were weaving a many-threaded tissue, 
 never jostling, though seeming ever just about to meet, 
 keeping their form as a whole, which proceeds as 
 though directed by a single will, and yet is all alive 
 with individual activity. This is a feeble picture of 
 what science teaches is going on in the most solid 
 masses of matter as they are quietly transformed by 
 manifold workings within. It is utterly inadequate to 
 set forth the currents and counter-currents that make 
 up the palpitating life of a growing tree, as it weaves 
 the texture of stem and bark, of bud and flower, as it 
 compounds by subtle selection and recomposition the 
 nourishing fluids from the earth, and lifts them up along 
 the lofty channels, to elaborate them in the leaf, by 
 subtle exchanges in the air, and then to compact them 
 at last in the new year's growth. Our illustration 
 would be a mockery of the changes in the animal 
 economy, as they appear in the glorious universe of 
 sentient beings. Yet science has soberly taught us to 
 regard the cosmical system itself, from the largest masses 
 to the tiniest molecules, as a vast aggregation of atoms, 
 each held in place and form by acting with and counter- 
 acting one another. Let certain of these forces cease 
 to act in the same proportions as now, and the earth 
 itself would fly into tiny fragments as suddenly as one of 
 Rupert's drops ; and the words of Shakspeare would be 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 279 
 
 literally fulfilled, as the great globe itself, and all which 
 it inherits, would leave not a rack behind. The tiniest 
 flower which hangs by a thread over a rushing stream is 
 not kept in its place more truly by that thread, than the 
 thread and the crumbling verge on which it hangs are 
 held in place by forces which come from the Sun and 
 Jupiter and Saturn. Some of us may have stood on the 
 old tower which once overlooked the principal cascade 
 of the falls at Niagara. If so, we shall remember that the 
 spectator looked directly upon the stream as it sweeps 
 over the unseen verge many fathoms deep, smooth on 
 the surface, forever shattered, and yet the same forever. 
 As one peers beneath this treacherous surface, he sees 
 the masses of foam in moving pillars, which perpetually 
 rise and are constantly broken, ever newly created, ever 
 dashed into myriads of glittering and many colored 
 drops, giving to the eye and the mind a vivid impres- 
 sion of chaos itself. But there is no chaos there. Sub- 
 stantially the same forces are repeated for ages, the 
 same colors are maintained, the same pillars stand, 
 though always falling, except as there are slight va- 
 riations in the quantity of water, the forces of wind, 
 the light of the sun, with now and then a breach in the 
 rock beneath. We have in this scene an image of 
 the universe as known to science. The matter is fluid : 
 the forces might change, their laws only are unchanged ; 
 because these are adjusted by purpose as it has adapted 
 the one to the other. The unstable yet permanent 
 cataract is an apt image of the universe as modern 
 science beholds it, made up as it is of motions and com- 
 motions which are so subtle, so noiseless, so manifold, so 
 tremendous, and yet so nicely adjusted and so peaceful, 
 that nothing seems so stable. 
 
 Let us return to our image again. I said that now 
 and then a break in the rock beneath changes the form 
 
280 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 and inner movements of the cataract, and we know that 
 the cataract itself has notched the records of the ages 
 of its retrocession upon the rocks by its side. So the 
 universe, as science teaches us, is not stationary in its 
 forms. It has passed through varied phases, each of 
 which has been developed largely from the preceding 
 under unchanging laws. Whether a creative force may 
 now and then have intervened, or is ever fulfilling its 
 behests by a plastic energy, we do not here care to 
 inquire. We have to do only with the forces which all 
 believe to be fixed in their actings and laws. If pur- 
 pose, as we have seen, is required if we would explain 
 the harmonious action of the forces which act in any 
 present phase of the universe, purpose is also required 
 for the more numerous and complicated adjustments 
 which are involved in the development of one phase 
 from another. If the adaptations are many which hold 
 the elements of a growing tree or a living body together, 
 those are far more numerous which are involved in the 
 changes inform and structure and function which follow 
 one another in regular procession, for a century of life. 
 But what is a century of the life of a tree to a thousand 
 centuries of one of the fermenting geologic periods, with 
 its meltings and its freezings, its upheavals and depres- 
 sions? But, in each, every particle of matter has had 
 some share in the enormous mechanical and chemical 
 changes, by heat and cold, by water and fire, which have 
 prepared the earth for life, — each phase in its order, the 
 simpler before the more complex, till the structure was 
 complete. If we suppose a controlling design to be 
 present, and that the law of progress marshals, impels, 
 and guides every mass and atom in this procession 
 towards a completed plan, then development is ex- 
 plained as possible. Mr. Huxley says, and he says 
 truly, that it is a fundamental proposition of evolu- 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 281 
 
 tion, "that the whole world, living and not living, 
 is the result of the mutual interaction, according to 
 definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules 
 of which the primitive nebulosity of this universe was 
 composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the 
 existing world lay potentially as the cosmic vapor ; and 
 that a sufficient intelligence of the properties of that 
 vapor could have predicted, say, the state of the fauna 
 of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can 
 say what will happen to the breath on a cold winter's 
 day" ("Critiques," etc., p. 305). This is very true. Now, 
 let us suppose that a master in science had selected for 
 his study that portion of nebulous matter which was to 
 constitute the brain of the most sagacious dog in 1869. 
 We had almost said the brain of Mr. Huxley himself, 
 as Shakspeare makes Hamlet trace the noble dust of 
 Alexander till he finds it stopping a bunghole. If he 
 knows the definite laws of this nebulous mass so thor- 
 oughly as to see it in Mr. Huxley's future brain, he 
 must know what it can be and do with reference to all 
 the other particles with which it will need to act, and 
 follow its future activities through all the phases which 
 it will assume till it emerges into an intelligent brain, 
 and begins to think. The man who could predict this 
 orderly progress from what he sees in these particles of 
 nebulous matter, we should say, sees in them the plan 
 of their development. We cannot doubt that a plan is 
 involved in the very constitution of these particles, 
 which is understood only as these progressive possibil- 
 ities are discerned. If the particles were to be created 
 with this constitution and surrounded by their fellows 
 by a being who had anticipated in his mind their history, 
 we should say at once that design controlled their exist- 
 ence and the developed activities which were to follow. 
 If law regulates the result of the combined activity of 
 
282 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 two forces or two millions of agents in present har- 
 mony, and if law would seem to indicate thought and 
 reason, how much more does the orderly development 
 of such forces manifest design when long periods of 
 time are required ! It follows, that if we accept what is 
 called a tendency to variation, of which Mr. Darwin 
 makes so much, or the tendency to differentiation, on 
 which Mr. Spencer insists, and use either to account for 
 the evolution in which all scientists believe, then we 
 must suppose each to act under the steadying direction 
 of design for unnumbered generations, or the result 
 would be indefinite vacillation. If, for example, a col- 
 lection of nebulous vapor should start on the road of 
 transformation which it must travel for some millions of 
 years till it lands in the brain of Mr Huxley, full pano- 
 plied for a sturdy fight with every dissentient, it not 
 only has a long road to travel, but a road which must 
 steadily tend toward this single goal under the influence 
 of all the attractions and repulsions which it encounters 
 on the way. If the particles concerned are at the start 
 shunted off by an impulse which they can continue to 
 sustain, all is right; but unless this destination is as- 
 signed, and every arrangement is made to hold them to 
 it, it is a mere chance whether any regular tendency 
 can be maintained. There will be serious hazard of 
 fatal disturbance and confusion. If we resort to the 
 survival of the fittest, we find the same difficulty in 
 supposing that the crowding atoms which line this hyper- 
 bolic pathway will push for billions of ages with such 
 an even pressure as not now and then to trample down 
 even the fittest, or push them off to another track. But 
 enough of evolution and progress, in regard to which 
 scientific men are not all agreed. It is time that we 
 had returned to the beaten highway of methods and 
 truths which are accepted by all. 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 283 
 
 Science requires exact definitions, or a precise and 
 complete enumeration of the properties which separate 
 one class of objects from another. As in common life, 
 so in science, the most satisfactory definition states 
 what any thing exists for in relation to other objects, 
 or, as we say, assigns its place or function with its 
 neighbors in a rational system. Let three straight lines 
 be drawn separately from given points. Apart from 
 one another they are three straight lines only. But as 
 soon as they are seen together in their several relations 
 to one another, as parts of the triangle which they con- 
 stitute, they are defined by the triangle for which they 
 are drawn, and which, by being drawn, they create. A 
 hundred sticks of timber lie confusedly in a heap. 
 Each may be defined as sill, or joist, or rafter, accord- 
 ing to the use for which it is designed or best fitted in 
 construction, as the frame of a house, or bridge, or 
 stable. Every object which we define, we define best by 
 its function ; and one or another function or relation is 
 selected as best according to the place which we give 
 the object in the system of things, or the purpose to 
 which it is to be applied. 
 
 We classify on the supposition that certain groups 
 out of the tens of thousands which we might make are 
 significant, and are likely to be permanent in the de- 
 signs of nature ; and that the characteristics which we 
 select are permanent in these permanent groups, and 
 will help us to interpret other capacities and adapta- 
 tions. In other words, we suppose that certain group- 
 ings of nature, certain qualities by which we collect 
 and marshal them, are of greater significance in the 
 designs of nature in respect to science or practical life 
 when we gain a step beyond the classification and nam- 
 ing which other people do for us, and begin to theorize 
 and invent and discover for ourselves. In other words, 
 
284 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 when we look below the surface of things, the language 
 by which we describe our processes seems to take for 
 granted that design is what we are searching after. 
 We inquire, as we say, into the meaning of things, 
 their true intent, import, and significance, the ideas 
 and secrets of the universe, etc. Every artisan, experi- 
 menter, and inventor, every florist, pigeon or dog fan- 
 cier, every stock-breeder, as truly as every discoverer of 
 great laws or truths, tries first to guess, and then essays 
 to confirm, what this or that sign imports. All the 
 poetic and idealized representations, all the mythologi- 
 cal conceptions concerning the favored child of nature, 
 her consecrated priest, her chosen devotee, proceed on 
 the single assumption that nature itself is controlled by 
 design in her own processes and in her modes of making 
 them known. 
 
 We have already seen, that the belief in the laws of. 
 nature, in the regularity of their action, or the mutual 
 and steady adjustment of one force to another, is but 
 another form of assenting to the truth that design 
 and thought are supreme. The circumstance that sci- 
 entific men often stop short with these laws, without 
 asking themselves what their belief in law implies, 
 proves nothing except that they are so occupied with 
 this or that special line of investigation or inquiry as 
 to leave little leisure or occasion to inquire whether 
 a purpose underlies law. The exclusiveness of their 
 occupations, with the very concentration of their inqui- 
 ries within these limits, and the current religious belief 
 which connects nature's laws with the Supreme Being 
 whom they worship, render superfluous any speculative 
 thought upon the purposes or designs of nature. Now 
 and then it happens, that a very able and truth-loving 
 student forgets, in the fervor of his faith in law, that 
 any inquiry in respect to the grounds of this faith is 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 285 
 
 required, or admits of a rational answer. Others con- 
 found laws with forces, and personify their confused 
 conceptions of both, and assume a position of contempt- 
 uous defiance towards any thinker who asks them to 
 give a reason for their faith in these abstractions. Not- 
 withstanding all this, the fact remains true, that modern 
 science has myriads of more occasions to believe that 
 nature is palpitating with thought than had ancient or 
 modern common sense or ancient science. And yet it 
 not infrequently happens, that the objects of inquiry are 
 so many, that the phenomena are so engrossing, and the 
 questionings and explorations so fascinating, that the 
 grand impression of the universe as a whole fails to be 
 responded to. 
 
 We observe, in conclusion, that the truth that design 
 controls the universe, alone furnishes science with a sat- 
 isfactory conception of nature, of man, and of God. 
 
 By nature we mean the material part of the uni- 
 verse. Here we are met again, notwithstanding all 
 that has been reasoned on the subject, with the obsti- 
 nate questioning, How can dead matter express objective 
 thought? We answer by the questions, Does not ani- 
 mated matter at least express, not thought only, but feel- 
 ing as well ? Do you doubt the existence of the spirit 
 of your friend, or the thought which flashes out from 
 within the recess which has never been penetrated ex- 
 cept by himself, and writes .itself upon the face which 
 encloses and veils it ? Perhaps the reply will be given, 
 that, if we allow that animated matter can reveal 
 the thought which it expresses by word or look, it does 
 not follow that matter of another sort can reveal design, 
 much less that it can manifest feeling. We answer it 
 can, because it does, and in cases which all men feel 
 and no one will dispute. Take any one of the auto- 
 matic machines with which we are now so familiar; e.g., 
 
286 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 the very common machine for setting card-teeth. Notice 
 how the wire is first reeled off and shortened as fast as 
 it is required, then cut at the requisite length, then 
 seized by the iron nippers which are thrust forward at 
 the moment, then drawn back at the instant and looped, 
 then bent at the suitable length ; observe how the end 
 of each tooth is sharpened, then confronted with the 
 leather flap, which has been pricked in advance by a 
 special apparatus worked by the machine, then thrust 
 in ; and meanwhile, as the leather slips forward, other 
 holes have been provided ; and the process already de- 
 scribed has been perfected with another looped tooth, 
 which is at once sent home to its place. When a sin- 
 gle row has been completed, the flap is slipped upwards 
 so as to remove the finished row of teeth ; and then it 
 proceeds on its course, and is ready to meet the repeti- 
 tion of the successive processes which have preceded 
 in orderly succession. Is not thought made visible 
 here? Do not indications of design flash from every 
 one of these movements so vividly and impressively, 
 that we almost think or say the machine is insouled ? 
 Is it said that this is because we have seen the 
 construction of similar machines, and that any work 
 known to be of man, or contrived by the mind of 
 man, may naturally be interpreted through another 
 like itself? To meet this difficulty we select another 
 example, — Faber's talking-machine, which was copied 
 after an apparatus never made by human hands or 
 devised by human thinking ; of larynx, with pipe and 
 reeds, with pharynx and roof of mouth for resonance, 
 with tongue for pressure against palate and teeth, all 
 capable of regulation by the lips for finishing and mod- 
 ulation of sound, and yet controlled by a few keys 
 that regulate the actings of larynx, tongue, and lips 
 upon the air that is furnished from a common kitchen- 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 287 
 
 bellows. We almost start with surprise when, as the 
 attendant touches the keys and plies the bellows, the 
 machine utters so distinctly, "Z can speak English. 
 Sprechen sie Deutsche Parlez-vous Frangais? Con- 
 stantinople, Mesopotamia." But this, you say, was imi- 
 tated from an apparatus already in existence. But 
 what was copied in that apparatus ? — the parts of it ? 
 Not alone the parts as such, in shape and quality of 
 material, but the parts as adjusted to one another in 
 the production of articulated sound, seemingly with the 
 design of producing spoken language. But, if so, then 
 the design must have existed, and been made mani- 
 fest through the structure itself. Is it said that design 
 is thought into the natural talking apparatus, after 
 analogies from manufactured whistles and reeds, etc.? 
 This is sometimes said ; and it is charged as unscientific 
 that man's reason in adjusting means to ends, under 
 the limitations of his materials, is made the norm and 
 measure of an imagined thinking in nature. This and 
 nothing else is the meaning of the current charge of 
 anthropomorphism made now so freely, as though 
 nature were belittled and dishonored by having her 
 thoughts interpreted by the analogies furnished from 
 the highest of human processes. We reply, Science is 
 and must be anthropomorphic so far at least, that man 
 must exalt the authority and the trustworthiness of his 
 own intellect if science is to stand. If the interpreta- 
 tion of design in nature is anthropomorphic, then the 
 discovery of that geometry in the heavens by which 
 every eclipse is foretold, and the Nautical Almanac is 
 computed, is also anthropomorphic. 
 
 This leads me to add, that design in nature alone as- 
 signs to man his true place in nature. If I am asked 
 what I mean by man's true place, and am told that I beg 
 the question by assuming that man has any place (i.e., 
 
288 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 any destined or designed place), I answer, I mean, by- 
 man's true place in nature, that place on the one hand 
 which Science must assume for the intellect of man, in 
 order that Science herself can maintain any consistency 
 or assert any authority, and the place on the other 
 which the morals and manners, the laws and institu- 
 tions, of man must assert for his hopes, his obligations, 
 and his rights. These are strikingly contrasted with the 
 place and authority which are allotted to man's intellect 
 on the supposition that man is the temporary product 
 of material force, and with the dignity and destiny 
 which are accorded to man's desires and hopes, on the 
 theory that he exists for a few years, to be dissolved 
 into his original elements, and to re-appear in other 
 forms of being and action. If Science has any author- 
 ity, the intellect of man must, in a sense, assume to 
 judge the operations of nature, and interpret them by 
 its own. It finds that its own operations are controlled 
 by design so far as they are rational at all, and it can- 
 not but believe that the same is true of the regulated 
 operations which nature presents for its interpretation. 
 In doing this, the intelligence of man assumes perma- 
 nent authority to judge of the past and the future by 
 relations and rules which are supreme and abide forever. 
 Science, in a sense, must assume for man kingship over 
 nature, and thereby kindred vAth God. 
 
 If we take the other view, viz., that man, being the 
 product of nature, is just what nature makes him by 
 the temporary development of her progressive agencies ; 
 this and nothing more in his intellectual powers, and in 
 the relations by which he judges, mathematical, causal, 
 law-interpreting, design-interpreting, — then Science is 
 dethroned, and man is dethroned with her. His rela- 
 tions are only his modes of looking at things as long as 
 he lasts, but there is nothing true in things which corre- 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 289 
 
 sponds to them ; therefore all and both the subjective 
 processes, and their imagined objective counterparts, 
 will disappear at the next turn of the wheel, when 
 man is whirled off into something else. But what will 
 become of science if this theory of man is true ? If 
 man's view of nature is anthropomorphic, then sci- 
 ence is necessarily anthropomorphic. If man assumes 
 too much in finding design in nature, then, by the same 
 rule, he assumes too much in finding any thing in nature ; 
 force or law, yes, even in finding in it number and 
 geometry. To deny design in nature because it is an- 
 thropomorphic, requires us to deny force and law as 
 well. It should never be forgotten, that what we call 
 science is the product of human thinking ; and, if we do 
 not assert for man and the thinking of man its appro- 
 priate authority, then science should bow itself off the 
 stage. Science in these days is not very willing to be 
 bowed off the stage ; and it ought not to be, and for 
 this reason it ought to assert a place in nature for man 
 as a knowing being ; but this it cannot do, unless it finds 
 that design in nature which assigns to man suprem- 
 acy. Next, if design rules in nature, there is also a 
 place in nature for man as an emotional and voluntary 
 being. This is assumed in all our social and political 
 theories, in our ethics and our politics, in our institu- 
 tions, our laws, in all that we say of human duties and 
 human rights. All these take. for granted that man is 
 able to recognize all these relations, and that some of 
 them are supreme over all others, in our estimate of 
 man's position in the intentions of nature. Those who 
 deny design must necessarily regard moral relations as 
 the changing products of social sympathies and antipa- 
 thies. They must interpret conscience to be the reflex 
 of advanced experience and capricious fashion ; duty, 
 the command of the majority ; right, to be what is con- 
 
290 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 ceded by the will of the strongest to the weakest party. 
 They must assert that man's destiny is to die and to 
 rot, and that is the end of him. His future life is an 
 impossibility : and his destiny after this life is over is 
 but a phantasm or a dream, except as the thoughts and 
 feelings which he has evolved live on in the impulses 
 which they have imparted to the thoughts and feelings 
 of other beings who follow ; for there is and can be no 
 other future life. 
 
 This is a short statement of the ethical, sociological, 
 and political creed which is taught by those who find no 
 design in nature, or who make every thing which gives 
 man his dignity and self-respect to be the product of 
 social environment plus a more or less considerable va- 
 riation of individual impulses. I need not argue that 
 such a view destroys conscience and degrades man, 
 that it makes the educated and cultured more selfish 
 and grasping, and the uneducated more discontented 
 and revolutionary. It claims to be very new, with its 
 sounding abstractions and its scientific pretensions. It 
 would be easy to show that it is as old as Lucretius 
 and Hobbes, and that it is dangerous in proportion to 
 the confidence with which its want of coherence is 
 disguised and its immoral tendencies are hidden, even 
 from its advocates, by its high-sounding language, its 
 rhetorical speciousness, and its arrogant dogmatism. 
 
 The assumption of design in the universe justifies the 
 faith of science in a personal and intelligent Creator. 
 Justifies? I had almost said it requires this, in order 
 that the intellect may rest in a completed idea of a well- 
 rounded universe. A creator is a being who originates 
 all the active beings, and imparts all the force or forces 
 which exist, and who regulates their mutual activities 
 by the laws which he has imposed upon them to accom- 
 plish the designs which he proposes, in the existence, 
 
FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 291 
 
 the development, and activity of the material and spirit- 
 ual universe. You may try in vain to stop short at any 
 view of the origin of things without designing force, if 
 you hope to provide for science. You may try the 
 theory of force only, as Spencer does, and refer this 
 origin or existence of things, as he does, to a persistent 
 unknown and unknowable power, unlimited in space, 
 and without beginning or end in time. But in this 
 conception you have all the mystery which pertains to a 
 self-existent personal Creator, with no advantages. You 
 have a being who is himself unexplained, and who him- 
 self explains nothing. But what next, according to 
 Mr. Spencer? Why, somehow this unknowable power 
 appears as acting through or upon a mass of matter 
 which is in a state of unstable equilibrium, in which 
 there is provided potentially all the events and beings 
 which are to be developed in the future history of the 
 universe. How it happens that each separate particle is 
 in its place, with its wondrous potencies and promises 
 of vegetable and animal life, of heroes and battles and 
 philosophers, of lords and ladies gay, of saints and 
 fiends, is not explained. How each happens regularly 
 and progressively to act, no one can explain. 
 
 But all the future is here. Here is destiny, but no 
 design. There is law here, because each particle which 
 stands or moves in this star-dust must act with every 
 other particle according to the capacities of each to 
 condition the other. There must be progress steady 
 and onward, we are told, according to a law which sets 
 in motion a set of constantly shifting and changing 
 partners, every figure being more complicated than 
 the other, till the dance is out. Here again is destiny, 
 — the destiny of evolution, destination with perpetual 
 progress, but no design. 
 
 Take now the other view. Let science recognize 
 
292 FORCE, LAW, AND DESIGN. 
 
 purpose, and there is explanation of law. The force of 
 every individual agent is the condition to every other 
 so far as they act in mutual dependence on one another. 
 Admit evolution, even in the extremest form, and con- 
 cede that every thing has been produced out of the 
 original star-dust. Even then we need not ask which 
 best satisfies the demands and the discoveries of science ; 
 which is the best working hypothesis, — this theory of a 
 personified force, or the theory of an intelligent Creator, 
 whose thought preceded the act which called the uni- 
 verse of forces into existence, fixed them under law, in 
 obedience to designs of love which blessed beforehand 
 those beings who were to interpret in science, and imi- 
 tate in art, and honor in worship, the one knowable 
 God, — knowable by them, because made in his image. 
 
 But our study has been too much prolonged. We 
 conclude with the words of Lord Bacon : " It is an 
 assured truth, and a conclusion of experience, that a 
 little or superficial knowledge of philosophy may incline 
 the mind to atheism, but a farther proceeding therein 
 doth bring the mind back again to religion ; for on the 
 entrance of philosophy, when the second causes which 
 are next unto the senses do offer themselves to the 
 mind of man, if it dwell and stay in them, it may 
 induce some oblivion of the highest cause : but when 
 a man passeth on farther, and seeth the dependence of 
 causes and the works of Providence, then, according to 
 the allegory of the poets, he will easily believe that the 
 highest link of nature's chain must needs be tied to 
 the foot of Jupiter's chair." 
 
PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION OF 
 HUME'S PHILOSOPHY, 1 
 
 Professor Huxley is always an interesting writer, 
 whatever may be his theme. He never fails to be clear 
 and forcible, and he is usually both vivacious and amus- 
 ing. It is true, his positiveness makes him defiant and 
 contemptuous of men and opinions of whom and of 
 which he has very little knowledge, and ought to say 
 little or nothing. And yet his ignorance is often so 
 complete and unconscious, that his positiveness be- 
 comes diverting ; while his self-complacent good-nature 
 is always so manifest, that the critic loses all sense of 
 irritation in sympathy with his author's serene self-sat- 
 isfaction, and abates even much of moral displeasure 
 at his frivolous trifling with the most important moral 
 and religious truths, by reason of the succession of 
 surprises which his audacious paradoxes occasion. Pro- 
 fessor Huxley may not inaptly be styled the William 
 Cobbett of our current philosophical radicalism. He is 
 like Cobbett in acuteness, directness, humor, and earth- 
 liness. He is like Cobbett in the clearness, directness, 
 and vigor of his style. Above all, he is like Cobbett in 
 being never weary of u having a fling at the parsons." 
 
 The writer informs his readers, that it was at the 
 desire and suggestion of Mr. Morley, the editor of the 
 series of "Biographies of English Men of Letters," 
 
 1 Hume: by Professor Huxley. New York, 1879. The Princeton 
 Review, November, 1879. 
 
294 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 that he undertook the task of writing upon David 
 Hume. He half apologizes for his audacity in making 
 the attempt, inasmuch as he does not profess to be him- 
 self a man of letters. He excuses himself, however, by 
 the consideration, that Mr. Hume has at present greater 
 significance and reputation as a philosopher than as a 
 literary man, and that his own familiarity with science 
 in some sense qualifies him to write upon Hume's 
 philosophical system. 
 
 The reader who is at all familiar with the special 
 signification in which the term science is persistently 
 used by men of Professor Huxley's way of thinking, as 
 synonymous with physics, will perhaps be surprised that 
 he should find any meaning or place left for philosophy, 
 either in his thinking or his terminology. That he 
 attempts to find both is made to appear as he proceeds. 
 Indeed, this biography derives its chief importance, 
 from the circumstance, that it is an elaborate attempt 
 on the part of an ultra-physiological materialist to rec- 
 ognize, after a fashion of his own, the significance of 
 the problems which have been proposed by metaphysi- 
 cians proper, and to solve them in such a way as to 
 reconcile Hume with Kant, Locke with Descartes, upon 
 the irenical basis furnished by the metaphysics of asso- 
 ciationalism and the psychology of cerebralism ! 
 
 Professor Huxley divides his treatise into two parts, 
 entitled respectively " Mr. Hume's Life " and " Mr. 
 Hume's Philosophy," the first occupying forty-five, and 
 the second one hundred and sixty pages. The biog- 
 raphy states concisely the principal external incidents 
 of Mr. Hume's life, and the salient features of his char- 
 acter as seen by the common eye. So far it is well 
 enough. And yet we cannot but regret that a life and 
 character so eminently individual and original, and so 
 suggestive of the times, had not been treated by a 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. , 295 
 
 writer competent vividly to conceive and graphically to 
 depict both the man and his age. Indeed, for a biog- 
 rapher of the requisite intellectual and moral qualifica- 
 tions, we cannot conceive a finer subject than Hume 
 the man, and the man of letters. A life of Hume, both 
 as a man of letters and philosopher, vividly conceived 
 and graphically set off by some just and lively por- 
 traiture of his times, might be given within the com- 
 pass of one of Mr. Morley's volumes, and be a priceless 
 addition to English biography, were it written by more 
 than one man whom we could name. But then, how 
 different would that man be in his stand-point from 
 Mr. Huxley, and how different would be the impres- 
 sions and lessons from the story and the criticism ! 
 
 Part II., on " Mr. Hume's Philosophy," was doubt- 
 less designed to be, what Professor Huxley describes it, 
 an "exposition of Hume's philosophy." He informs 
 us, that, in preparing it, he " applied himself to the task 
 of selecting and arranging in systematic order the 
 passages which appeared to him to contain the clearest 
 statements of Hume's opinions." He adds, he should 
 have been glad to confine himself to the comments 
 which might serve to connect these excerpts, but ex- 
 cuses himself for overstepping these limits by " an ine- 
 radicable tendency to try to make things clear." The 
 reader would expect from this announcement to find a 
 tolerably complete statement of Mr. Hume's philo- 
 sophical opinions, made clearer, perhaps, by explanatory 
 remarks, with here and there a brief criticism inter- 
 posed, or perhaps a supplementary observation. He 
 would certainly have reason to look for very much of 
 Mr. Hume's philosophizing, and very little compara- 
 tively of Professor Huxley's. He may reasonably 
 be surprised, therefore, when he finds that the treatise 
 contains as much or more of Mr. Huxley's philosophy 
 
296 . PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 than it does of the philosophy of Mr. Hume. He could 
 not object to an exposition of Mr. Hume's philosophy 
 in Professor Huxley's own language. He would have 
 no reason to be offended had Professor Huxley now and 
 then expressed his own dissent from Mr. Hume's opin- 
 ions, and his reasons for the same. Nor, indeed, could 
 he reasonably complain had he drawn his illustrations, 
 confirmations, or refutations from modern science, 
 whether physiological or any other. But he may cer- 
 tainly feel some surprise to find that the philosophy is, 
 in the main, Professor Huxley's, re-enforced now and 
 then by Mr. Hume's, and not infrequently substituted 
 in place of that of the great Scottish leader. The trea- 
 tise is certainly a striking example of the tendency of 
 modern physics and physiology to rush into metaphys- 
 ics. It is certainly not the first time that Professor 
 Huxley has essayed an attempt at philosophy. His 
 well-known lecture on Descartes seems to have pre- 
 pared the way for his discussion of Hume ; resembling 
 it strikingly in its manner of treatment, its conclusions, 
 its audacity, and its blunders. 
 
 It is comparatively of little consequence, however, 
 whether the present treatise ought to be called Mr. 
 Hume's Philosophy or Mr. Huxley's. So far, however, 
 as it contains the latter, it invites and demands a 
 candid criticism, even though the results of such a 
 criticism should show that the author's "ineradicable 
 tendency to try to make things clear" has resulted 
 only in making clear his own failure to vindicate his 
 materialistic and atheistic conclusions, even with the 
 authority and prestige which he sought from Mr. Hume. 
 
 Before entering upon this critical examination, we 
 would call attention to the hope expressed by the au- 
 thor, " that there is nothing in what he may have said 
 which is inconsistent with the logical development of 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 297 
 
 Hume's principles." This suggests the important ques- 
 tion which has been agitated by critical students ; viz., 
 whether Hume held any fixed and logical system of 
 philosophy, either in its principles or conclusions. 
 Hamilton insists that he was not a dogmatist, but a 
 sceptic ; that he did not assert his own principles, nor 
 proceed to derive from them their logical consequences 
 as his own conclusions, but expounded the principles 
 of the received philosophy, i.e., the philosophy of Locke, 
 with the inferences which these necessarily involved; 
 leaving it for his readers to decide whether the infer- 
 ences disproved the premises by a reductio ad absurdum, 
 or whether the difficulty of reaching or phrasing any 
 trustworthy data might not justify a sceptical distrust 
 or despair of any philosophical exactness of statement 
 (Met. Lects., xvi., xxxix.). There is much in the 
 spirit of Hume's earliest treatise which would indicate 
 that he often wrote in a spirit of mischievous banter, 
 which found its chief delight in puzzling the average 
 mind with the lucid statement of current metaphysical 
 theories, and the logical derivation of incredible para- 
 doxes from the premises furnished by the received phi- 
 losophy. As we follow the movements of his mind in 
 his later treatises, we find him more cautious of dogma- 
 tism, more guarded and suave in his manner of writing, 
 and more careful to avoid giving offence to other think- 
 ers, theologians being always excepted. His famous 
 " Essay on Miracles " is as remarkable for its sly indi- 
 rectness as it is for its skilful argumentation. Even 
 the dialogues on Natural Religion, which he declined to 
 publish during his lifetime, indicate a singular indecis- 
 ion or indefiniteness of philosophical opinion united to 
 a sensitive timidity in avowing his real or even his pre- 
 vailing conclusions. Hence the question has often 
 been raised, and never satisfactorily answered, which 
 
298 PBOFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 of the personages in these masterly dialogues repre- 
 sented his own sentiments. The most plausible answer 
 to this question seems to us to be, that each of them 
 represents Hume in one of his varying moods ; and all 
 together bespeak a man who was gifted with great 
 intellectual subtlety conjoined with the mastery over 
 a singularly lucid style, but was perpetually vacillating 
 with the changes of his own half-formed convictions. 
 There are strong internal evidences in his writings, 
 that the statements are true, which Huxley treats with 
 such lightness, that Hume in his more earnest moods 
 relaxed from the frivolous temper which he usually 
 assumed when he touched theological questions or 
 religious truth. 
 
 Professor Huxley is no such man. He is downright 
 in the opinions which he holds, and outright in express- 
 ing them. He is least of all an Academic, but, as Syd- 
 ney Smith said of Lord Macaulay, " is always cocksure 
 of every thing," — of the worthlessness of what he calls 
 "pure metaphysics," of the scientific certainty of his 
 biological psychology, — in short, of every point of the 
 philosophy which he finds in or reads into Hume, and 
 of the conclusions which he deduces from it. Every 
 step which he takes is positive and firm. He would 
 have his readers believe that Hume was the forerunner 
 of the modern metaphysics, of which Mr. Huxley is the 
 acknowledged head in physiology, Mr. Bain the most 
 distio guished analysist in psychology, and Mr. Spencer 
 the most profound and comprehensive philosopher and 
 theologian. He goes even farther in his sanguine posi- 
 tiveness. He tries to persuade himself and his readers 
 that Locke, Descartes, Spinoza, and Kant all approxi- 
 mated on many points to the same principles with him- 
 self, and are worthy of the very highest respect in the 
 temple of the new philosophy. 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 299 
 
 Professor Huxley begins his exposition with a chapter 
 on u The Object and Scope of Philosophy." It is worthy 
 of note, that at the very outset he recognizes a distinc- 
 tion between science and philosophy. Both have to do 
 with knowledge. Philosophy attempts to answer the 
 question, What can I know ? u What is commonly 
 called science, whether mathematical, physical, or bio- 
 logical, consists of the answers which mankind have 
 been able to give to the inquiry, What do I know? 
 They furnish us with the results of the mental opera- 
 tions which constitute thinking; while philosophy, in 
 the stricter sense of the term, inquires into the founda- 
 tion of the first principles which those operations assume 
 or imply." He soon discovers that this comprehensive 
 question can be answered satisfactorily only by that 
 analysis of the power of knowing which we call psycho- 
 logical. Thus far we find no difficulty in keeping com- 
 pany with the critic, when all at once he brings us to 
 a pause by turning upon us with the assertion, " Psy- 
 chology is a part of the science of life, or biology, which 
 differs from the other branches of that science merely in 
 so far as it deals with the psychical instead of the physi- 
 cal phenomena of life." From one point of view, this 
 assertion might be considered as harmless enough. 
 From another, it simply begs a score of questions, and 
 commits us to his entire theory of physiological, not to 
 say materialistic, philosophizing, He supports this view 
 by the remark, that, as the physiologist studies "func- 
 tions," so the psychologist searches after "faculties." 
 He adds the not very original or profound remark, that 
 mental phenomena are more or less affected by bodily 
 states ; and that, as in physiology we must know some- 
 thing of physics, which treats of the lower operations of 
 the body : so in psychology we ought to consider those 
 higher functions of which physiology treats. From all 
 
300 PBOFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 this he concludes that psychology and physiology must 
 follow the same method of investigation, and can differ 
 only in the subject-matter with which they are con- 
 cerned. That psychology has a special subject-matter 
 he defends against the positivists, but not before, in 
 almost the same breath, he had turned against the 
 "pure metaphysicians" who "attempt to base the 
 theory of knowing upon supposed necessary and uni- 
 versal truths, and assert that scientific observation is 
 impossible unless such truths are already known or 
 implied ; " apparently forgetting, that two pages earlier 
 he had affirmed that " philosophy, in the stricter sense 
 of the term, inquires into the foundation of the first 
 principles which these operations assume or imply." 
 It will be seen that the professor has already fallen into 
 deep water, and has begun to flounder where very 
 many have floundered before him. In other words, he 
 has first classed biology among the sciences, as con- 
 trasted with philosophy, and then has placed philosophy 
 under psychology, and psychology under biology, and 
 thus brought back philosophy to a special science, even 
 the science of life, which means a science of the brain, 
 and finally given it the coup de grace by attacking the 
 pure metaphysicians for doing what he had said all 
 philosophers must do ; i.e., seeking to find " the first 
 principles which the psychological operations assume 
 or imply." 
 
 He does not seem aware, however, that he has lost 
 his footing, or that he flounders at all ; for he seems to 
 recover his footing by saying that " it is assuredly one 
 of Hume's greatest merits that he clearly recognized 
 the fact that philosophy is based upon psychology." 
 He refers here to the title of Hume's first work as a 
 " Treatise of Human Nature, being an Attempt to in- 
 troduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 301 
 
 Moral Subjects." The title is certainly very significant ; 
 and the explanation of its import, as given by Hume 
 himself, in the passage which Huxley quotes on p. 51, 
 very clearly sets forth his views as to what the u exper- 
 imental method " is. It shows very satisfactorily that 
 Hume, so far as he reached definite views, anticipated 
 the modern physical school in a then novel theory of 
 the soul, and the method of studying its phenomena. 
 We cannot complain or wonder that Professor Huxley 
 at this point claims for his own views the authority 
 of Hume. But he commits a grave offence when he 
 proceeds to refer to Descartes and Locke and Kant 
 as sanctioning similar opinions in regard either to 
 the nature of the soul or the method of attaining to 
 psychological and philosophical knowledge. In citing 
 their authority, he not only makes a muddle of their 
 opinions, but leaves his readers in a muddle as to the 
 object for which he quotes them. He first observes 
 (p. 53) that u the memorable service rendered to the 
 cause of sound thinking by Descartes consisted in this, 
 that he laid the foundation of modern philosophical 
 criticism by his inquiry into the nature of certainty," 
 and that it is a clear result of the investigation started 
 by Descartes " that there is one thing of which no doubt 
 can be entertained, ' " and that is the momentary con- 
 sciousness we call a, present thought or feeling" We beg 
 Professor Huxley's pardon. This is not the doctrine 
 of Descartes at all. What he insisted upon in his 
 famous argument, Cogito, ergo sum, was the existence of 
 the ego, as involved in and clearly discerned " in each 
 momentary state we call a present thought or feeling." 
 This is the truth which Hume ridiculed and denied 
 most persistently. In proof of our assertion, we refer 
 to the second of the Meditations, and to Mr. Huxley's 
 own lecture upon Descartes, published in his " Lay 
 
302 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews " (p. 328, Am. ed.), 
 in which he asserts, that in the proposition I think, three 
 propositions are included. H The first of these is, f some- 
 thing called /exists ; ' the second is, i something called 
 thought exists ; ' and the third is, \ the thought is the 
 result of the action of the I.' " He then proceeds to 
 argue, that, of these three propositions, in his opinion 
 the second only can be true. From which it appears 
 that Professor Huxley does not quote from Descartes, 
 either in word or thought, but cites what Professor 
 Huxley argues Descartes ought to have said. If any 
 tenet was characteristic for Descartes to affirm and for 
 Hume to deny (cf. pp. 165-6), it was the existence of 
 the ego as given in every state of consciousness. For 
 Professor Huxley to cite the authority of Descartes in 
 favor of his own doctrine is singularly audacious. 
 
 Scarcely less daring is his citation of sundry passages 
 from Hume as containing an anticipation of the tech- 
 nical theory of modern agnosticism, whereas they are 
 simply expressive of his contemptuous disesteem of the 
 frivolous logomachies of the metaphysical speculations 
 current in his time. Scarcely less cool is the effrontery 
 with which he cites Locke's sensible remarks in respect 
 to the necessity of recognizing the limits of human 
 knowledge, and Kant's restriction of all logical knowl- 
 edge to the sphere of the phenomenal as tending in the 
 same direction. Every way, this first chapter, on the 
 " Object and Scope of Philosophy," is wholly disappoint- 
 ing. It neither gives us the views of Mr. Hume with 
 any appreciation of his historic position, nor the views 
 of Professor Huxley with any frankness. The citations 
 and arguments from Descartes, Locke, and Kant are 
 of no significance to any reader who knows any thing of 
 their teachings. Even the just recognition of philosophy 
 as different from science, and of the relation of philos- 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 303 
 
 ophy to psychology, is annulled by the degradation of 
 psychology to biology, and the obvious preparation for 
 his subsequent argument, that metaphysical relations are 
 nothing more than cerebral outgrowths. 
 
 The second chapter treats of M The Contents of the 
 Mind." What the precise signification of this phrase may 
 be does not appear at once. Whether the objections 
 urged by Huxley are valid, that the conception of the 
 mind as an entity endowed with faculties is a legacy u of 
 ancient philosophy more or less leavened by theology," 
 or the doctrine quoted from Hume be correct, that 
 " what we call the mind is nothing but a heap or col- 
 lection of different perceptions united together by certain 
 relations," or the cautious view finally sanctioned by 
 the critic be the only one which it is safe to adopt, 
 " that we know nothing more of the mind than that it 
 is a series of perceptions," it still remains true, that the 
 contents of the mind must signify the various kinds of 
 phenomena which make up the heap or series. 
 
 We do not accept this doctrine, but hold to that of 
 Descartes, that the mind is itself an agent capable of 
 those various modes of acting and suffering which are 
 called by Huxley its contents. But, waiving this point, 
 we limit ourselves to Mr. Huxley's exposition and criti- 
 cal analysis of Hume's doctrine of the elementary phe- 
 nomena of which the mind is the subject. These are 
 correctly stated as reducible to' two classes ; viz., impres- 
 sions and ideas; the first of which includes "all our 
 sensations, passions, and emotions as they make their 
 first appearance in the soul," and the second the faint 
 images of impressions or antecedent ideas. Huxley 
 criticises very justly this view of Hume, on the ground 
 that it does not include " relations." In doing so, he 
 might have referred to Hume's own words already 
 quoted, as teaching a better doctrine, in which he 
 
304 PBOFESSOB HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 speaks of " different perceptions united together by 
 certain relations." As a decisive example that Hume 
 is wrong, he appeals to every act of memory as neces- 
 sarily involving in one case " the feeling of the succes- 
 sion of two impressions," and in the other " the feeling 
 of their similarity." He very justly makes a stronger 
 point against Hume, that relations figure largely in his 
 fundamental doctrine of association, and are altogether 
 essential to his explanation of causation. He urges 
 also against him, that, in his own account of the nature 
 and origin of relations, he is inconsistent with himself. 
 For these reasons he ventures to amend Hume's cata- 
 logue of the contents of the mind by an additional or 
 third class of original impressions ; viz., relations. 
 
 Having enlarged Hume's inventory of the contents 
 of the mind by adding relations to impressions and 
 ideas, he raises the very important question, whether 
 the possession of one or all of these simple elements 
 involves an act of knowledge. Of all the questions 
 which he could possibly ask, this is fundamental to an. 
 understanding of the historical position of Hume's 
 theory, and to a successful criticism of its fatal defect. 
 Stated fully, the question is this : Must the mind exer- 
 cise the act of knowledge in gaining what Huxley called 
 its contents, i.e., its elementary states, whether these are 
 impressions, ideas, or relations ; or must it first possess 
 these elements before it proceeds to unite them in an 
 act of knowledge ? This we affirm to be the most im- 
 portant question which could possibly be proposed for 
 an answer. 
 
 Professor Huxley refers us at once to Locke's defini- 
 tion of knowledge u as the perception of the agreement 
 or disagreement of ideas," which Hume tacitly accepts. 
 According to this definition, he rightly reasons, the 
 mind must have ideas, etc., before it can unite them in 
 
OP HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 305 
 
 relations. This would involve the inference, that the 
 mind cannot know its simple states, as of pain, however 
 violent, or any specific sensation, however definite, be- 
 cause, forsooth, it must first possess ideas before it can 
 discern their agreement or disagreement ; that is, be- 
 fore it can know. But surely Huxley rightly reasons, 
 whenever we have a sensation we must know it ; the 
 distinction between the two being merely verbal. Then, 
 is not Locke's definition defective? Huxley does not 
 suggest the thought. He makes a joke of the matter. 
 Instead of extricating himself from his embarrassment, 
 he frankly confesses it, and even more frankly owns, 
 that u the ' pure metaphysicians ' make great capital out 
 of the ambiguity " by " declaring that even the simplest 
 act of sensation contains two terms and a relation, — 
 the sensitive subject, the sensigenous object, and that 
 masterful entity, the ego. From which great triad, as 
 from a Gnostic trinity, emanates an endless procession of 
 other logical shadows, and all the Fata Morgana of philo- 
 sophical dreamland." With this jocose confession of 
 weakness, our philosophical scene-shifter lets fall the 
 curtain upon the second act of his promised exhibition ; 
 leaving the act of knowledge wholly unexplained by 
 which " the contents of the mind " are gained. 
 
 We cannot suffer our manager to raise the curtain 
 again and discuss the " origin of the impressions " with- 
 out calling attention to the dexterity with which he omits 
 a discussion of this cardinal question in the philosophy 
 of Hume, and, indeed, in all philosophy. Every tyro in 
 philosophy knows, or ought to know, that the idealism 
 of Berkeley was logically derived from Locke's defini- 
 tion of knowledge as the perception of an agreement 
 or disagreement of ideas, or from the assumption which 
 this definition implied, that we must first gain ideas 
 before we can discern them in relations. Berkeley took 
 
306 PROFESSOB HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 Locke's definition to be literally correct, and reasoned 
 from it, that we know only the ideas of matter and their 
 relations, but never can know matter itself. Hume 
 made a similar application of it to our ideas of spirit, 
 and concluded that all that we know of spirit are our 
 ideas of it ; that we do not and cannot know the ego or 
 agent, — because the " masterful ego " is only a heap 
 or collection of impressions. Berkeley and Hume to- 
 gether furnished the reductio ad absurdum of Locke's 
 defective definition of knowledge, and forced upon 
 philosophers the necessity of revising and correcting it 
 in the way indicated by Professor Huxley, by adding 
 relations to the contents of the mind. Many of the so- 
 called u pure metaphysicians " also go still farther, and 
 give a corrected definition of knowledge, which the 
 materialists and associationalists overlook or reject. 
 This corrected definition would be as follows : The 
 mind, " that masterful entity, the ego" gains its ideas 
 by observing existing entities in relations (or as related) 
 to one another. This is its function, and in the exercise 
 of this function it finds the authority to trust the con- 
 tents gained by its own acts. It does not find itself in 
 possession of its materials, it knows not how, — as " the 
 contents of the mind," as impressions or ideas, nor even 
 as relations, — and then proceed to compound them into 
 knowledge ; but it finds things or entities in combina- 
 tion, or related together, and proceeds subsequently to 
 decompose them into ideas, and to express these ideas in 
 language. As Professor Huxley himself explains of 
 memory, the mind not only views ideas previously 
 present with more or less vividness, but it recalls these 
 in a relation of succession. So it is of all experiences 
 or mental activities : they are known to exist, and not 
 only are known to exist, but to exist in relations to one 
 another. They are necessarily and uniformly given in 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 307 
 
 combination. They are affirmed in propositions which 
 the mind subsequently analyzes into subject, predicate, 
 and copula. As every thing living is essentially com- 
 plex ; as the vegetable and animal cell already exist, or 
 the protoplasm is certain to show itself in distinguish- 
 able elements united into living wholes, — so the mind 
 apprehends whatever it knows, in related elements. 
 These, as known, become " the contents of the mind," 
 as united or separated by these several relations. 
 
 How widely contrasted this view of the mind and its 
 functions is with that which Professor Huxley assumes 
 and teaches will appear as we follow his expositions in 
 detail. What excellent reasons he has to dismiss it 
 with a jest may appear in the sequel. The arts of 
 thimblerigging are not confined to that manual dexterity 
 by which the attention is diverted from a movement 
 which the operator is desirous to conceal, perhaps from 
 himself ! 
 
 If our view of knowledge is correct, the mind in 
 knowledge is pre-eminently active, and its position in 
 respect to whatever it knows is a position of complete 
 and independent self-reliance. The function itself is 
 altogether unique, — so unique that it will suffer a com- 
 parison with no other. Whether the ego perceives or is 
 conscious, whether it remembers or reasons, whether it 
 invents or interprets, it appears as an individual agent, 
 which is in no sense the servant of the objects which it 
 discerns or explains. To interpret its acts by material- 
 istic analogies, or to explain them by the laws which 
 control the world of matter, is simply to destroy its 
 capacity to judge of matter and explain its phenomena. 
 To interpret its phenomena or products by the phenom- 
 ena which address the senses, or to calculate its results 
 by weight or measure, is to destroy the authority of the 
 agent which weighs and measures. To assume that the 
 
308 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 acts of scientific judgment by which biology is created 
 are themselves only biological phenomena of a subtler 
 complexion, is to make biology itself an uncertain prod- 
 uct of cerebral excitements. In like manner, to degrade 
 the science of the mind under the guise of applying to 
 it the experimental method, by forgetting or denying 
 that it discovers and enforces the principles and laws 
 which are essential to all scientific method, past, present, 
 and future ; to make this agent to be the possible prod- 
 uct of a changing constitution, or of the progressive 
 growths of an accidental environment, — is to be untrue 
 to the most elementary experiences which we have of 
 the nature of knowledge, and to the most splendid 
 achievements of "that masterful entity "which in these 
 modern times speaketh such great things, and often 
 such presumptuous things, and always such brilliant 
 things by the mouth of Professor Huxley and those 
 who think with him. 
 
 In Chapter III. our critic proceeds to expound Hume's 
 corrected theory of u The Origin of the Impressions." 
 He ought here to throw much needed light on impor- 
 tant problems. The reader should keep in mind that 
 the word Impressions is used as equivalent to sensations 
 plus relations, both of which make up "the primary 
 irresolvable states of consciousness." We notice, first 
 of all, that in this discussion the defective theory of 
 knowledge to which we have adverted is continually 
 assumed, and in several features which we have not yet 
 stated. First of all, it seems to be implied, that, in the 
 act of knowing, the object known is the efficient agent, 
 and not the mind. The impression is represented as 
 produced by "the sensigenous object" upon the mind, 
 whatever that may be, whether it be the brain or u a 
 heap," "a collection," or "a bundle of impressions." 
 Whatever it is, it is only the passive recipient of 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 309 
 
 whatever effect the object produces in or imposes upon 
 it. Next, the relations which Huxley had noticed as 
 not adequately recognized by Hume are grouped and 
 treated as on a par with sensations so far as their " ori- 
 gin " and method of production are concerned. They 
 also are simply the effects of objects which operate on 
 the mind. It is marvellous in the eyes of a " pure 
 metaphysician " to observe that Professor Huxley goes 
 so far in the right direction in recognizing relations as 
 essential elements in knowledge, and yet after all so 
 readily sinks them to the level of sensations. He is not 
 so outspoken as Herbert Spencer, who, after making as 
 much or more of relations in the economy of knowledge 
 than he, proceeds to define, say for example, the rela- 
 tion of likeness or equality between two colors or 
 sounds as the sensations which are experienced in effect- 
 ing a transition from the sensations of color or sound 
 in question. Huxley does not say this, but his theory 
 logically requires him to hold it. 
 
 In expounding Hume, the professor observes that he 
 agrees with Descartes that u all our perceptions are 
 dependent on our organs, and the disposition of our 
 nerves and animal spirits." He also shows, and correctly 
 enough, that Hume taught that the primary qualities 
 and the two classes of secondary qualities are alike, in 
 being impressions produced on the senses. Whereupon 
 Mr. Huxley leaps to the conclusion, that Mr. Hume 
 " fully adopted the conclusion to which all that we know 
 of psychological physiology tends, that the origin of 
 the elements of consciousness is to be sought in bodily 
 changes, the seat of which can only be placed in the 
 brain." He quotes again from Hume to the effect that 
 there can be no possible objection from the nature of 
 matter or mind, as known a priori, " against the possi- 
 bility of a causal connection between the modes of 
 
310 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 motion of the cerebral substance and states of con 
 sciousness." The substance of Hume's argument is, 
 that, inasmuch as causation is resolvable into accidental 
 associations, any thing can be the cause of any thing 
 else if only it is constantly conjoined with it. AVhere- 
 upon Huxley waxes bolder in the affirmation, that what 
 Hume had provided for as possible has now been estab- 
 lished as certain, — that " what we call the operations 
 of the mind are functions of the brain, and the materi- 
 als of consciousness are products of cerebral activity." 
 He then adds, u It is hardly necessary to point out, that 
 the doctrine first laid down is what is commonly called 
 materialism. In fact, I am not sure that the adjective 
 4 crass,' which appears to have a special charm for rhe- 
 torical sciolists, would not be applied to it. But it is 
 nevertheless true, that the doctrine contains nothing in- 
 consistent with the purest idealism." The readers of 
 Mr. Huxley will not be surprised at this statement, or 
 the argument on which it is founded. It is no strange 
 thing to find him urging with the utmost confidence 
 the doctrine that the brain is all the mind which science 
 can recognize, and the phenomena of spirit are alto- 
 gether dependent on modes of motion, and then turn 
 about and add, but, after all, it is of no consequence 
 what we say ; for modes of motion on the one side, and 
 the corresponding spiritual states on the other, are 
 simply two uniformly adherent phenomena of we know 
 not and care not what substratum, call it what you 
 will. In a similar fashion reason Spencer, Bain, and 
 Lewes. We submit, however, that it is not altogether 
 fair to make Hume teach doctrines like these, and an- 
 ticipate the modern dogmatic, two-faced materialism. 
 The ambitious and deferential references of Huxley 
 to the " pure metaphysicians " Leibnitz and Fichte, in 
 this connection, do not relieve him of the charge of 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 311 
 
 reading the philosophy of Huxley between the lines of 
 Hume. It is true, Hume the sceptic did suggest, that 
 every thing which we call the substance of matter and 
 spirit is utterly beyond our apprehension, and that all 
 we do know of either is simply sensations ; that both 
 matter and spirit themselves are nothing more than 
 collections of sensations and emotions. But Hume the 
 dogmatist, when he suggested, that, for aught we know, 
 the several changes in the animal spirits or the nervous 
 system are adequate to account for every description of 
 mental phenomena, treated matter as the substance 
 well known and real to the solid common sense of 
 common man, and as the producing agent of all spirit- 
 ual manifestations, and therefore the only permanently 
 existing agent in the universe. Mr. Hume, the acute 
 reasoner against the possibility of any philosophy, is 
 one man, and Mr. Hume, the assailant of those spiritual 
 truths which are vital to all morality, faith, and wor- 
 ship, is altogether another. 
 
 Mr. Huxley himself is also an example of a man 
 who can play two rSles in reasoning, and scarcely know 
 when he passes from the one to the other. When 
 Mr. Huxley reasons as a physiologist or paleontologist, 
 there is no man so positive an assertor of the reality 
 of matter, and its infinite capacities for evolution into 
 forms of wonder and beauty. But Mr. Huxley the 
 metaphysician is the most uncertain and timid of men 
 as to whether matter or spirit have any existence, and 
 does not care what name you give to either or its 
 phenomena. When he comes before an American 
 audience, with his enthusiasm freshly excited by the 
 remains which had been freshly observed in an Ameri- 
 can museum, he stamps forth with his feet his irrepres- 
 sible and enthusiastic conviction that evolution is a 
 demonstrated fact ; but when he enacts the role of a 
 
312 PROFESSOB HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 " physiological metaphysician," then matter and spirit, 
 the old horses and new, with their infinite number of 
 intervening forms, are all, in the generosity of his 
 idealistic candor, at once converted into sensations ; and 
 sensations and emotions are declared to be all that we 
 know of either matter or mind. Forsooth, the succes- 
 sions and associations of these sensations and emotions 
 constitute the facts and science of either and of both. 
 On the one hand, he asseverates that physiological psy- 
 chology has taught with absolute positiveness that all 
 the varieties of so-called spiritual activity are produced 
 by modes of motion in the cerebral substance. But, 
 again putting on his metaphysical robes, he declares 
 that modes of motion, bulk, and figure are nothing but 
 sensations, and consequently materialism and idealism 
 are interchangeable ; and it is folly to ask which you 
 will prefer, for at bottom they are one. 
 
 Growing so liberal in his catholicity, he condescends, 
 in this very chapter, to accept the long-discarded doc- 
 trine of innate ideas, and invites Descartes, the former 
 high priest of spiritualism, to enter into the temple of 
 the new philosophic faith, and officiate with distin- 
 guished honors. These innate ideas, he informs us, 
 are nothing more nor less than "the product of the 
 re-action of the organ of the mind on the stimulus of 
 an unknown cause, which is Descartes' je ne sais quoi." 
 This assertion might be admitted to be true if the 
 phrases organ of the mind and je ne sais quoi were omit- 
 ted. But against these omissions Descartes would have 
 protested with his utmost energy ; and his school would 
 have exclaimed with philosophic horror, Procul, pro- 
 cul! 
 
 We ought not to be surprised, that, with this liberal 
 construction of Descartes' doctrine of innate ideas, he 
 should administer a reproof to Locke for grossly misun- 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 313 
 
 derstanding him, nor, perhaps, that he should extend 
 to Kant a patronizing expression of gratification that 
 he had the penetration to anticipate the doctrine pro- 
 pounded by Mr. Huxley, that "co-existence and suc- 
 cession are mental phenomena not given in the sense- 
 experience." We are all of us greatly obliged to Mr. 
 Huxley for the small favors bestowed in the recog- 
 nition of these relations as superadded to pure sense- 
 experiences, but we confess that we cannot clearly 
 discern in what way they are the products of u modes 
 of motion " in the cerebral apparatus. We apprehend, 
 that however cordial may have been the invitation to 
 Kant and Descartes to enter the temple of Mr. Hux- 
 ley's faith, on condition that they would assert that the 
 relations which are superadded to sense-experiences are 
 themselves brain-growths, they would be rather slow to 
 accept it. 
 
 In Chapter IV. the author proceeds to give his views 
 of the higher operations of the mind, under the title, 
 " The Classification and the Nomenclature of Mental 
 Operations." He re-asserts at the beginning, more 
 roundly than ever, the doctrine that all mental states 
 are effects of physical causes ; that they occur in assign- 
 able portions of the cerebral substance, both the im- 
 pressions and relations when originally received, as 
 also all the subsequent modifications to which they 
 may be subjected. Every intellectual activity falls into 
 one of the three groups of sensation, correlation, and 
 ideation. Ideation signifies the recall of sensations, 
 either in the relations originally experienced, or as 
 more or less modified. In one point only Huxley dif- 
 fers from Hume. Whereas Hume makes memory and 
 imagination to differ from sensation chiefly in that their 
 phenomena are less vivacious, Huxley insists, that in 
 memory the objects remembered must have co-existed 
 
314 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 with other ideas in the past, and preceded impressions 
 or ideas now present. This is what he means by cor- 
 relation, emphasizing co-existence and succession, on 
 which Hume had placed but little stress. It is to be 
 remembered, however, that the relations themselves 
 are conceived by Huxley, especially with sensations, as 
 " feelings produced by cerebral changes." He empha- 
 sizes also expectation as equally important with mem- 
 ory. But the element of knowledge as related to 
 reality, whether in the past or the future, is left wholly 
 unexplained. Recognition, or the certainty that the 
 event revivified actually occurred, is resolved wholly 
 into the phenomena that one idea is recalled in connec- 
 tion with another. Knowledge or belief of the future 
 is explained as a so-called present state of conscious- 
 ness, having no relation to the " sensigenous object " 
 or "the masterful ego." Knowledge in the form of 
 memory is the recall of two or more ideas in the rela- 
 tion of succession to one another and some present im- 
 pression, while expectation is equally destitute of the 
 element of any belief in the future conception as real. 
 
 Generic ideas, also, which play so important a rdle in 
 scientific processes, are the result of the frequent re- 
 vival of a few elements in individual impressions, to the 
 neglect of the great number which only occur occasion- 
 ally ; the element in the process of forming and using 
 such ideas, which is of any significance to knowledge, 
 being wholly left out. The conjunction of two or more 
 generic ideas, " as heat and flame, weight and solidity," 
 in the so-called relations of causation, is explained by 
 both Hume and Huxley by association and custom. If 
 generic memories of succession are strengthened by 
 repeating similar combinations in new impressions, 
 the process is called verification, every case of which 
 strengthens belief by simply giving greater energy to 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 315 
 
 association. This is all that either Hume or Huxley 
 has to say of the higher intellectual processes, so far as 
 these can be performed without the aid of language. 
 Knowledge is but the occurrence of successive or simi- 
 lar states of consciousness, which, whether they repre- 
 sent realities of matter or spirit, are not known to be 
 either and are not known to be any thing, even what 
 they are interpreted to be, and are the attendants of 
 the modes of motion in the sensigenous object, in con- 
 nection with changes in the cerebral functions. The 
 relations of succession, co-existence, and similarity are 
 also products of modes of motion and cerebral corre- 
 lates. Memory is but the recall of conjunctions of 
 ideas and impressions. Classification is the result of 
 association. Propositions of causation, with their ex- 
 planations of the past and their predictions of the 
 future, are founded on custom, which signifies the more 
 or less frequent association of impressions or ideas. 
 Last of all, the experiment which verifies every theory 
 does this only by making stronger the bonds which 
 association had already established. 
 
 This is the theory of the higher operations of the 
 mind which Mr. Huxley, in the name of Mr. Hume, 
 commends to the men of the present generation as the 
 net result on the one hand of the new philosophy, 
 which is the outcome of physiological psychology, and 
 which he would have us believe is not only enforced by 
 Hume, but in a sense sanctioned by Locke, Descartes, 
 and Kant, and on the other hand as sufficient to explain 
 and justify the supreme confidence which present and 
 future science exacts from all its votaries, however bold 
 are its assertions concerning the history of the past, or 
 confident its theories concerning phenomena which can- 
 not possibly be verified. Science nowadays erects a 
 tower that rises beyond the clouds, and threatens to 
 
316 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 overtop the very battlements of the heavens beyond 
 which faith had imagined it now and then could catch 
 some glimpses. It would seem, that, in order to sup- 
 port so lofty a structure, it should require a foundation 
 broader and deeper than Mr. Huxley's metaphysical 
 analysis of the higher intellectual processes. 
 
 We ought not to be surprised to find, after Mr. Hux- 
 ley has lowered the highest operations of the human 
 intellect to cerebral motions and associational combina- 
 tions, that he should be prepared to find no difference 
 between the mental phenomena of animals and the 
 mental phenomena of men. This doctrine he proceeds 
 to establish in detail in Chapter V., which is devoted 
 to the discussion of this point. He begins by advert- 
 ing to the truth, that, as the use of language is proved 
 by the example of children and deaf-mutes not to.be 
 essential to these higher processes, it follows that the 
 absence of language on the part of animals does not of 
 necessity involve the entire absence of these higher ac- 
 tivities. He urges still further, that, " whatever reason 
 we have for believing that the changes which take 
 place in the normal cerebral substance of man give rise 
 to states of consciousness, the same reason exists in the 
 belief that the modes of motion of the cerebral sub- 
 stance of an ape or of a dog produce like effects." 
 Moreover, the actions of an ape and a dog give evidence 
 similar to that which is furnished by man, that both are 
 capable of every variety of intellectual activity which 
 is achieved by him. Dogs remember and dream and 
 generalize and reason. Comparative psychology, now 
 re-enforced by comparative physiology, sanctions this 
 conclusion ; and Huxley notices, that although Hume 
 in some sense anticipated the existence of this science, 
 with its incidental testimony to the likeness of intel- 
 lectual processes in both animals and men, he yet hesi- 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 317 
 
 tates to find any similarity between the " inference of 
 the animal " and " the process of argument or reason- 
 ing in man." On second thought, however, he finds 
 him to hold, that even the " experimental reasoning " in 
 man, " on which the whole conduct of life depends," is 
 " nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power 
 that acts in us unknown to ourselves." From this 
 Huxley gives his own theory, which is simply what we 
 should expect to find ; viz., that instinct covers every 
 mental process, — from the reflex acts of the nervous 
 system up to the most deliberately reasoned process of 
 scientific deduction. But this view of the matter, Hux- 
 ley proceeds to observe, involves in some sense the doc- 
 trine of innate ideas as held by Descartes ; and he for 
 the second or third time extends to him the right hand 
 of fellowship. But he fails to note that the innate 
 ideas of Mr. Huxley are simply the more highly devel- 
 oped capacities of a well-trained and well-descended 
 brain; while the innate ideas of Descartes are in no 
 sense whatever dependent on the brain or the animal 
 spirits, but would be excluded from holding any rela- 
 tions whatever to matter. 
 
 Language remains to be disposed of as something 
 peculiar to man. It is noticeable that Mr. Huxley is in 
 haste to despatch it in a very speedy and summary 
 fashion. He certainly throws no light whatever upon 
 its nature, and evidently feels no little embarrassment 
 in explaining how, by means of its potent alchemy, 
 thought becomes visible and science is made possible. 
 All the explanation which he gives of it is summed up 
 in the commonplaces : Substantives are signs of mental 
 wholes, — attributes, of the parts of which these wholes 
 are composed. Predication is a sign of "the feeling 
 of a relation," which carries us back to the resolution of 
 an experienced or felt relation into an impression, and 
 
318 PBOFESSOB HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 smuggles in the knowing or a predicating agenc, who 
 has been resolved into " a heap or collection of impres- 
 sions and ideas," through the phrase "feeling of a 
 relation," in which an agent who can feel is implied but 
 not confessed. 
 
 From language Huxley proceeds to the verbal prop- 
 ositions in which " men enshrine their beliefs." Of 
 these beliefs he considers Hume's Philosophical Theory 
 of Necessary Truths, The Order of Nature, The Soul, 
 Theism, The Passions and Volitions, and The Principle 
 of Morals. We do not propose to follow Mr. Huxley 
 in his remarks upon Mr. Hume's opinions upon these 
 topics. But we cannot refrain from noticing a few of 
 them. He finds, to his discomfiture it would seem, that 
 Mr. Hume recognizes a clear distinction between rela- 
 tions of ideas and matters of fact, and that under the 
 first he comprehends mathematical relations and all 
 the so-called intuitive and even all demonstrated truths. 
 Mr. Huxley's " ineradicable tendency to make things 
 clear " finds it hard to reconcile this statement with 
 either his own or Hume's theory of impressions or re- 
 lations, or the doctrine of instincts or custom. Had 
 he chosen to avail himself of Hume's doctrine of the 
 origin and nature of mathematical knowledge as ex- 
 pounded in the " Treatise of Human Nature," he would 
 have found one more harmonious with the drift of his 
 pyschology and metaphysics. It is a doctrine which 
 would set most modern mathematicians aghast ; and we 
 do not wonder that Professor Huxley does not refer to it, 
 but rather gives himself to the work of explaining away 
 the distinction which Hume had recognized as existing 
 between intuitive relations and matters of fact ! He 
 urges, that, had not " matters of fact " been given to 
 us through the senses, we should never " in fact " have 
 apprehended mathematical entities or the relations 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 319 
 
 which they involve. It follows that geometrical and 
 numerical quanta are in some sense matters of fact ! 
 Moreover the axiom, " Things which are equal to the 
 same are equal to another, is only a particular case of 
 the predication of similarity ; and, if there come no im- 
 pressions, it is obvious there could be no predicates," 
 and breaks out with the naive interrogation, u But what 
 is an existence in the universe but an impression ? " 
 Indeed, thou solid, matter-of-fact, critical, defiant Mr. 
 Huxley ! Has it come to this, that, misled by a narrow 
 psychology and insnared by shallow metaphysics, thou 
 hast been brought so far as to confess that this solid 
 universe of matter, with its wondrous protoplasm con- 
 taining within itself such wonder-working power and 
 potency, and gathered in vast reservoirs in the abysmal 
 depths, and baptized with a name befitting its mysteri- 
 ous hiding-place, — that all these are nothing but im- 
 pressions f 
 
 But we return from our digression, as Huxley returns 
 to his logic after this exclamation, to say if what are 
 called necessary truths are analyzed they will be found 
 to be of two kinds : " Either they depend on the con- 
 vention which underlies the possibility of intelligible 
 speech, that terms shall have the same meaning, or they 
 are propositions, the negation of which implies the dis- 
 solution of some association in memory or expectation, 
 which is, in fact, indissoluble, or the denial of some fact 
 of immediate consciousness." The resolution of the so- 
 called logical laws into a convention or device to effect 
 the possibility of communication between man and 
 man reminds one of the exclamation of Sancho Panza, 
 " Blessed is the man who invented sleep ! " inasmuch as 
 it attributes the recognition and use of conceptions as 
 identical with one another to an arrangement or con- 
 tract suggested by the desirableness of language. 
 
320 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 Our necessary beliefs of matters of fact are resolved 
 into propositions, which cannot be denied without break- 
 ing some association of memory or expectation, " or the 
 denial of some immediate fact of consciousness." We 
 stop at this last phrase with delighted surprise at dis- 
 covering that Mr. Huxley has allowed himself for once 
 to recognize man as a being who can know something, 
 even though what he knows is only a fleeting impres- 
 sion. Hitherto, in common with Hume, he had made 
 the elements of all mental activity to be impressions 
 produced by the " sensigenous object," and existing 
 only as fleeting phenomena, and out of which, by means 
 of custom and association, all else was built up. But 
 here at last he confesses that man can know a fact, viz., 
 a fact of consciousness ; that is, that knowledge or belief 
 is exercised by the mind as an "immediate fact of con- 
 sciousness," and the reality known may not be denied. 
 
 When Mr. Huxley, in still further confirmation of 
 his meaning, explains that " the denial of the necessary 
 truth, that the thought now in mind exists, involves the 
 denial of consciousness," he asserts what we think a 
 most obvious and elementary truth, — a truth which is 
 fundamental to our confidence in either knowledge or 
 philosophy. But, in asserting this truth, he abandons 
 the very corner-stone of Hume's teaching, that impres- 
 sions are the elements of our intellectual states. 
 
 In order still further to weaken our confidence in 
 necessary truth as contrasted with matters of fact, he 
 observes that what we call matters of fact almost uni- 
 versally include their relations ; as when we say red is 
 unlike blue we have a fact or relation of similarity, or 
 when we recall a fact of memory we assert for it a relation 
 of time. This is all true enough ; but it does not meet 
 the case, inasmuch as the so-called necessary relations 
 which are also self-evident are not of this sort at all. 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 321 
 
 Mr. Huxley does not care to prosecute the subject of 
 necessary truths as against the concessions of Hume 
 any further than to assert that it is impossible to prove 
 that the cogency of mathematical first principles is due 
 to any thing more than early-formed, constantly repeated, 
 and perpetually verified associations. And here he 
 leaves the matter. It would seem to be especially 
 unfortunate for his cause, that Professor Huxley has 
 treated so superficially, and in a sense disposed so flip- 
 pantly, of mathematical quanta and their relations. 
 The majority of modern scientists are disposed to trust 
 in mathematics, whatever else they may distrust. Few 
 if any of them, unless they have been previously com- 
 mitted to the consequences of the metaphysical theory 
 of physiological evolution, will accept that view which 
 brings these relations down to a level with matters of 
 fact, or resolves them into the unbroken associations 
 which come from often-repeated experiences. The pure 
 mathematics are a strong outwork of sound philosophy, 
 which the believers of solid science and solid meta- 
 physics and solid faith are under a common necessity 
 to defend ; because here is a central rallying-point for 
 each and all, whether they make an onset or a defence. 
 The axioms and constructions of pure geometry are a 
 standing protest against modern cerebralism. 
 
 Professor Huxley deals almost as lightly (and more 
 inconsequently and inconsistently) with the causal re- 
 lation as he does with the mathematical, at one time 
 criticising Hume, and then sanctioning the very error 
 which he had criticised. In one breath he calls atten- 
 tion to the point, that it is one thing to be indebted 
 to experience for the belief that a particular cause is 
 invariably connected with an effect, and altogether 
 another to derive from it the belief which every scientist 
 must accept, that every event is caused. And yet on 
 
322 PBOFESSOB HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 the very next page he argues at considerable length to 
 show that multitudes of men believe that the majority 
 of events are wholly uncaused. The only possible rec- 
 onciliation of this apparent inconsistency would be 
 found in the theory which Stuart Mill holds, that the 
 belief in the universality of the relation is as truly 
 the result of experience as the belief of a single exem- 
 plification of it. This is doubtless Professor Huxley's 
 own theory, but he passes the whole of this fun- 
 damental matter over too lightly to invite criticism. 
 Inasmuch as he does not attempt to give his own 
 metaphysics of causation and the uniformity of nature, 
 we must be excused from noticing the scanty views 
 which he seems to favor. We observe, however, that 
 he does not undertake to reconcile Hume's theory of 
 mathematical or causal relations with either Descartes' 
 doctrine of innate ideas or Kant's doctrine of the 
 a priori forms of the sensory or categories of the under- 
 standing. That would be an effort beyond the au- 
 dacity of even Huxley's ingenious effrontery. 
 
 As Professor Huxley proceeds to Hume's doctrine of 
 miracles, he grows still more shy and reserved, finding 
 himself in deeper water than that to which he is accus- 
 tomed. He shows himself incompetent to measure the 
 philosophical strength of Hume's argument for the 
 a priori improbability of any violation of the laws of 
 nature whatever, as also to estimate the preponderating 
 force of the counter-argument in support of the a priori 
 probability of miraculous intervention whenever the 
 necessities or ends of the spiritual universe demand or 
 justify such an intervention. A belief in the uniformity 
 of the laws of nature, which is founded solely on the 
 generalizations of experience, is too weak, as Mr. Stuart 
 Mill confesses, to establish any conclusion which may 
 not be overturned by a single example to the contrary. 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 323 
 
 Professor'Huxley, however, says, " The day-fly has better 
 grounds for calling a thunder-storm supernatural than 
 has man, with his experience of an infinitesimal fraction 
 of duration, to say that the most astonishing event 
 that can be imagined is beyond the scope of natural 
 causes." But why not say, in reply, that man, from his 
 limited experience, is equally incompetent to deny that 
 such an event is beyond the scope of supernatural 
 causes ? Upon Professor Huxley's or Mr. Hume's ex- 
 planation of the grounds of our belief in the natural and 
 its uniformities, we cannot see why what has been con- 
 sidered to be uniformly natural should not be regarded 
 as exceptional. To the suggestion, that what seems to 
 be exceptional may be referred to some law as yet un- 
 discovered, we reply, that the faith in uniformity or law 
 even, if it be held to be derived from experience only 
 and to be the product of association, may be overturned 
 or weakened by such experience or association, so far 
 as any a priori probability is concerned. In other 
 words, it is only on a priori grounds derived from the 
 relations of purpose in nature that experience learns, in 
 ordinary cases, to pronounce a miracle impossible and 
 incredible. The fact that men do thus judge, in ordi- 
 nary circumstances, of reported miracles, gave to 
 Hume's argument its plausibility, or rather its strength, 
 as against credulity and fanaticism- It is true, that, on 
 the grounds furnished by his own metaphysics or 
 philosophy, Hume had no right to appeal to experience 
 at all as he did, as furnishing the grounds for faith in 
 the uniformity of nature. But Hume the keen-sighted 
 man of the world and the sensitive satirist of super- 
 stitious credulity was another person than Hume the 
 logical metaphysician. Therefore, when he turned to 
 the Christian miracles, he had so little appreciation of 
 their import and the occasion for their occurrence that 
 
324 PBOFESSOB HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 it was impossible he should find any difference between 
 them and those which offended his common sense ; and 
 so, as a man of the world, he rejected them, but per- 
 suaded himself that it was on grounds of a profound 
 philosophy, — a philosophy certainly more profound 
 than his own metaphysics ever provided. But Professor 
 Huxley has no insight for tins construction of Hume's 
 argument ; and he alternately flounders in his own in- 
 capacity to dispose of the problem with any satis- 
 faction to 'himself or others, and sneers in his own 
 contemptuous ignorance at truths and reasons for which 
 he has no insight. 
 
 He fares even worse when he proceeds in the next 
 chapter to the discussion of u Theism and the Evolu- 
 tion of Theology." He remarks at the outset very 
 truly, that u Hume seems to have had but two hearty 
 dislikes, — the one to the English nation, and the other 
 to all the professors of dogmatic theology." He did 
 not add, which he might have done very truly, that, if 
 contempt were substituted for dislike, he himself sympa- 
 thizes most cordially with Hume. This contempt is 
 manifest in the want of interest which he manifests in 
 the exposition and criticism of Hume's discussion of 
 theism. In Hume's treatises, particularly in his dia- 
 logues concerning Natural Religion, there is more acute- 
 ness, comprehensiveness, and earnestness than in any 
 or all of his other philosophical writings. Despite the 
 sceptical uncertainty into which he very frequently 
 falls, he now and then seems to forget the pyrrhonist, 
 and to reason as a man, with a subtlety, force, and elo- 
 quence which are most honorable to what we may sup- 
 pose to have been his prevailing convictions. The 
 words which he puts into the mouth of Cleanthes, the 
 advocate for the argument from design, are often earnest 
 and glowing. Professor Huxley has no sympathy with 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 325 
 
 arguments in this direction; as, indeed, his thorough- 
 paced associational metaphysics would allow no stand- 
 ing-place for a moment for design in nature : and he 
 slides over the discussion as easily as possible, interpos- 
 ing here and there a sharp remark to give energy to 
 every negative conclusion, and to weaken the force of 
 any positive utterances. At the end of his comments 
 on both Hume and Bishop Butler, he gives us the fol- 
 lowing : " Surely on this topic silence is golden, while 
 speech reaches not even the dignity of sounding brass 
 or tinkling cymbal, and is but the weary clatter of 
 endless logomachy. One can but suspect that Hume 
 also had reached this conclusion, and that his shadowy 
 and inconsistent theism was the expression of his desire 
 to rest in a state of mind which distinctly excluded ne- 
 gation, while it included as little as possible of affirma- 
 tion respecting a problem which he felt to be hopelessly 
 insoluble." 
 
 After having thus brought the authority of Hume, as 
 far as possible, over to the side of the modern agnostics, 
 he proceeds to quote from the " Essay on the Natural 
 History of Religions," as a tentative effort in the direc- 
 tion of the modern doctrine, that monotheism is the 
 product of evolution. His scientific interest in this 
 matter, however, is easily turned aside by the oppor- 
 tunity to satirize the free application to one another, by 
 religionists of all classes, of the term atheist as a term 
 of reproach. Characteristically enough, having begun 
 this chapter with the saying, that " if Hume was ever 
 bitter in his public utterances, it is against priests in 
 general and theological enthusiasts and fanatics in par- 
 ticular," he concludes it with quoting a stanza or two 
 of bitter and biting lines from Burns's " Holy Fair " 
 against the professors of Scottish religion and theology. 
 
 The three remaining chapters are entitled " The 
 
326 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 Soul," " The Doctrine of Immortality, Volition, Lib- 
 erty, and Necessity," and " The Principles of Morals." 
 They contain no matter worthy any special attention, 
 and the author shows in writing them that he had be- 
 come weary of his task. He attempts to dispose of 
 Descartes' doctrine of the immateriality of the soul by 
 discoursing of the absurdity of his other doctrine, that 
 a being whose essence is spiritual can hold no relations 
 to matter. He quotes with approbation Hume's dog- 
 matic assertions, that, as for himself, he never found that 
 he could find in himself any thing which he could call 
 himself but only " a bundle or collection of different 
 perceptions," or " a kind of theatre where several per- 
 ceptions successively make their appearance." He next 
 subjoins several well-known puzzles from Hume and 
 himself to illustrate the loose and variable application 
 of identity to material objects. He thinks it quite 
 enough to find, that, in respect to the evidences of the 
 natural and necessary immortality of the human soul, 
 Archbishop Whately agrees with Hume, to whom he 
 thinks the prelate was indebted for his own views. As 
 to the moral argument, he sneers at the attempt to 
 know any thing about the divine justice, and the neces- 
 sity of another life for the vindication and completion 
 of its work, and brings in Kant to indorse the position 
 of Hume, that the immortality of the soul cannot be 
 demonstrated by the intellect ; dismissing Kant's moral 
 demonstration with a flippant word. The chapter on 
 volition, etc., furnishes an opportunity for him to utter 
 the dogma, that " so far, therefore, from necessity de- 
 stroying moral responsibility, it is the foundation of all 
 praise and blame ; and moral admiration reaches its 
 climax in the ascription of necessary goodness to the 
 Deity." He then endeavors to meet the objection 
 brought against necessity, that it makes God the author 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 327 
 
 of sin, by observing that Hume attempts no answer to 
 it, " probably because none is possible," but subjoins in 
 the next breath, that the objection is u the direct conse- 
 quence of every known form of monotheism," and ad- 
 verts to the fact, " that not long after the publication of 
 Hume's treatise, Jonathan Edwards, president of the 
 College of New Jersey, produced, in the interests of the 
 strictest orthodoxy, a demonstration of the necessarian 
 thesis, which has never been equalled in power, and cer- 
 tainly has never been refuted." Here, again, he must 
 bring in Kant, with his intelligible freedom as pertain- 
 ing to the human soul as a noumenon, for the purpose 
 of a witticism about metaphysicians, which we may be 
 pardoned for saying is as applicable to the " physiolo- 
 gical " as to the u pure metaphysicians." 
 
 He concludes with a few pages upon Hume's Princi- 
 ples of Morals, in which this same Professor Huxley, 
 whose psychology is materialism, whose metaphysics is 
 evolutionism, and whose theology is atheism, avows 
 himself a sentimentalist in ethics, declaring in so many 
 words, that, " in whichever way we look at the matter, 
 morality is based on feeling, not on reason ; " and " the 
 moral law, like the laws of physical nature, rests upon 
 instinctive intuitions, and is neither more nor less in- 
 nate and necessary than they are." Some men are 
 destitute of a mathematical sense, others of any sensi- 
 bility to art ; and " some there may be who, devoid of 
 sympathy, are incapable of a sense of duty." 
 
 In closing this cri deal examination of Professor Hux- 
 ley's exposition of Hume, the writer finds himself in- 
 clined, if not constrained, to apologize for the detail 
 and the length of a paper which, as would appear, has 
 been occupied with material which has proved so weak 
 and unworthy. His apology is furnished in the impor- 
 tance of the theme, and the reputation and ability of 
 
328 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION 
 
 the critic. The philosophy of Hume is rightly judged 
 by Professor Huxley to have very great significance at 
 the present time, by reason of its intimate relations to 
 the metaphysics of that very influential school with 
 which Professor Huxley is very closely identified. It 
 also has a very definite genesis, having been evolved 
 very directly and by stages which can be traced most 
 distinctly from Descartes and Locke. It has awakened 
 severe and constant criticism notably from the Scottish 
 and German schools, and been challenged in every one 
 of its assertions and assumptions by a long succession 
 of acute antagonists. Of all this Professor Huxley 
 knows something, enough at least to impress him with 
 the importance of his theme, and to prompt him to ac- 
 quaint himself with the opinions and writings of Kant, 
 — how thoroughly and appreciatively may be gathered 
 from the course of the present criticism. It would 
 seem that his knowledge of the place which Hume con- 
 tinues to hold in modern thinking should have prompted 
 him at least to treat his theme with greater thorough- 
 ness, and to acquaint himself more completely with 
 Hume's critics and antagonists. It happens, that, not 
 very many years before Professor Huxley's work was 
 undertaken, a new edition of the works of Hume, ac- 
 companied by a very able and searching critical exami- 
 nation of the principles of his philosophy, was edited 
 at the University of Oxford. Of the existence of this 
 able criticism Professor Huxley makes no recognition. 
 He does not often condescend to notice or refer to this 
 edition of his works; although he makes some little 
 parade of his bibliographical recognition of and refer- 
 ence to the only other complete English edition, which 
 was published in 1810. 
 
 It is doubtless true, that Professor Huxley is so well 
 satisfied that the physiological metaphysics with the 
 
OF HUME'S PHILOSOPHY. 329 
 
 materialistic psychology and atheistic theology are so 
 far established beyond all refutation as to release every 
 one of their adherents from the obligation to fight any 
 battle in their defence. As long, however, as the oppo- 
 site party makes a respectable showing, and retains a 
 manifest hold upon the faith of men who are disposed 
 to defend their opinions, it would seem to be no more 
 than courteous for those who are so confident of their 
 strength to exercise it after the methods generally rec- 
 ognized in legitimate warfare, especially when the chal- 
 lenge comes from their own side. 
 
 Professor Huxley, in undertaking to state and define 
 the philosophy of Hume, especially in relation to mod- 
 ern theories, might be held to the duty of doing his 
 work with the candor and thoroughness which would 
 command the respect of his opponents, by exhibiting 
 an adequate knowledge of his subject-matter, and by 
 opposing to their well-known arguments some earnest 
 counter-discussion. In failing to do this, he has pro- 
 duced a work which rises no higher than a clever jeu 
 d'esprit, but can have no influence except with that one- 
 sided set of writers who, having fired away all the shot 
 which they have at command in the defence of atheistic 
 evolutionism, employ themselves in discharging rockets 
 over their imagined success. In the mean time, no one 
 is deceived but themselves, and those lookers-on who 
 mistake brilliant coruscations and repeated shoutings 
 for effective arguments. 
 
 On the other hand, it makes a sober man sad to ob- 
 serve that these are indications of a decay of the truly 
 scientific spirit among a certain class of educated men, 
 which threatens a greater evil, if such were possible, 
 than a temporary weakening or destruction of ethical 
 and religious faith. We appreciate and enjoy Profes- 
 sor Huxley's acuteness and wit, without a thought of 
 
330 PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S EXPOSITION, ETC. 
 
 whom or what he strikes; but we cannot enjoy his 
 superficial ignorance or shallow appreciation of consid- 
 erations to which men of the highest rank in the world 
 of thought have attached supreme importance. We 
 regret that he should have lent his example to a ten- 
 dency which is rapidly gathering strength, — to the 
 division of men of scientific spirit into two separate 
 encampments, which, instead of engaging in brave and 
 vigorous controversy, shall retire beyond even fighting 
 distance, under intrenchments which are only strong 
 enough to serve the needs of those who dare not meas- 
 ure their strength in the open field. Whether the 
 indignant fulminations of unscientific and ignorant 
 religionists, or the contemptuous asseverations of un- 
 philosophical and one-sided scientists, do the greater 
 harm, is of little use to inquire. Mr. Hume did, if pos- 
 sible, infinitely greater harm to the world by the uncan- 
 did and frivolous spirit which grew out of his utter 
 distrust of the possibility of scientific certainty than by 
 his attacks upon natural theism and supernatural Chris- 
 tianity. Professor Huxley is likely to do infinitely 
 greater harm by the example of unscientific and super- 
 ficial philosophizing which this biography furnishes 
 than by the direct aid and comfort which he has fur- 
 nished by his sneers and his dogmatism to scientific 
 unbelief. 
 
XI. 
 
 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: ITS ENFANT 
 TEEHIBLE. 1 
 
 It not unfrequently happens, that, in a large family 
 of active-minded children, there is one who is conspicu- 
 ous for energy of thought, and a certain habit of direct 
 and outspoken utterance, conjoined with a naive uncon- 
 sciousness and simplicity, which make him at once the 
 terror and the delight of the household. He speaks out 
 the family secrets with a charming and yet fearful open- 
 ness of manner and bluntness of phraseology. He re- 
 peats with a perilous truthfulness the free remarks 
 about the neighbors which are proper only to the 
 family circle, and then only when young ears and 
 prattling tongues are supposed to be absent. He ap- 
 plies to the conduct of casual visitors the axiomatic 
 principles of a wise father or prudent mother with a 
 fearful directness if not precipitancy of logic, with 
 such utter heedlessness of place and time and age and 
 sex as confounds the oracle from which the wisdom 
 originally proceeded, and makes it resolve with inward 
 groanings ever afterwards to be dumb. 
 
 Such a child may be gifted, even to an almost preter- 
 natural degree. He may be fearfully clever. He may be 
 acute and logical, plain-spoken and witty, ardent and 
 fearless, noble and brilliant ; but for all that, rather be- 
 
 1 Lectures and Essays by the late William Kingdon Clifford, F.R.S., 
 etc. Edited by Leslie Stephen and Frederick Pollock, with an introduc- 
 tion by F. Pollock. In two volumes. London : Macmillan & Co., 1879. 
 Princeton Review, May, 1880. 
 
 331 
 
332 THE NEWEST ATHEISM : 
 
 cause of these very preternatural gifts and this preter- 
 natural boldness, he is the enfant terrible of the house- 
 hold and the neighborhood. 
 
 The very select family of those who call themselves 
 the Scientists of the present generation are of necessity 
 very active and bright-minded. The members of this 
 large household are constantly stimulating one another 
 by their brilliant hypotheses, and their daring adven- 
 tures in the field of experiment and conjecture. They 
 wax earnest in their manifold discussions, whether they 
 agree or disagree. They are often — we had almost 
 said always — subtle and acute, eloquent and bold in 
 their expositions of favorite theories, or their lofty 
 flights of imaginative romancing. Scientific papers 
 and debates and harangues are usually especially 
 spirited and spirit-stirring. It is not surprising, that in 
 certain branches of this now very numerous and vari- 
 ously assorted family, especially those branches which 
 delight to think of themselves as advancing to the very 
 front rank of speculative daring, there should be more 
 than one enfant terrible who distinguishes himself by 
 exploits of speculation and daringness of utterance 
 which astonish even the boldest of his compeers. Such 
 a thinker and expounder was the late Professor Wil- 
 liam K. Clifford, whose somewhat extraordinary career 
 and more extraordinary utterances are for many reasons 
 worthy of careful consideration. Among these reasons 
 the most important is, not that he indulged in occasional 
 paradoxes of thought and speech, but that his atheistic 
 logic possessed him like an evil demon, shooting him 
 along arrowy rapids, and plunging him down abysses of 
 denial, into which most men shudder even to look. 
 This daring and perilous logic was not so much the 
 logic of the man as it was the logic of his school. It 
 was no narrow and personal idiosyncrasy, the result of 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 333 
 
 temperament and training. It was the consistent and 
 outspoken reasoning of the atheistic materialism of the 
 times which so many now call philosophy, and of those 
 specialized doctrines of nature and of man which are 
 claimed to be alone worthy to be called scientific. 
 Were the principles announced in these lectures pecul- 
 iar to Professor Clifford, they might be regarded as the 
 products of an unusually intense and therefore a nar- 
 row personality. But they are the axioms of a large 
 and ambitious and positive school of thinkers, who dif- 
 fer from him only in that they cannot state them so 
 forcibly, or dare not state them so boldly, as he has 
 done. Were the reasoning an individual peculiarity 
 of a singularly subtle and therefore an over-refined 
 logician, it might be dismissed as the product of an 
 intellect misled by the tenuity of its own deductions ; 
 but when it is discovered to be in no respect peculiar, 
 except as it is disencumbered of many superfluous and 
 entangling lines of ratiocination, it is well fitted, not 
 only to attract our attention, but to awaken the in- 
 quiry, If this logic is so merciless, how can any thinker 
 escape being impaled upon its polished but cruel spikes? 
 Were the conclusions only the daring and isolated bra- 
 vados of a bold and paradoxical declaimer, or the ex- 
 travagant flights of a fervid romancer, they might 
 receive our astonishment, or our admiration, or our 
 ridicule ; but when they are viewed as the necessary 
 consequents of a well-reasoned and coherent system 
 held in common with the writer by hundreds or thou- 
 sands of sober thinkers, who differs from them only in 
 vigor and clearness and eloquence and daring, they are 
 fitted, not only to arrest the attention, but to hold it 
 with earnest and steady gaze until the question is asked 
 and answered, Are the premises sound from which these 
 conclusions are deduced, or do the conclusions, so offen- 
 
334 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 sive and shocking as they are, prove of themselves that 
 the premises must be false or only partially true ? 
 
 The career of Professor Clifford was singularly bril- 
 liant and singularly short. He was born May 4, 1845, 
 and died March 3, 1879. He was very early distin- 
 guished for extraordinary aptitude for the pure mathe- 
 matics ; being alike remarkable for subtlety of analysis, 
 fertility of invention, and felicity of exposition, amount- 
 ing to genius in the highest and rarest sense of this 
 term. At the age of twenty-six he was appointed 
 professor of Applied Mathematics in University College, 
 London. Before this time he had plunged with pas- 
 sionate zeal into the discussions of modern speculation. 
 As early as at the age of twenty-three he had accepted 
 the doctrine of evolution in its extremest form and in 
 its most daring applications. The then new and para- 
 doxical positions in respect to space and the nature of 
 mathematical quantity were hailed by him with glowing 
 enthusiasm, and propounded with an ardor and ingenuity 
 peculiar to himself. 
 
 Psychology, scientific induction, ethics, and theology 
 were handled one by one with the same confidence ; and 
 the extremest conclusions in each were advanced with 
 what seemed, to many, a defiant recklessness which 
 savored little of the philosophic calm. At his death, 
 which was premature but not unexpected, thinking men, 
 who believe in God and immortality, held their breath, 
 and kept their thoughts to themselves. 
 
 A brief and most unsatisfactory memoir of his col- 
 lected essays and lectures, many of which had already 
 been published, are all the materials by which we can 
 judge of the man or estimate his philosophy. For the 
 reasons already given, both deserve a considerate at- 
 tention. 
 
 As we have already said, Professor Clifford was an 
 
ITS ENFANT TEBRIBLE. 335 
 
 extreme evolutionist ; accepting the theory first under 
 Mr. Darwin's impulse as a new creative principle in 
 biology, then proceeding to use it in constructing psy- 
 chology, and subsequently extending it, under Spencer's 
 guidance, as a universal philosophy to explain every 
 description of natural phenomena with their laws, i.e., 
 mechanism, chemism, life, spirit, man, — in short, 
 the universe, — from which he formally and passionately 
 excluded God, not only finding no place for the Self- 
 Existent, but demonstrating that philosophy not only 
 does not recognize an unknowable God, but that it 
 knows there is no God higher than humanity or man. 
 At first he was a High Churchman, and as such had 
 carefully separated his traditionary faith from those in- 
 tellectual processes which his scientific theories were 
 constantly bringing into requisition. For a while he 
 held, as a positive tenet, that religious truth could not 
 rest on scientific proof, inasmuch as the latter requires 
 probable evidence alone, while religion demands intui- 
 tive certainty. For a while he arrested his sliding steps 
 on the slippery slope down which they were gliding, by 
 finding in faith a positive insight, or a special religious 
 faculty ; but this he abandoned — when or how we are 
 not told, but it is easy to see why — so soon as he had 
 fairly accepted the dogma, that every species of intuition 
 is a growth of time in the cerebral structure. That at 
 first he was extreme, not to say extravagant,' in the ap- 
 plications of his theory to practical matters, and was in 
 danger of exemplifying his new .creed by applying the 
 doctrine of growth by differentiation in some personal 
 extravagances of sans-culotterie in manners, if not in 
 morals, is hinted by his biographer. This effervescence, 
 as we are told, was soon over. This youthful tendency 
 to differentiation seems to have very soon yielded to the 
 sobering or integrating influences of his environment 
 
336 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 Under the sounder sense of his associates, he was con- 
 tent to expend his enthusiasm in the propagation and 
 application of his new theory in speculative applica- 
 tions, which were sufficiently startling and paradoxical. 
 Leaving the man for the present, to return to him again, 
 we will notice some of his philosophical theories as 
 expounded by himself. 
 
 We begin with his theory of the intellect. This is 
 explained most fully in his discourse " On Some of the 
 Conditions of Intellectual Development." This dis- 
 course was prepared at the age of twenty-three, not 
 long after he had given his complete adhesion to the 
 doctrine of evolution in its wider and more thorough- 
 going import. It flashes with the enthusiasm of youth 
 newly kindled by a fresh discovery of wondrous promise. 
 It reveals most distinctly and frankly the logic by 
 which these new convictions had been reached. The 
 professor begins by reminding his hearers that their 
 minds are constantly changing. New sensations, new 
 impulses, succeed one another in rapid succession. The 
 character also, which at first thought might be said to 
 be fixed, is itself constantly undergoing a slow but cer- 
 tain movement. This is true, even of that aggregate 
 of changes in the character of generations of men 
 which we call the spirit of the age. These changes, 
 moreover, have a fixed relation to circumstances. All 
 the influences which are used by a man with himself, 
 his neighbors, and his generation, proceed on the assump- 
 tion, that, if circumstances change, the character will 
 change with them. This raises the question, When are 
 these changes for the better, and when for the worse ? 
 How shall we answer this and other questions ? The 
 author suggests a method, founded, as he frankly owns, 
 on " a certain analogy ; namely, the analogy between 
 the mind and the visible forms of organic life " ! The 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 337 
 
 plant grows, the animal grows, the mind grows. What 
 is this feature called growth which is common to them 
 all ? Simply this, that in the changes which all men ex- 
 perience, the old and the past is not left behind, but is 
 taken up into the new and incorporated with it. If, in 
 this particular, growth is common to the organic and 
 the spiritual, u may we not reasonably suppose that the 
 laws of change are alike, if not identical, in the two 
 cases ? " This analogy, if analogy it may be called, is 
 the only reason given by this brilliant professor for 
 accepting the hypothesis of evolution and including 
 within it the sphere of life and the sphere of intellect. 
 It is true he only accepts it as " a working hypothesis : " 
 but he accepts it with all the accessories which Mr. 
 Darwin had attached to it ; viz., the tendency to vary 
 and the struggle for existence, neither of which features 
 necessarily belongs to the single common characteristic 
 of growth. The first leap would seem to be a long leap, 
 — from growth in a tree to growth in the mind, — in- 
 volving a changing and a change-recording structure ; 
 but what could justify a second leap to growth with a 
 tendency to vary, and then a third to growth fixed by 
 the pressure of environment, it is very difficult for a 
 sober thinker to answer. And yet this young mathe- 
 matical genius, who ought to be something of a logician, 
 does not hesitate to dare each of these flying leaps in 
 succession. 
 
 To a cool and considerate thinker, it would seem to 
 be transparently clear, that, in this so-called induction, 
 mere words, or the metaphors out of which words are 
 made, are the cobweb bridges which are thrown over 
 these chasms of thought ; that the confidence with 
 which the words change, record of changes, growth, varia- 
 tion, re-action of environment, are applied indiscriminately 
 to a tree, an animal, and the mind in the same senses, 
 
338 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 when in many cases the similarity is most attenuated, 
 is a very remarkable phenomenon in our modern scien- 
 tific thinking. And yet upon the legitimacy or the 
 illegitimacy of this confidence rests the theory which 
 evolves matter and spirit, life and intelligence, affec- 
 tion and conscience, man and God, in a series of ascend- 
 ing spirals, which vanish into the unknowable. 
 
 But we have not yet finished Professor Clifford's 
 maiden essay. He is not content with the analogies 
 already referred to. Looking again at the changes in a 
 tree or an animal, we find them reducible to three types, 
 viz., change in growth, change in structure, and change in 
 function: and, as we look also at changes in the mind, 
 we find the same three types repeated ; confirming our 
 confidence that the law of evolution is applicable to 
 both. We consider each apart as treated by our author ; 
 it being understood that we give his thoughts, not his 
 words, the underlying rather than the outspoken logic : 
 or, to follow the old metaphor of logic and rhetoric, we 
 give the clinched fist and not the outspread palm. 
 
 We begin with growth. Growth in a tree consists of 
 increased bulk or bigness. It results in an access of 
 particles or accretion of material by nourishment. 
 Here the professor allows himself a slight digression, 
 being led astray by the subject-matter. He gives a 
 theory of the normal size, and the finishing stages by 
 which normal dimensions are attained ; remarking, that, 
 as a growing plant notoriously takes in nourishment 
 through the whole of its external surface, the surface 
 increases in a proportion continually inferior to that of 
 its mass, till finally it is brought to a standstill, and 
 growth terminates. 
 
 What now is growth in the mind, and how do we 
 reckon the law and limitations of its normal growth? 
 How is the analogy made good which is looked for? 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 339 
 
 If the mind were assumed to be a brain-mass, with so 
 many cubic inches as its normal size, or with so many 
 thousand brain-cells, as Professor Bain has so carefully 
 computed in his " Mind and Body," all needing nutri- 
 ment, then the analogy would hold. But Professor 
 Clifford had at that time not advanced so far as this, 
 but is satisfied with loosely treating the growth of the 
 mind as identical with the " acquisition of new knowl- 
 edge." Unconsciously adopting but not avowing the 
 conception of Hume and J. S. Mill, that the mind is a 
 bundle or series of impressions, he reasons, that, as the 
 mind gains new knowledge, the bundle grows bigger and 
 the series grows longer. Moreover, he reasons, that as 
 long as we acquire faster than we forget, i.e., gain more 
 ideas than we lose, the mind continues to grow. This 
 may happen in infancy and childhood ; but, when we 
 lose ideas as fast as we acquire them, the mind has 
 attained its normal size, for a similar reason to that 
 which holds in a plant, as already explained. " The 
 growth ceases as soon as this balance is attained. So 
 that in this first law, you see, there is an entire analogy 
 between the two cases." All which is more luminous 
 than convincing. 
 
 We are taught, "in the next place, that the mind 
 experiences changes of structure ; that is to say, changes 
 in the shape and arrangement of its parts." Parts of 
 the mind are ideas. Arrangement of ideas we can form 
 some idea of, but " shape " of ideas is a little too much 
 for us to understand ; and the author does not relieve 
 us. Upon arrangement, however, he throws a little 
 light. Ideas of different qualities never connected 
 before are brought together "by the qualities being 
 found to exist in the same object." Other ideas are 
 newly connected by new scientific relations ; and so ideas 
 are re-arranged, — by a process similar, we suppose, to 
 
340 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 that by which inorganic material is redistributed, and 
 gathered into organic tissue. 
 
 " Lastly, changes of function take place. Everybody 
 knows how the mental faculties open out and become 
 visible as a child grows up." Here the author stops. 
 He has struck a new vein. He has not explained what 
 a function is, either in a tree or an animal. He has not 
 shown how increase in size, and change of structure, in 
 either involves the manifestation and the activity of 
 new functions. Nor has he shown how a similar process 
 takes place in the mind. Before the analogy which he 
 seeks for can be set up between what are called func- 
 tions in each, the nature of function should be correctly 
 understood in at least one. Otherwise we reason in 
 metaphors, and venture flying-leaps from matter to 
 spirit, when the audacity of the jump or the applause 
 of the spectators is not certain always to save the leaper 
 from an ignominious souse in the mire. In the present 
 instance, the mire is a confused impression that ideas by 
 increasing in mental mass, and re-arrangement in mental 
 structure, can somehow re-appear in mental faculty, and 
 that faculty in mind is analogous to function in a tree 
 or an animal. The writer has plainly lost his head in 
 the excitement of the leap, having begun with, the rec- 
 ognition of ideas only, and emerging after his plunge with 
 the assumption of faculty as the consequence of growth. 
 
 And yet he seems very well satisfied. He picks him- 
 self up without knowing that he has fallen, and 
 concludes u that the actions which go on between 
 the individual and its environment may be reduced to 
 the same three types, viz., of growth, structure, and 
 function, in the case of the mind as in the case of any 
 visible organism." 
 
 He next resumes a question which had already been 
 suggested : What is a change or growth for the better in 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 341 
 
 the organic and the spiritual ? He finds, that when an 
 organism, whether a tree or animal, grows better, its 
 parts u get more different " and u get more connected," 
 i.e., "the organism becomes more different from and 
 more connected with the environment, and the organism 
 gets more different from and more connected with other 
 individuals," in these successive processes of differen- 
 tiation and integration. Similarly the mind is developed 
 from the lower to the higher as its parts are separated 
 and connected with another, as the mind itself is sep- 
 arated from and united with its environment, and as it 
 is separated from other individuals and socially united 
 with them. The parts of the mind are ideas. Ideas are 
 confusedly blended when consciousness is undeveloped. 
 Ideas are separated when light is distinguished from 
 darkness, when one percept, and another, and another, 
 is separated by sharp discrimination. They are united 
 when any coincide within the same limits and come into 
 a whole. These wholes are next discriminated from 
 other objects previously discerned as ideas, and anon 
 united with another into other ideals. Next, one of 
 these ideal wholes begins to drop off from the mind in 
 which it had existed as an idea, and anon is united with 
 the mind itself by the very act by which the mind dis- 
 tinguishes it from itself. It becomes " something out- 
 side of ourselves, a real thing different from ourselves ; " 
 and yet, as the number of the relations by which it is 
 discriminated is increased, the more intimately is it 
 wrought into the mind that discerns it. So true is this, 
 the author waxes warm in asserting, that, the more we 
 discriminate nature into parts, the more our minds are 
 assimilated to nature ; so that, as we gain in the dis- 
 crimination and unition of our ideas, we grow into new 
 faculties, or new senses to beauty and truth. This is 
 true of the individual and also of the race. 
 
342 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 All this is very fine, and would be true were there 
 not two oversights. First, the parts of a tree and an 
 animal are not analogous to ideas in the mind. Next, 
 let it be that these parts grow by these successive 
 actions and re-actions of separation and unition, the 
 process of growth is not analogous to the several acts 
 of discrimination and unition by which the universe of 
 ideas is built up by the perceiving mind. Did the 
 analogy hold, the ideas would repel and attract another 
 in alternate rhythm, just as do the particles of the tree 
 and animal. The precise point in which the analogy 
 does not hold is unconsciously expressed by Professor 
 Clifford himself when he says, " This notion, then, of a 
 thing being real, existing external to ourselves, is due 
 to the active power of the mind which regards it as one, 
 which binds together all its boundaries." Once intro- 
 duce this notion of an active power of the mind, and the 
 analogy of its processes to those of the growing tree, 
 and the growing animal wholly fails. Ideas no longer 
 separate from and combine with one another as the 
 parts of a tree or an animal, but the active power of 
 the man unites and parts them. We cannot say when 
 we pass the line which divides the tree and animal, that 
 the process of the self-differentiation and integration of 
 parts is intensified into the feeble beginnings of the 
 analysis and synthesis of ideas. But we are forced to 
 say, that the processes cannot be assimilated after the 
 analogy proposed, and that there is no evidence that 
 the one can be developed into the other by the com- 
 bined action of inner variation or external environment, 
 or by any known or conjectured physiological operation. 
 
 The professor concludes his arguments with an ex- 
 hortation to his hearers, which is interesting for two 
 reasons. It illustrates the revolutionary condition of 
 his mind over the new-found doctrine of evolution, and 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 343 
 
 it brings out a glaring inconsistency between the doc- 
 trine itself and the inference which he derives from it. 
 The doctrine is, You are and you must be what your 
 nature, as formed for you, is capable of becoming by the 
 joint action of its tendency to variation, and the holding 
 and fixing power of its environment. The exhortation 
 derived from this conclusion is, cultivate variation, 
 swell and sprout in every direction, try all kinds of 
 experiments in odd ways, if so be that some lucky 
 sprout may be caught and fixed by some favoring envi- 
 ronment ; and nature and yourself shall rejoice over the 
 fortunate combination. This conclusion was all very 
 natural for this strong-hearted and enthusiastic youth, 
 who was rejoicing in the possibilities of the future, and 
 rejoicing also in the promise of his new-found gospel of 
 evolution. The exhortation, too, was natural. It could 
 with difficulty be repressed. It was only unfortunate 
 as being inconsistent with the doctrine from which it 
 Was derived. For only as the mind possesses an energy 
 of its own can it properly be exhorted and inspired to 
 the exercise of its powers in the direction of individual 
 activity. But inasmuch as all the energy in the case, 
 according to the theory, rests in the ideas, we cannot 
 see the propriety of any exhortation at all. Moreover, 
 it would seem, to the unsophisticated mind, that the 
 exhortation itself is properly a part of the environment 
 to the minds addressed ; and the sole function of the 
 environment, so far as they are concerned, is to fix and 
 favor, or to scatter and repress, their tendency to varia- 
 tion. We conclude that the author must have forgotten 
 the correct application of his new faith in the fervor of 
 his exhortation, and reasoned as though he actually 
 believed in " an active power of the mind " as some- 
 thing other than the parts of a tree or animal in its 
 functions and laws. 
 
344 THE NEWEST ATHEISM : 
 
 We have dwelt so long upon this brief lecture, be- 
 cause it was the first exposition of the author's new 
 philosophy, and the foundation-stone upon which he 
 founded his new faith. For this reason, if for no other, 
 it cannot but excite a special interest, and particularly 
 inasmuch as he never changed or disavowed it in any 
 essential particular. It expresses in brief also the state- 
 ment and the argument of the doctrine of atheistic 
 evolution. As such it is not distinguished for any 
 special coherence of logic or felicity of illustration. It 
 is, however, clear, outspoken, simple, and short. It 
 contains the principal article of this creed, and the sub- 
 stance of all that can be said in its favor. The author 
 first endeavors to connect two spheres of phenomena, 
 the organic and the physical, under a common relation, 
 and to explain them by a common analogy; i.e., of 
 growth, which means development. If the analogy 
 holds between these two disparate spheres, it may hold 
 between spheres that are more widely remote. If it 
 holds between a tree and the intelligent spirit of man, 
 it may hold between nebulous matter and the poems of 
 a Goethe and Shakspeare, and the affections, thoughts, 
 aspirations, that wander through eternity, and connect 
 man with God and immortality. If the movement here 
 called growth is independent of freedom in man or 
 design in nature, if it proceeds of itself by alternate 
 pulses of variation and integration, then there is 
 neither need nor place in the universe for God. So 
 Clifford reasoned with such directness of logic as that 
 with which the rifle-bullet speeds to its mark, not with- 
 out the cruel shriek of exultation with which the bullet 
 rejoices over its work of death. 
 
 Many professed evolutionists, who adopt the same 
 logic, do indeed seek to stop short of these extreme con- 
 clusions. They find a place for spirit and for God in 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 345 
 
 the plan of evolution itself, in the intricacies of the de- 
 pendencies, and the energies of the forces, and the sus- 
 tained length of time which the doctrine involves. We 
 have no disposition to dispute at this point the sincerity 
 of their faith. 
 
 We beg leave to call their attention to one point, 
 however ; and that is, to the weakness and cloudiness of 
 the analogies between the organic and the spiritual 
 which theistic evolutionists so frequently accept, and 
 the facility with which they accept this theory as a 
 "working hypothesis." This essay of Clifford is an 
 intelligible example of what we mean. Acute and 
 quick as he was, and trained to all the subtleties of 
 mathematical analysis, skilled, moreover, in the art of 
 felicitous exposition, he is carried away by the double 
 or triple sense of the term development, and stumbles 
 into complete confusion and logical discomfiture for 
 failing to discern the difference between the process of 
 growth in a tree, and growth in mental activity and 
 acquisition. His example is not so peculiar as would 
 seem at first thought. Development itself, in any of 
 the many senses which it bears, gives pause and wonder 
 to our analysis. These senses are also consistent with 
 manifold theories of force, law, or purpose. The scien- 
 tist used to the precise terminology of science in vege- 
 table or animal life, and unused to any sharp thinking 
 or precise terminology in intellectual or spiritual phe- 
 nomena, is easily tempted to accept terms in a scien- 
 tific signification which are metaphorical in the extreme ; 
 to adopt evolution as a " working hypothesis," i.e., as a 
 metaphysical theory, and to proceed to work his reason- 
 ings and his conclusions by it as though it were verified 
 by facts. It were unfortunate for the scientist and for 
 science, and the logic of both, if he should be discovered, 
 even to himself, in making such fearful blunders as our 
 
346 THE NEWEST ATHEISM : 
 
 enfant terrible has done in this lecture, which he delivered 
 with such exuberant and irrepressible confidence, and 
 which his editor does not think it necessary either to 
 explain or excuse. 
 
 Leaving the first lecture, we select, for the next of 
 those which comes within our plan to consider, the 
 elaborate discourse delivered in 1872 before the members 
 of the British Association, " On the Aims and Instru- 
 ments of Scientific Thought." This lecture is remark- 
 able as being one of the most deliberate attempts to 
 limit the sphere and the methods of scientific knowl- 
 edge to the acts and results of simple sense-experience 
 which has been put upon record during the present cen- 
 tury. It carries us back to the bald and unsupported 
 assertions of the school of Helvetius, in respect to the 
 nature and methods of our higher knowledge. It is 
 written in serious earnestness, however, without the 
 slightest indication of a frivolous or trifling spirit. The 
 method is analytic. The author begins by asking what 
 is scientific thinking. After a few preliminary efforts, 
 he answers at last by saying, u It is the application of 
 past experiences to new phenomena whenever such 
 experiences have become sufficiently uniform and exact. 
 There is, however, no absolute exactness in any thing. 
 All exactness is proximate. It is enough that the 
 objects compared or measured go beyond our sense 
 observations and measurements. Pure mathematical 
 quantities and their relations are fictions. So are abso- 
 lute uniformities, in phenomena or operations. It is 
 enough that we can detect no errors. The questions 
 we ask must also be reasonable ; and they are reason- 
 able whenever we have at hand experiences such as 
 have been described, — that are sufficiently exact and suf- 
 ficiently applicable." To the questions whether there is 
 any thing beyond our experience which is irresolvable, 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 347 
 
 absolute, or unknowable, it is enough to reply, As 
 fast as we get new experiences, and can apply them to 
 new cases, we shall go on doing so. That is all that 
 we can say, and with this we ought to be content. To 
 introduce the ideal element of pure mathematical quan- 
 tity in time and space in order to explain exactness, or 
 to assume adaptation or causation or analogy in nature 
 in order to explain reasonableness, is gratuitous, inas- 
 much as we are limited to the single activity already 
 described. We find ourselves acting in the ways enu- 
 merated ; and by these methods we explain our exist- 
 ence, our modes of activity, our science, its aims and 
 instruments, and have finally reached, as the formula 
 which meets every case, the single uniformity or law 
 which we call evolution. 
 
 In passing over this lecture, with this brief synopsis, 
 we have left untouched a host of gratuitous, untenable, 
 and inconsistent assertions. We hardly need say, that 
 the theory of scientific thought here outlined is insuffi- 
 cient to explain or justify any species of scientific 
 activity, or to sustain any kind of scientific enthusiasm. 
 There is no need to say that such a philosophy of 
 science is necessarily atheistic. Simple observation of 
 the uniformities of sense, or even of spirit, however 
 exact or reasonable, could never raise the question, 
 much less answer, Is there any thing beyond the finite ? 
 The denial of causation and purpose and geometrical 
 quantity rules out any possible suggestion of a self- 
 existent and Personal Intelligence. 
 
 We are forced to omit, for the reasons already given, 
 the detailed expositions of Clifford's theories of physics, 
 and the extended explanation and vindication of his 
 views of the metaphysics of pure mathematics, which 
 are given in other lectures and essays. We pass to his 
 essay entitled " Body and Mind," which was written in 
 
348 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 1874, six years after the essay on "Mental Develop- 
 ment," when the doctrine of evolution had become 
 hardened in his mind into an axiomatic truth. No 
 more rankly outspoken materialistic atheism could pos- 
 sibly be conceived than that which this essay avows and 
 defends. The frankness of the avowal is, however, of 
 little moment. We are solely interested in the argu- 
 ments by which this double conclusion is reached. 
 Professor Clifford begins by asserting that philosophy 
 and science are only organized common sense ; that, if 
 more questions in either have not been settled, it is 
 because the methods of inquiry in both are defective. 
 Certain questions are no longer open : some may be 
 presumed to be settled by scientific men, such as the 
 possibility of squaring the circle. In like manner, there 
 are questions in respect to the mind and body which 
 have ceased to be open questions, because science has 
 had her word to say about them. " And they are only 
 open now to people who do not know what that word 
 of science is, and will not try to learn it." This sounds 
 somewhat dogmatic and priestly. We look forward 
 with curiosity to know what these questions are, and 
 how they are settled. We are not left long in uncer- 
 tainty. The field of knowledge is divided into three 
 departments; viz., inanimate matter, giving us physics; 
 living bodies, involving physiology ; facts and relations 
 called consciousness, giving us psychology, ethics, etc. 
 "The gulf" between the first two of these groups, 
 which he dexterously calls physics of inorganic bodies 
 and the physics of organic bodies, "has in these last days 
 been firmly bridged over." For a description of the 
 bridge, he refers to Professor Huxley's lecture at Bel- 
 fast. This means, that, among the questions which are 
 considered settled, this is one : " that the science of 
 organic bodies is only a complication of the science of 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 849 
 
 inorganic bodies." The unsettled question which he 
 undertakes to answer is, whether it is not possible 
 "to construct some similar bridge between the now 
 united science of physics, which deals with all phenom- 
 ena, whether organic or inorganic," and "the other 
 science, the science of consciousness " ? 
 
 We must first do justice to the difference between 
 the two sets of facts or phenomena. That there 
 is a difference, and it is observed from primeval 
 times, is evident from the proverb, "Put yourself 
 in his place," which implies, that, in men and animals, 
 there are certain facts of individual consciousness 
 beyond what we call facts of physical organiza- 
 tion. 
 
 These facts of consciousness, if the logic means any 
 thing, are covered by the term " yourself." Very un- 
 fortunately the author observes, certain primeval men 
 very early got a notion that this word self meant some- 
 thing more, i.e., a spiritual, that is, a ghostly, substra- 
 tum of these phenomena of consciousness. This notion 
 came, not as the psychologists say, by direct intro- 
 spection of an entity directly observed, as some like 
 Descartes have taught, nor by a subinduced noumenon, 
 or a synthetic unity of apprehension, as Kant barbar- 
 ously explained, but it came in consequence of indiges- 
 tion, — in a dream. Primeval men, being given to 
 over-eating, would naturally have dreams of their fel- 
 low-men, — talking, and, it may be, fighting, with them. 
 From these experiences they inferred that these dream- 
 images actually left the bodies of their neighbors and 
 came into their own, and they saw and heard them, 
 and possibly fought with them. These spirit-images 
 were very naturally taken to be the spiritual substrata 
 or agents of the conscious phenomena, and became the 
 first occasions of the notion, that there are two sub- 
 
350 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 stances or agents in the universe ; namely, material 
 and psychical. 1 
 
 Professor Clifford proceeds to answer at length in 
 Mr. Huxley's words. 
 
 But what has science to say to all this? First, 
 "The brain is the organ of sensation, thought, and 
 emotion; i.e., some change in the condition of the 
 matter of this organ is the invariable antecedent of 
 the state of consciousness to which each of these terms 
 are applied." This the author asserts is believed by all 
 men of science. We deny that there is any evidence 
 for the proposition in its terms or meaning. It cer- 
 tainly has not been verified by observation or experi- 
 ment, that a definite change in the brain corresponds to 
 every definite experience of consciousness. That some 
 change in its condition may attend each spiritual state 
 may be true ; but that one precedes the other (is its 
 cause and its sole cause), or has a counterpart to all its 
 elements, is very largely an inference. 
 
 Second, " The movements of animals are due to 
 changes in the form of the muscles, and this change of 
 form arises from a motion of the substance of the nerves 
 that go to them." If by motion is meant some molecular 
 change through the length of the nerve, this may be 
 assented to. 
 
 Third, "The sensations of animals are due to a 
 motion of the substance of the nerves which connect 
 the sensory organs with the brain." Due, that is, 
 solely! From this proposition as thus amended, be- 
 
 1 We submit whether the conceptions now substituted for the ghostly- 
 ego, viz., of "a series of ideas," "a stream of ideas," "a bundle of im- 
 pressions," or " a thread of consciousness," or " a series of feelings tchich 
 is aioare of itself as past or future," might not be accounted for by the 
 more delicate viands on which philosophic man "has learned to feed, 
 now that he has grown so great," and the more refined images which 
 visit his dreams. 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 351 
 
 cause it is thus intended, we dissent. It carries with 
 itself most of the conclusions which the author would 
 establish. This plank of the proposed bridge must be 
 rejected ; and, if it fails, the bridge cannot be complete. 
 And yet the author appears not to have dreamed that 
 it would not be assented to, for he states it without 
 any comment or proof. The fourth proposition we 
 omit, as not denied. The fifth is in substance, that the 
 motion of a part of the brain or ganglion, excited by 
 a sensory nerve, leaves a tendency to be moved in the 
 same way ; and the resuscitation of the motion is the 
 physical cause, i.e., the sole cause, of every act of 
 memory, including the presentation of the object re- 
 membered and the act of remembering, and its reference 
 to time. This memory is twofold, ganglionic and cere- 
 bral. What we have said of 1, 2, 3, applies to this. 
 
 Besides these direct excitements, resulting in sensa- 
 tion, and prompting to bodily action, there are side 
 excitements of fibres associated with one another, re- 
 sulting, not in bodily action, but in tendencies to action. 
 This excitement of brain-fibres depends on the flow of 
 blood to one fibre or another. Upon which we have 
 this luminous remark, "And it is a curious property 
 of the nervous system, that it can direct the supply of 
 blood which is to be sent to any part of it. It is pos- 
 sible, by directing your attention to a particular part of 
 the hand, to make it sore ; and thus the marks called 
 stigmata have been produced ! " Without noticing the 
 edifying part of this side-blow at the superstitious, we 
 ask only, What is the it called the nervous system t Is 
 it the whole, or some part? If the whole, how could 
 the whole of the brain direct a supply of blood to a 
 part? And what is the attention, and who or what 
 directs it to the hand when the stigmata follow? 
 
 From sensations and brain mechanism he proceeds 
 
352 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 to the facts of consciousness, which he wishes to reach 
 by his bridge. The first point asserted is, that any so- 
 called present state of consciousness is complex, con- 
 sisting of several elements in different degrees of 
 energy. Of any two or more of these, if one occurs a 
 second time, its associates tend to recur ; thus a link, 
 whatever that may mean, is established between them. 
 These links are not only between sensations and sensa- 
 tions only, but also between sensations and exertions. 
 Trains of conscious states may intervene between the 
 one and the other ; and exertion is also voluntary and 
 involuntary, whatever these epithets signify. The 
 author does not tell us, and we certainly cannot ex- 
 plain by means of any data which he gives. He does, 
 however, attempt to tell us what judgment is, — that 
 act which is supposed to be by eminence intellectual, 
 and to lift men out of the lower regions of sensational 
 activity. This is his definition : " Any beginning of an 
 action is what we call a judgment ;" i.e., any experienced 
 or revived sensation, which awakens an impulse to 
 action, is the nucleus of intelligence. " If you consider 
 what a proposition means, you will see it must cor- 
 respond to the beginning of some sort of exertion. 
 When you say that A is B, you mean that you are 
 going to act as if A were B." " The assertion that the 
 water is frozen implies a bundle of resolves, which 
 means, Given certain other conditions, I shall go and 
 walk upon it." We grant that the impulse to act may 
 sometimes attend a judgment, but it does not for this 
 reason define it. It may be true, that, when some of 
 Professor Clifford's readers say or judge there is no 
 God, they will act as if there were none ; but charity 
 bids us to judge, or at least to say, that it is one thing 
 for Professor Clifford to judge, and another to act the 
 lie, there is no God. This doctrine of judgment is not, 
 
ITS ENFANT TEBEIBLE. 353 
 
 however, original with our author. Professor Bain is 
 well known as its author, as also of the kindred notion 
 that belief is resolved into expectation. Both are poor 
 makeshifts, to which the cerebral philosophy is driven, 
 under the difficulty which it finds of accounting for any 
 connection of conceptions or ideas higher than brain 
 mechanism provides for. 
 
 From action Professor Clifford proceeds to character. 
 Character is concerned only with voluntary action ; and 
 in " voluntary actions what takes place is that a certain 
 sensation is communicated to the mind, the sensation is 
 manipulated by the mind, etc." " The character of the 
 person is determined by the nature of the manipula- 
 tion." And pray, Professor Clifford, what place in 
 your theory have you made for the mind or its manipu- 
 lations ? Indeed, what is the mind but the brain-mass ; 
 and how can the brain manipulate at all? Even if 
 we allow that it, the nervous system, can direct the 
 flow of blood, how are sensations manipulated so that 
 " conclusions are drawn, and thus a message is sent out 
 which causes certain motions to take place " ? 
 
 He adds by way of caution, that, as the result of 
 these manipulations, character slowly changes, but only 
 slowly. 
 
 After this analysis of the second class of facts, viz., 
 the facts of consciousness, the author traces the paral- 
 lelism between them and the facts of the nervous 
 system, the facts of the first class. As the physical 
 stimulus of the sensory nerve is followed by the impulse 
 of the motor nerve, so the sensation is followed by the 
 response of the mental fact that moves the hand. So 
 is it universally of all mental facts : they are parallel 
 to some changes in the brain. His logic is this. Be- 
 cause it is true of a limited class of physical phenomena 
 that they depend on (partially, some would say, Pro- 
 
354 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 fessor Clifford, wholly), or are definitely traceable to, 
 nervous or brain changes, therefore it follows that all 
 mental phenomena are dependent as completely in every 
 particular on correspondent brain or nervous changes. 
 We need not stay to indicate where this logic fails. 
 
 He proceeds, however, to observe, that, though this 
 parallelism is so close and complete, there is an enor- 
 mous gulf between the two classes of facts. The phe- 
 nomena of the one class are open to the observation of 
 all. They are called objects, or phenomena. Facts of 
 consciousness are known only to one man. Of the 
 physical facts, we know that they are complete within 
 themselves. From the stimulus of the light to the eye 
 as its motions proceed to the brain along the track of 
 the sensory nerve, and return by the path of the motor, 
 " these motions are perfectly complete physical trains ; 
 and every step is fully accounted for by mechanical 
 conditions." There is no force lost and none created, 
 in nerve or brain or muscle. But how is it with the 
 other effects, and the force which produces them ? This 
 is the answer : " Therefore it is not a right thing to say, 
 for example, that the mind is a force ; because, if the 
 mind were a force, we should be able to perceive it." 
 " Again, if anybody says that the will influences matter, 
 the statement is not untrue, but it is nonsense. The 
 will is not a material thing, it is not a mode of material 
 motion." " The only thing which influences matter is 
 the position of surrounding matter or the motion of 
 surrounding matter." It will not be forgotten by the 
 attentive reader, that the writer of these sentences had 
 previously spoken of the nervous system as directing 
 the supply of blood to the parts of the brain, and of 
 the mind as capable of so directing the attention to a 
 part of the hand as to determine the blood to a definite 
 place in the organism, and thus produce stigmata. It 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 355 
 
 would seem that the mind or will in such cases might 
 properly be called a physical force. In any event, there 
 is a clear distinction, which Professor Clifford has more 
 than once admitted, between the power which directs 
 and the power which originates physical force. 
 
 As the result of this reasoning, he concludes that the 
 body is "a physical machine, which goes by itself 
 according to a physical law; that is to say, is auto- 
 matic." " But it is not merely a machine, because con- 
 sciousness goes with it." "The mind, then, is to be 
 regarded as a stream of feelings which runs parallel to 
 and simultaneous with a certain part of the action of 
 the body," etc. "An automaton, however, is not a 
 puppet. A puppet is moved without, by strings or 
 wheels. An automaton is moved from within. We 
 act as our characters impel us. But our characters are 
 made largely for us, as we inherit from others. We 
 impart to others also." To the objection that we ex- 
 clude freedom by this conception, it is replied, But 
 what higher freedom can we have or desire than to act 
 of ourselves as our characters impel ? Rather should we 
 reason, If we are not automatic, we are not responsible. 
 We ought rather to judge that the doctrine that Provi- 
 dence or destiny adds other forces than these of brain 
 and inherited character is the essence of immorality. 
 
 Having proceeded thus far, the author reviews his 
 course to discover how far he has succeeded in estab- 
 lishing a bridge between the two classes of facts ; viz., 
 the organic and the psychical. He concludes, that in- 
 asmuch as brain and nervous organism, so far back as 
 we know them, are probably attended by corresponding 
 parallels of consciousness, if we accept the doctrine of 
 evolution we must believe, that in the very lowest 
 organism, even in the amoeba, there is something incon- 
 ceivable to us, which is of the same nature with our own 
 
356 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 consciousness. We are forced to another step even. 
 We cannot stop at organic matter. Following the law 
 of continuity, and holding that the organic by physical 
 processes were formed from the inorganic, we must 
 believe, that to every motion of matter which corre- 
 sponds with mental facts in ourselves, that is, to every 
 motion of every molecule, there is a correspondent sen- 
 sation, or something like it. As there is presumed or 
 known to be a parallelism between a complex brain and 
 a complex of consciousness, and as the organic brain is 
 physically developed from unorganized matter without 
 breach of continuity ; so mind, by this parallelism, can be 
 traced in its beginnings so far back as there is physical 
 motion in a molecule. 
 
 One leap more, and the author attains his loftiest 
 flight. The so-called physical objects, including the 
 organic, are, as known by and to us, only feelings, over 
 against which we postulate a correspondent reality. 
 But, if the reality can correspond to a mental feeling, 
 this must be made of the same stuff with it. " What 
 I perceive as your brain is really in itself your con- 
 sciousness, is you ; but then, what I call your brain, the 
 material fact, is merely my perception." The two ele- 
 ments are not indeed the same, but they must be made 
 of the same stuff. 
 
 Therefore this solid universe, with its phenomena 
 present to sense and its phenomena present to con- 
 sciousness, may at any instant be resolved into particles, 
 which by motion become the stuff that mind is made of. 
 
 Excepting this last speculation, and one or two other 
 points as the opinion expressed in respect to the trans- 
 formation of energy in the brain, Professor Clifford 
 declares, that the doctrine he had expounded "is the 
 doctrine of science at the present day." 
 
 But Professor Clifford does not rest here. In view 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 357 
 
 of these conclusions as the last words of science, he asks, 
 Have we any authority for believing that consciousness 
 can exist without a nervous system ? We answer, all 
 the consciousness which we know of is thus associated. 
 This fact of itself creates a probability, and should make 
 us cautious in concluding in any direction opposite to 
 uniform fact. But if the one general conclusion is 
 established, that motion and consciousness everywhere 
 attend one another, then to believe that consciousness 
 could occur without its pendant manifested to the senses 
 would oblige us to deny that matter is what our belief 
 in the uniformity of nature forces us to believe it to be ; 
 viz., always manifest to the senses, and that mind 
 is always connected with such a manifested basis. We 
 conclude, then, consciousness without a material coun- 
 terpart is an absurdity. 
 
 The next question is, whether the physical universe, 
 or that portion nearest to us, may not be one vast brain, 
 whose movements are paralleled by a consciousness as 
 complex in its elements and as vast in its grasp ? This 
 is just possible, he says: but such a brain cannot be 
 analogous to any we are familiar with, because in these 
 there are disturbances which are parallel to the con- 
 scious acts ; and in the inter-planetary spaces there is no 
 evidence of such material substratum. But is it not just 
 possible that the stars are atoms in some vast organism 
 which might be adequate to such conscious acts ? To 
 this he gravely replies, It is just possible. But, were 
 there such an organism, it could not be affected through 
 vision of events in the solar system ; and, according to 
 any laws of matter known to us, " it could affect the 
 solar system only by its weight." 
 
 The question is in substance this : What is the last 
 word of science respecting the being and agency of one 
 Eternal Mind? To this question he replies, — 
 
358 THE NEWEST ATHEISM : 
 
 11 On the whole, therefore, we seem entitled to conclude, that, 
 during such time as we can have evidence of, no intelligence or 
 volition has been concerned in events happening within the range 
 of the solar system, except that of animals living on the planets. 
 The weight of such probabilities is, of course, estimated differently 
 by different people ; and the questions are only beginning to receive 
 the right sort of attention. But it does seem to me, that we may 
 expect in time to have negative evidence on this point of the same 
 kind and of the same cogency as that which forbids us to assume 
 the existence between the earth and Yenus of a planet as large as 
 either of them." 
 
 In this delicate and periphrastic phraseology does 
 our enfant terrible utter the conclusion which he is com- 
 pelled to derive from the facts and principles in which 
 all who have a right to call themselves men of science 
 are agreed, viz., there is no God ; because there is no 
 evidence of a brain large enough to perform the func- 
 tions of the Eternal Spirit. We must own that we are 
 surprised at the subdued tone of the announcement. 
 We had been prepared for a more emphatic burst, be- 
 fitting the tremendous conclusion. We conclude that 
 our author, like Bottom in the "Midsummer-Night's 
 Dream," while he had at first resolved, " I will roar, that 
 I will do any man's heart good to hear me," on second 
 thought resolved "not to frighten the ladies," and 
 finally, " I will roar you as gently as any sucking dove ; 
 I will roar you an 'twere any nightingale." 
 
 But let us pause a moment on the height of this great 
 argument, up which we have been conducted by many 
 laborious steps, and survey for a moment the steps 
 which have been laid for us. Has our guide succeeded 
 in his attempts first to bind all phenomena, the inor- 
 ganic, organic, and conscious, by one continuous bond, 
 thereby excluding from the universe spirit as man, and 
 spirit as God ? As we followed his positions we ques- 
 tioned not a few of them. The first step assumed the 
 
ITS ENFANT TEBBIBLE. 359 
 
 whole argument, and not a few which followed were 
 such as the logic of true science would hesitate to affirm. 
 Consequently our breath has not been quite taken away 
 by the appalling conclusion in which there is nothing 
 appalling but its effrontery, and nothing redeeming ex- 
 cept the studied moderation of its diction. 
 
 But Professor Clifford does not leave us to our reflec- 
 tions. He anticipates that the conclusion will leave a 
 blank to many hearts, "because they take away the 
 objects of very important and wide-spread emotions of 
 hope and reverence and love," and " that they destroy 
 the motives for good conduct." To this he replies, that 
 healthy emotions are felt about facts and not about 
 phantoms ; and the question should never be, what is 
 pleasing or displeasing to our feelings, but what is true. 
 To reason for or against evidence from the relation of 
 belief to action is most demoralizing. Then, these little 
 guesses of ours are very untrustworthy any way, when, 
 perhaps, " there is not one man in a million who has any 
 right to a definite opinion about them." Such men are, 
 of course, certain eminent psychologists* like Professor 
 Alexander Bain, or certain comprehensive philosophers 
 like Mr. Herbert Spencer. 
 
 But there is one truth which all men believe in, and 
 that concerns the distinction between right and wrong. 
 " Duty to one's countrymen and fellow-citizens " " is in 
 all healthy communities the one thing sacred and su- 
 preme." Whether or not, in addition to this instinct, we 
 have the voice of an unseen person also, the voice of the 
 instinct itself " loses nothing of its sacredness, nothing 
 of its clearness, nothing of its obligation." This re-as- 
 sures us somewhat. We confess that we have our fears 
 lest these theories of science of the soul will fail to re- 
 deem some of these fair words about duty. 
 
 We proceed then to inquire, What, then, is duty and 
 
360 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 right and conscience and virtue as explained by their 
 expounder ? We find his answer in the essay on the 
 " Scientific Basis of Morals " and the lecture on u Right 
 and Wrong: the Scientific Ground of their Distinc- 
 tion," both produced in 1875. 
 
 Declining the attempt to analyze Clifford's arguments 
 in order, we give the most important definitions and 
 conclusions. In the first of these essays we find the 
 following : The moral judgments and feelings are the 
 product of the social instinct as modified by the law 
 of evolution. These grow out of the tribal self, in which 
 every human being is more or less distinctly a sharer. 
 To understand the import of this term, we need to con- 
 sider the several senses and applications of the term 
 self. This is properly and primarily applied to "the 
 stream of feelings which make up a consciousness 
 regarded as bound together by association and mem- 
 ory." Next it is applied to a select portion of these 
 feelings, not including the corporeal ; although strictly 
 " my foot is certainly a part of myself, because I get 
 hurt when anybody treads on it." When we desire 
 something in the future, we personify or abstract its 
 future consequences in our feelings, and think of it as 
 suitable or unsuitable to ourselves, — either tribal or 
 individual. With the simpler races the conception of 
 self is less developed, and more indefinite and wide. It 
 is universally expanded so as to include one's tribe, 
 which is thus an expanded self, or stream or bundle 
 of feelings. " The savage is not only hurt when any- 
 body treads on his foot, but when anybody treads on 
 his tribe." All his future hopes and fears reflect the 
 enjoyments and sufferings which make up his future 
 tribal experience. " We may doubt whether the self- 
 hood of the tribe is not earlier in development than 
 that of the individual." "In the highest natures it 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 361 
 
 finally takes the form of humanity." Under the law 
 of natural selection, piety toward the tribal self grows 
 necessarily strong ; those groups of men in which it is 
 weak being extinguished by the struggle for existence. 
 The fittest to survive are those whose intenser piety 
 toward this tribal self is the strongest. The tribe soon 
 finds out, that, to exist, it must love piety towards itself. 
 It likes the deed which conduces to its welfare. It likes 
 the character, the man, from whom the deed proceeds. 
 Similarly it dislikes the deed and the man who is impi- 
 ous towards itself. By and by the man learns to judge 
 of his deeds and himself by occupying the place of this 
 tribal self, and this is self-approbation and remorse. 
 Next comes right. " Right actions are not those which 
 are publicly approved, but those whose public approba- 
 tion a well-instructed tribal self would like." Moreover, 
 there are two ways of expressing disapprobation. " To 
 chase a man away as a noxious beast, and to punish him 
 for doing wrong, these are two very different things." 
 In the second case we desire to improve the character 
 of the offender, or the character of those who witness 
 his punishment. 
 
 Responsibility belongs to a man who "can be pun- 
 ished for doing wrong with the approval of the tribal 
 self." 
 
 The categorical imperative, or the obligatoriness of 
 duty, results from the circumstance, that the ethical 
 maxims are matured by natural selection, so that they 
 are not disputed. "Hence it is that the moral sense 
 of the individual, though founded on the experience 
 of the tribe, is purely intuitive : conscience gives no 
 reasons." But though in their form the commands of 
 conscience are unconditional, in their application to the 
 individual they are subject to many conditions. They 
 declare, If you do not obey, the tribe will say, in the 
 
362 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 name of the people, I hate you ; and the voice of the 
 tribal self will say to the man, I hate myself. 
 
 In its derival of moral judgments from the imagined 
 judgments of society, this theory is identical with that 
 of Adam Smith. It differs from it in one or two very 
 important particulars. The theory of Smith assumes 
 a conscious distinction between the individual self and 
 his fellows. It connects the two by a natural sympathy 
 with the feelings of judgments of our fellows, under 
 the operation of which each man imagines his fellow- 
 men to approve or disapprove himself, then sympathizes 
 with their favorable or unfavorable judgment and feel- 
 ings, and thus, by "putting himself in their place," 
 builds up a conscience for himself. 
 
 The theory of Clifford finds its origin in the failure to 
 distinguish the two, or the necessary blending or absorp- 
 tion of the individual self in the tribe, — a blending so 
 complete, that " the savage is not only hurt when any- 
 body treads on his foot, but when anybody treads on 
 his tribe." 
 
 In Smith's theory, the conscience, or second self, is 
 built up in the conscious life by the processes of asso- 
 ciation in the individual soul enforced by individual 
 sympathy. In the theory of Clifford and Darwin, the 
 undiscriminating identification of the tribal with the 
 real self grows into a commanding law under the opera- 
 tion of natural selection, inasmuch as every tribe in 
 which it is not strong is wiped out of being in the 
 struggle for existence, and tribal feeling becomes 
 supreme by heredity. The theory of Smith does not 
 exclude voluntariness and individual responsibility. 
 The theory of Clifford resolves the self into a stream or 
 bundle of sensations, which after a long time are some- 
 how expanded so as to include our fellows. It makes no 
 provision, however, for voluntary action or responsibility. 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 363 
 
 The important subject of voluntariness or freedom, 
 as related to moral responsibility, is indeed discussed at 
 wearisome length in the second of the essays referred 
 to, in which the author usually logically adheres to the 
 position, that in brain-movements, and their parallels in 
 conscious phenomena, we do just as our organized brain 
 and parallel impulses would make us do, and that any 
 other explanation of responsible action is irrational 
 and immoral. One singular exception occurs, which is 
 more glaring than the similar oversight which we have 
 already noticed. Suppose, he says, that by memory 
 several motives are set in action. "Then I choose 
 which of these motives shall prevail. Those who care- 
 fully watch themselves find out that a particular motive 
 is made to prevail by the fixing of the attention upon 
 that class of remembered things which call up the mo- 
 tive. The physical side of this is the sending of blood 
 to a certain set of nerves ; namely, those whose action 
 corresponds to the memories which are to be attended 
 to." Again, " We distinguish this mass of passions and 
 pleasures, desire and knowledge and pain, which makes 
 up most of my character at the moment from that inner 
 and deeper motive-choosing self which is called reason, and 
 the will and the ego, which is only responsible when 
 motives are voluntarily chosen by directing attention 
 to them." These extracts need no comment : they are 
 manifestly oversights. The author had obviously for- 
 gotten his system and its logic when he wrote them. 
 
 Otherwise he is consistent throughout. Moral law 
 is a natural growth, the product of circumstances. 
 Under the law of development, virtue is not good 
 because it makes the tribe strong, but virtue is good 
 because the strong tribes kill off the weaker. The 
 excellence and obligation of goodness are not" derived 
 from any permanent fitness or adaptation to the well- 
 
364 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 being of society, but from the fact that society, under 
 the laws of descent and struggle, has propagated the 
 social instinct into unquestioned supremacy. 
 
 From these principles our outspoken and generally 
 logical reasoner derives the following inferences, which 
 he does not hesitate to avow : First, " Right is an affair 
 of the community, and must not be referred to any 
 thing else." " The first principle of natural ethics is 
 the sole and supreme allegiance of conscience to the 
 community." " An immediate deduction from our 
 principle is, that there are no self-regarding virtues 
 properly so called ; those qualities which tend to the 
 advantage and preservation of the individual being 
 only morally right in so far as they make him a more 
 useful citizen." "The virtue of purity, for example, 
 attains in this way a fairly exact definition." " My 
 happiness is of no use to the community except in so 
 far as it makes me a more efficient citizen." Veracity 
 is obligatory for a similar reason. Whenever deviations 
 from it are excused, the community is in fault. Veracity 
 to the community depends on faith in man ; that is, in 
 the individual man. We Englishmen, however (per- 
 haps because we are strong in the tribal instinct), abhor 
 the man who tells a lie, or who suggests that a lie may 
 sometimes be excused for its usefulness. 
 
 Such is a brief resume of the ethics of our rampant 
 philosopher. It will be remembered, that, when he had 
 demonstrated that science knows there is no God, he 
 had cheered and comforted us by the faith that right 
 remains and is eternal. This led us to search after his 
 conception of the nature of right, and the grounds of 
 our confidence in its supreme and venerable authority. 
 We have followed him step by step in every separate 
 and subtle track of his analysis, and with what result ? 
 " Might makes right. All duties are merged and re- 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 365 
 
 solved into the growing predominance of the tribal self. 
 Man emerges from the brutal condition by becoming 
 more social. As he loses himself more completely in 
 the tribe, the tribe takes more and more complete pos- 
 session of his being, and gives greater energy to his 
 social nature. At last the organized community writes 
 its behests in his very brain, and they are henceforth 
 enforced by an unquestioned authority." 
 
 The most superficial reader of ethical systems will 
 not fail to recognize the close affinity of this theory with 
 the tendency of the ancient schools to exalt the state 
 as supreme. The ancients, however, in their theories, 
 never wholly overlooked the rights and duties of the 
 individual man, however completely they disregarded 
 them when they came into conflict with the interests 
 of the community. Even the modern theories which 
 are most nearly allied to the one before us have verily 
 ventured to conceive of moral relations as an out- 
 growth of unconscious impulses into that unquestioned 
 predominance which gives to conscience its sacred 
 authority, and to faith in the ultimate triumph of the 
 right its capacity to dare and to die. 
 
 Professor Clifford begins by materializing the spirit 
 and denying its immortality. He next degrades the 
 intellect and debases its methods so far as to belittle 
 science and eliminate the Creator. With re-assuring 
 words he cheers us with the declaration that right and 
 duty and virtue will ever remain. But right and duty 
 and virtue, in their turn, are resolved into chance prod- 
 ucts of those blind and balanced forces which have built 
 organized society up to its present momentary struc- 
 ture. To the individual man is denied the not ignoble 
 privilege and dignity of offering himself a willing sac- 
 rifice upon the altar of the public welfare. Were there 
 such a self-sacrificing impulse, it would not be the choice 
 
366 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 of his loving soul, but the product of a thousand lucky 
 accidents, which the mighty ocean of being had tossed 
 into momentary existence, — a glittering bubble from 
 the crest of one of its yeasty waves. 
 
 Nothing is more noticeable to the reader of these 
 essays than the contemptuous but half-suppressed scorn 
 with which their author rejects the scientific possibility 
 of a personal God, and the passionate fervor with which 
 he enforces the charms and authority of duty and truth. 
 A profounder analysis and a more teachable temper 
 would have taught him, that a satisfactory science of 
 nature and of duty requires as its fundamental axiom 
 the existence of an intelligent Creator, and that a 
 materialistic evolution which rejects God can explain 
 neither duty nor science nor man. 
 
 A single reflection occurs to us in connection with 
 Professor Clifford's " Theory of Ethics." If all duty 
 is resolved into our allegiance to the community, and 
 if scientific men are alone competent to understand 
 those truths and facts which may guide the judgment 
 of the community, and if in respect to some of the 
 most fundamental truths only one in a million is so 
 qualified, then it follows, that duty to the community 
 may require that a priesthood of science should assume 
 to itself the functions of regulating the interests and 
 actions of both societies and individuals. The process 
 of natural selection, as we ordinarily conceive it, would 
 be greatly accelerated if the ignorant and obstinate, 
 particularly those of the fanatical and religious sort, 
 should be weeded out by summary methods. Under 
 the law of the survival of the fittest, the obstinate and 
 the unenlightened might disappear; and a hardy and 
 healthy stock of cool-brained and clear-thinking citizens 
 might bring into exclusive possession and intenser 
 energy the impulses which tend to human welfare. 
 
ITS ENFANT TERBIBLE. 367 
 
 We observe that no subject moves Professor Clifford 
 to such uncontrollable excitement as the influence of a 
 religious priesthood. In view of its past history, and 
 in the immediate prospect of some terrible revival of 
 its power, he at times almost loses his self-possession 
 and his dignity. We can almost excuse him for the 
 violence of his emotions at the thought of the enormities 
 of abuse which a religious and even a Christian priest- 
 hood has often occasioned in the past. We see no 
 occasion, however, for any dread of the immediate recur- 
 rence of such a debasing and cruel domination. Our 
 apprehensions, we confess, take another direction. In 
 our judgment, no priesthood of religion could possibly 
 be so remorseless and so irresponsible as a priesthood of 
 modern atheistic science, should it accept the ethical 
 and sociological' doctrines of the evolutionary ethics. 
 The Christian priesthood, with all its craft and unscru- 
 pulousness, with all its fanaticism, and want of senti- 
 mentalism, could never wholly forget the gentle and 
 humane precepts of the Gospels, and the example of its 
 self-sacrificing High-priest. But a select scientific high- 
 priesthood, which should adopt the theological ethics of 
 Professor Clifford, would find nothing within itself to 
 control its confidence in its own infallibility, or to limit 
 the means or the inclination to execute its remorseless 
 decrees. 
 
 The city of Paris has more than once been the wit- 
 ness of what each of these priesthoods could be and do. 
 The massacre of St. Bartholomew's is often referred to 
 as an example of what priestly fanaticism in religion 
 could inspire. But, terrible as was this scene, it does 
 not compare with those other spectacles of cruelty 
 and horror in the same city which the priesthoods of 
 atheistic, ethical, and political science have sanctioned 
 if they have not inspired. As between the two we 
 
368 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 should greatly prefer the domination of the Christian 
 to the scientific hierarchy. 
 
 We should fail to do justice to Professor Clifford did 
 we not distinctly refer to the paradoxical daring and 
 passionate earnestness with which he has expressed his 
 views on every point to which we have referred. His 
 essay on the " Ethics of Religion " includes page after 
 page of scathing denunciation of the baleful influences 
 which religious priesthoods have exercised upon every 
 interest which can ennoble or bless the human race. 
 At the close of the essay he relapses for a moment into 
 a calmer mood. He bethinks himself of such " a com- 
 radeship with the Great Companion " as once fired his 
 own youthful ardors, and still elevates and inspires the 
 faith of Maurice and Kingsley and Martineau. But 
 this relapse is but for a moment. Shaking off the spell, 
 he concludes with this Titanic utterance : u For after 
 such a helper of men, outside of humanity, the truth 
 will not allow us to seek. The dim and shadowy out- 
 lines of the superhuman deity fade slowly away from 
 before us ; and, as the mist of his presence floats aside, 
 we perceive with greater and greater clearness the shape 
 of a yet grander and nobler figure, — of him who made 
 all gods and shall unmake them. From the dawn of 
 history and from the inmost depth of every soul the 
 face of our father-man looks out upon us with the fire 
 of eternal youth in his eyes, and says, 4 Before Jehovah 
 was, I am ! ' " 
 
 The essay on " Cosmic Emotion " gives us his theory 
 of religious and ethical feeling, partly in the way of 
 philosophic analysis, and partly in the tone of an Orphic 
 hymn. The cosmos is contemplated in its double form, 
 as the macrocosm of nature and the microcosm of souls. 
 The first, by its mass and complexness, coupled with the 
 experience of disappointment in the attempt to grasp 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 369 
 
 it as a whole, calls forth our veneration, resignation, 
 and submission : the other presents the highest possible 
 generalization of what we call good in character, and 
 awakens the emotion of the second kind, such as is ex- 
 pressed by Wordsworth's " Ode to Duty." These two 
 grand and closely related objects, when contemplated 
 by the common eye, move us strongly ; but when viewed 
 by the armed eye of science, which connects them 
 together in those intimate relations which unite matter 
 and spirit, and, more than all, reads the history and 
 destiny of each in the light of evolution, they kindle 
 and sustain the most fervent worship, obedience, and 
 hope. The cosmos has ever been growing and is 
 ever to grow to our knowledge, which our wonder and 
 worship can never overtake and master. Human nature 
 has grown out of it ; as what we call matter has been 
 slowly evolved into life, and life has been transfigured 
 into spirit. Spirit became capable of morality when 
 the tribal self began to control the individual, and 
 band-work began to be recognized as the supreme good. 
 Moral goodness has been achieved as the social has 
 new-moulded the individual. The morally better is an- 
 other name for the necessarily more evolved. The 
 morally evil are but the crude and rude impulses which 
 have not yet been outgrown, the wildness of savage blood 
 which has not yet been fully refined. Moral character 
 is, indeed, every thing : the deed and wish are nothing 
 in the comparison. But character is as truly formed by 
 the laws of environment as are the forces of nature. 
 " The social organism itself is but a part of the universal 
 cosmos, and, like all else, is subject to the uniformity of 
 nature. The production and distribution of wealth, 
 the growth and effect of administrative machinery, the 
 education of the race, these are cases of general laws 
 which constitute the science of sociology. The discovery 
 
370 THE NEWEST ATHEISM: 
 
 of exact laws has only one purpose, — the guidance of 
 conduct by means of them. . . . And the use which 
 the republic must make of the laws of sociology is to 
 rationally organize society for the training of the best 
 citizens. Much patient practice of comradeship is 
 necessary before society will be qualified to organize 
 itself in accordance with reason. But those who can 
 read the signs of the times, read in them that the king- 
 dom of man is at hand." 
 
 With these bold and significant utterances we con- 
 clude our laborious and protracted rgsumS of the creed 
 of this extraordinary man. Many of our readers will 
 agree with us, that he is in more than one sense of the 
 term an enfant terrible in the scientific household. Not 
 a few will be inclined to raise the question a second 
 time, which we have already suggested, whether he rep- 
 resents any one but himself. Some will say that these 
 extravagances of logic and of assertion are simply the 
 legitimate though fiery outbreaks of a singularly head- 
 long and impetuous nature, endowed with extraordinary 
 gifts of concentration and exposition, whose youthful 
 ardor had manifested itself in feats of gymnastic daring 
 as foolhardy as are these specimens of high-flying reason- 
 ing and untamed declamation. 
 
 We cannot question that he was just the man he is 
 described to have been. A single look at his portrait 
 interprets him as endowed with a fearless, self-confident, 
 and singularly good-humored, though defiant, nature. 
 The history of his changes of opinion, the successive 
 struggles of thought and feeling through which he 
 fought his way from his High Churchmanship into the 
 rampant atheism in which he died, are not given us by 
 his over-dainty biographer. Such a history of his pro- 
 gressive change of opinions and their attendant emo- 
 tions, as we have in the diaries and letters of Blanco 
 
ITS ENFANT TERRIBLE. 371 
 
 White or Theodore Parker, or Arthur Clough or John 
 Sterling, would be most instructive in many most im- 
 portant particulars. All the light that we have upon 
 these points is found in the two lines from his biographer 
 which speak of " an intellectual and moral struggle," 
 and the pathetic confession in which he says, " We have 
 seen the spring sun shine out of an empty heaven to 
 light up a soulless earth : we have felt with utter loneli- 
 ness that the Great Companion is dead." 
 
 Our chief concern is not, however, with the man, 
 much as he alternately fascinates and repels us, but 
 with the question how far he represents the principles 
 and methods of the various classes of evolutionists of 
 the present day. In answer to this question, we ob- 
 serve, first, that Professor Clifford is not an agnostic. 
 In this he apparently differs from Spencer and Tyndall, 
 and all those who contend, that, while Science admits 
 that there is an absolute, she affirms that he can never 
 be so known by man as to be formulated in thought or 
 phrased in words ; that consequently a positive revela- 
 tion, a scientific or philosophical faith, a rational 
 worship, is impossible. As against these men, Clifford 
 asserts, that at present Science finds not the slightest 
 reason to believe there is any entity not finite, and that 
 in all probability she will soon be able to demonstrate 
 that no such being exists. 
 
 In this position Clifford is by no means alone among 
 the negative thinkers. We have the best authority for 
 asserting that many of the adherents of Mr. Spencer re- 
 ject altogether, as wholly untenable and inconsistent, all 
 his concessions which give form and being to agnosti- 
 cism, and regard his very elaborate attempts to mediate 
 between science and religion as irrational excrescences 
 upon the philosophy of evolution. 
 
 In respect to the nature of the soul, its possible sur- 
 
372 THE NEWEST ATHEISM : 
 
 vival of the body, and the nature and authority of con- 
 science, Professor Clifford holds the doctrines common 
 to this school. He differs from his associates only 
 in the more pointed and effective way in which he 
 states the common creed, and the more fearless deduction 
 of the logical conclusions to which it leads, and the more 
 offensive phraseology in which he characterizes the op- 
 posite opinions. However uncomfortable and trouble- 
 some this enfant terrible may be in the household which 
 he represents, he may render a very important service 
 to those who are hesitating whether to attach them- 
 selves to that section which represents the agnostic and 
 vacillating atheism of Spencer, or to the gnostic and 
 positive atheism of Professor Clifford. 
 
 There is another eminently respectable and conserva- 
 tive section of scientists, who hold the conclusions of 
 Professor Clifford in positive and outspoken abhorrence, 
 and who are theists in their personal and scientific faith. 
 They are evolutionists, ex professo ; but they are neither 
 materialistic nor atheistic evolutionists. They believe 
 in the soul and in conscience, in a future life and a per- 
 sonal God, and many of them in a supernatural revela- 
 tion. They find nothing in the teachings of science or 
 the doctrine of evolution, as they hold it, which is in- 
 consistent with their Christian faith or their theistic 
 philosophy. Some few of them may be equally distin- 
 guished in science and theology. 
 
 Nothing could possibly be more unjust or odious than 
 to intimate that the evolutionists of this school either 
 sympathize or symbolize with the conclusions of Pro- 
 fessor Clifford. It is, however, a fair question which we 
 ask, and which every seeker after truth would do well 
 to repeat, Whether and how far the logic of the two 
 schools is common, and whether our professor is not 
 sometimes the more consistent because the more fearless 
 
ITS ENFANT TEREIBLE. 373 
 
 logician of the two ? This question is no question be- 
 tween science and theology, but one which is more pro- 
 found and important ; viz., What is scientifically true, 
 and what methods of investigation may be trusted in 
 interpreting the indications of nature so far as they un- 
 roll the mysterious history of the past, or warrant our 
 confidence in the magnificent promises of the future ? 
 
 The first question which we ask ourselves, when we 
 open any work on these much-vexed questions, should 
 not be what does the author believe, or attempt to prove, 
 but how does he reason t — not what are his conclusions, 
 but what is his logic? what are his views of the mind 
 which interprets nature ; what his views of the methods 
 of studying nature ; how far does he strain, and when 
 does he limit, the analogies which bind nature and spirit 
 into one system; and how quick is he to detect the 
 differences which indicate the presence of nobler forces 
 and higher laws? If in any application whatever he 
 accepts the shallow logic and the hasty analogies of ma- 
 terialism, if he practically accepts those canons of induc- 
 tion which degrade knowledge to mere facilities of asso- 
 ciation, or the play and counter-play of brain mechanism, 
 we care very little what his scientific creed may be, or, 
 for that matter, what are his theological avowals. His 
 heart may be better than his head, and yet he is respon- 
 sible in the field of science only for the latter. His 
 principal conclusions may be scientifically and theo- 
 logically orthodox, while his methods of inquiry and 
 many of his special opinions are thoroughly untenable 
 and permanently mischievous. 
 
 We may be permitted to repeat with all frankness, 
 that we have not designed to make a scarecrow of the 
 extreme opinions of Professor Clifford, or to fasten 
 them upon any who disavow them, but simply to call 
 attention to the logic of his conclusions. We therefore 
 
374 THE NEWEST ATHEISM. 
 
 respectfully ask the attention of all our scientific friends 
 to the inquiry, how far their logic is similar to his, — not 
 so much in the final summing up of the subordinate 
 arguments to their grand conclusions, but in more or 
 fewer of the short and apparently easy steps which he 
 takes from the inorganic to the living, from life to spirit, 
 from spirit to conscience, and the skilful sleight-of-hand 
 by which he substitutes an accessory for a principal 
 relation, or confuses and mystifies himself and his 
 readers by glittering but treacherous analogies. We 
 would beg them to consider whether, even by accepting 
 evolution as a " working hypothesis," even in the origi- 
 nation of species, with the frank concession that not a 
 single instance can be adduced of any well-known and 
 thoroughly accredited species which has been produced 
 by the actual " working " of evolution, they do not 
 commit themselves to the merciless grasp of a logic 
 from which it may not be easy to escape. 
 
XII. 
 
 HERBERT SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCI- 
 OLOGY: A CRITICAL ESSAY 1 
 
 The term sociology was invented and adopted in its 
 French equivalent by Auguste Comte in his " Philo- 
 sophic Positive." It makes its first appearance in the 
 following sentence : " After Montesquieu, the next 
 great addition to sociology (which is the term I may be 
 allowed to invent, to designate social physics^) was made 
 by Condorcet proceeding on the views suggested by his 
 illustrious friend Turgot " (b. vi. chap. ii.). The term 
 social physics, also used by Comte as its equivalent, is 
 significant ; suggesting as it does the materialistic theory 
 of man, which Comte takes no pains to conceal. For, 
 according to his teachings, the higher nature of man is 
 simply the result of a more highly organized brain ; and 
 the psychical and social phenomena of humanity depend 
 solely on the quality and conditions of cerebral activity. 
 On such a theory it is very clear that the science of the 
 phenomena of man in society should, with the strictest 
 propriety, be styled social physics. 
 
 So far as Comte's theory of science will allow, as 
 being limited to the knowledge of phenomena and the 
 relations of similarity and succession, — recognizing 
 neither forces, causes, nor ends, — his treatment of this 
 science is very temperate, and abounds in many just 
 observations in respect to the operation of many of the 
 agencies which affect man's social status and progress. 
 
 i The Princeton Review, September, 1880. 
 
 375 
 
376 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 He recognizes very distinctly the extremely complex 
 nature of the problems which are to be solved, and the 
 difficulty of determining all the elements which enter 
 into the several products, as also the relative importance 
 of each. The single point of view from which he regards 
 society is that of biology, and through this science he 
 explains all the higher phenomena which pertain to 
 man. He quotes with approbation the pregnant sen- 
 tence of Pascal : " The entire succession of men through 
 the whole course of ages must be regarded as one man, 
 always living and incessantly learning." To this he 
 adds, " The whole social evolution of the race must 
 proceed in entire accordance with biological laws ; and 
 social phenomena must always be founded on the neces- 
 sary invariableness of the human organism, the charac- 
 teristics of which, physical, intellectual, and moral, are 
 always to be essentially the same and related in the 
 same manner, at every degree of the social scale, no 
 development of them attendant upon the social condi- 
 tion ever altering their nature in the least, nor, of 
 course, creating or destroying their nature in the least, 
 nor, of course, creating or destroying any faculties 
 whatever, or transposing their influence. No sociologi- 
 cal view can therefore be admitted, at any stage of the 
 science, or under any appearance of historical induction, 
 that is contradictory to the known laws of human 
 nature." And yet he insists that historical inductions 
 are essential conditions to the progress and perfection 
 of the deductions which can be derived from biology 
 and cerebral psychology. To the elucidation of the 
 science as thus conceived, Comte devotes full one-half 
 of the bulky treatise which occupies five stout octavo 
 volumes. It hardly need be said, that his stand-point is 
 that of materialistic atheism. His tone is, however, 
 thoroughly grave and scientific ; and, abating the many 
 
SPENCER >S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 377 
 
 elaborately superfluous observations into which he is 
 constantly betrayed, he shows careful and acute think- 
 ing upon many of the subjects which he passes in re- 
 view, and leaves the reader with the feeling of pro- 
 found respect for the earnestness of this plodding and 
 laborious thinker, as also of regret for the narrow 
 limits within which he confined himself by denying 
 personality and freedom to both man and God. 
 
 John Stuart Mill devoted the last book of his treatise 
 on Logic to the consideration of the logic of sociolog}^. 
 He adopts in general the views of Comte, as modified 
 by his acceptance of the relations involved in causation 
 and consciousness. These modifications could not be 
 very considerable, however, so long as he denied freedom, 
 and held to the necessity of human actions. Like Comte, 
 he distinctly recognizes the limitations and difficulties 
 of the science, and treats of these difficulties at length 
 in the light of his own analysis of the Logic of Induc- 
 tion. He insists very justly, that though the science of 
 man cannot enable us, like astrononry, to foresee and 
 predict future sociological events with entire accuracy, 
 it can yet with the greatest advantage acquaint us with 
 the tendencies which enter into social phenomena, and so 
 enable us in some measure to explain, to control, and 
 direct them. 
 
 Herbert Spencer, though he is very largely indebted 
 to Comte for many of his views, and especially in their 
 application to sociology, has emphasized his dissent from 
 him by superadding the doctrine of organic develop- 
 ment, or growth after the analogy of a living being. 
 He has accordingly modified his views of sociology by 
 this addition. We propose to inquire with what suc- 
 cess. Spencer's contributions to this science are pro- 
 fessedly only introductory to its study. They are to 
 consist of " The Principles of Sociology," in two 
 
378 SPENCEB >S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 volumes ; " Social Statics," and " The Study of Sociol- 
 ogy," as also several volumes of " Descriptive Sociology," 
 prepared under his direction, of materials for the com- 
 parative study of the customs and institutions of vari- 
 ous tribes and nations of men at different periods of 
 their history and at different stages of their progress. 
 
 The volume with which we shall chiefly concern our- 
 selves is entitled " The Study of Sociology." In its ex- 
 ternal form and method it is obviously prepared for 
 popular impression rather than for scientific conviction. 
 The chapters are connected with one another by no very 
 obvious relations of thought or association. The treat- 
 ment of the topics in the several chapters is sensational 
 rather than logical ; and the offences against good taste 
 and decency, so far as either require a respect for con- 
 victions which are held sacred by the great mass of Mr. 
 Spencer's fellow-countrymen, are almost unparalleled in 
 modern controversial literature. It is not easy to give 
 any just conception of the treatise to one who has not 
 read it ; because its method is rambling, and the clew of 
 logical connection is very frequently lost in the bewil- 
 dering maze of examples and stories which are designed 
 to serve as illustrations. The only practicable method 
 of discovering the author's theory, is to subject the 
 volume to a minute criticism. Even this promises only 
 partial success. 
 
 One prominent feature characterizes this treatise from 
 beginning to end , and that is, that the author assumes 
 the truth of evolution as an axiom which not only 
 ought to be accepted by all men who can rightfully 
 claim to be considered men of science, but has, in fact, 
 been already received by all who are now known as 
 such. He seems to assert with nearly the same out- 
 spoken positiveness, that a theist, in the common accep- 
 tation of the word, cannot accept sociology in any 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 379 
 
 scientific sense of the term. We find the first of these 
 positions distinctly announced in the first chapter, and 
 the last stated in the concluding chapter. We ought to 
 expect that each should be supported by some formal 
 argumentation. Inasmuch as the book professes to be 
 in some sense introductory to the study of this new sci- 
 ence, which the author finds not yet perfected or even 
 formulated, and is addressed to the popular ear all un- 
 accustomed to the science, and ignorant of its meaning 
 and its value, we should expect that a treatise with such 
 a beginning and ending would be fortified by arguments 
 and explanations touching these fundamental points. 
 We have some reason for surprise, if not for complaint, 
 when we find that its argumentation is occupied with 
 the confirmation of the truth of evolution through its 
 application to sociology, rather than with the illustra- 
 tion of sociology by means of evolution. 
 
 In the first chapter we find the following : — 
 
 " Now that the transformation and equivalence of forces is seen 
 by men of science to hold, not only throughout all inorganic ac- 
 tions, but throughout all organic actions ; now that even mental 
 changes are recognized as the correlatives of cerebral changes, 
 which also conform to this principle ; and now that there must be 
 admitted the corollary, that all actions going on in a society are 
 measured by certain antecedent energies, which disappear in 
 effecting them, while they themselves become actual or potential 
 energies from which subsequent actions arise, — it is strange that 
 there should not have arisen the consciousness that these highest 
 phenomena are to be studied as lower phenomena have been 
 studied, not, of course, after the same physical methods, but in 
 conformity with the same principles. And yet scientific men rarely 
 display such a consciousness." 
 
 In the conclusion we find these utterances : — 
 
 " Such must be, in part, my defence for having set down many 
 thoughts which the title of this work does not cover. Especially 
 have I found myself obliged thus to transgress, by representing the 
 
380 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 study of sociology as the study of evolution in its most complex 
 form. It is clear, that to one who considers the facts societies 
 exhibit as having had their origin in supernatural interpositions, 
 or in the wills of individual ruling men, the study of these facts 
 will have an aspect wholly unlike that which it has to one who 
 contemplates them as generated by processes of growth and devel- 
 opment continuing through centuries. Ignoring, as the first view 
 tacitly does, that conformity to law, in the scientific sense of the 
 word, which the second view tacitly asserts, there can be but little 
 community between the methods of inquiry proper to them re- 
 spectively. Continuous causation, which in the one case there is 
 little or no tendency to trace, becomes, in the other case, the chief 
 object of attention ; whence it follows, that there must be formed 
 wholly different ideas of the appropriate modes of investigation. 
 A foregone conclusion respecting the nature of social phenomena 
 is thus inevitably implied in any suggestions for the study of 
 them." 
 
 The first of these extracts is under the title of " Our 
 Need of Sociology," and was designed to illustrate the 
 point, that men of science, who know that evolution is 
 universally accepted as the only scientific theory of all 
 phenomena, the spiritual and social included, have not 
 yet accepted the necessary conclusion, that sociology 
 can only be explained by this theory, and therefore 
 need to be instructed in respect to these special ap- 
 plications. The considerations adduced in the second 
 of these extracts would have led a moderately candid 
 man to ask whether it were impossible to believe that 
 human freedom and a superintending providence are 
 consistent with the presence and agency of fixed forces 
 or tendencies that conform to natural law. A person 
 moderately acquainted with the course of human spec- 
 ulation respecting social phenomena, from the Book of 
 Job onwards, would at least recognize the unquestioned 
 fact, that both men and devils — if we are to credit 
 Milton — had in every generation vexed themselves with 
 inquiries how God could execute his decrees in the de- 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 381 
 
 velopments of human history, and yet man be free to 
 promote or thwart them. That a theist or Christian 
 had ever attempted to form a theory of sociology, and 
 with some fair pretensions to reasonableness, seems 
 never to have entered into the conception of this 
 student of man, to whom the very term rational or 
 scientific theology is an offence to his understanding, 
 and the object of his ignorant and sometimes ill-man- 
 nered ridicule. 
 
 The evils adduced in the first chapter to prove the 
 need of social science are pertinent enough, provided it 
 were conceded that sociology is adequate to prevent or 
 cure them. Mr. Spencer uses very just and true lan- 
 guage concerning the necessity that character or the 
 springs of action should be changed in order that con- 
 duct may be rectified. He almost agrees with those 
 teachers whom he sneers at as Methodists in respect to 
 the necessity of a new birth in man in order that society 
 may be reformed. But, unfortunately, he holds with 
 Robert Owen, that any inward change of character 
 can be effected only by favorable social circumstances. 
 In this particular many thinkers, who have meditated 
 as profoundly as he upon the problems of sociology, do 
 not agree with him, but agree with the Methodists. 
 
 The second chapter asks and seeks to answer the 
 question, " Is there a Social Science ? " In discussing 
 this question, Mr. Spencer supposes that there are two 
 classes of persons who must answer the question in the 
 negative. The first believe " that phenomena that are 
 greatly involved are supernaturally produced," conspic- 
 uous by the agency of great men ; and the second 
 contend that sociology cannot meet the requisitions for 
 a science by reason of the element of human freedom. 
 In illustrating the first, he holds up to ridicule the 
 devout recognition of the agency of God on various 
 
382 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 occasions of history ; and, in treating of the second, he 
 attacks Mr. Froude and Mr. C. Kingsley for seeming 
 to deny that a social science of free beings is possible. 
 He forgets that what they intend is, that sociology 
 cannot be an exact science; that inasmuch, in the 
 language of Mr. Mill, it has to do with tendencies only, 
 its provisions and explanations can never reach beyond 
 a certain degree of probability, and must always be 
 uttered with more or less reservation. Indeed, Mr. 
 Spencer, without knowing it, seems to furnish all the 
 materials for this very answer to Mr. Froude and 
 Kingsley in the concessions which he subsequently 
 makes concerning the failures to gain certainty and 
 completeness in our provisions and explanations of 
 social phenomena, and without seeming to be aware 
 that his argument is as truly at their service as it is at 
 his own. The chapter abounds in sundry particularly 
 splenetic passages, as when Mr. Spencer harps upon a 
 theme which the reader of his graver works will recog- 
 nize as having been previously treated under the title 
 of " The Impiety of the Pious." 
 
 " The disguises which piety puts on are, indeed, not unfrequently 
 suggestive of that which some would describe by a quite opposite 
 name. To study the universe as it is manifested to us ; to ascertain 
 by patient observation the order of the manifestations ; to discover 
 that the manifestations are connected with one another after a 
 regular way in time and space ; and, after repeated failures, to 
 give up as futile the attempt to understand the power manifested, — 
 is condemned as irreligious. And meanwhile the character of 
 religious is claimed by those who figure to themselves a Creator 
 moved by motives like their own, who conceive themselves as dis- 
 covering his designs, and who even speak of him as though he 
 laid plans to outwit the Devil ! " 
 
 He seems also to wander a little from the question 
 whether there is a social science in the following : — 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 383 
 
 "Just as that theory of the solar system which supposes the 
 planets to have been launched into their orbits by the hand of the 
 Almighty looks feasible so long as you do not insist on knowing 
 exactly what is meant by the hand of the Almighty, and just as the 
 special creation of plants and animals seems a tenable hypothesis 
 until you try and picture to yourself definitely the process by which 
 one of them is brought into existence ; so the genesis of societies 
 by the actions of great men may be comfortably believed so long 
 as, resting in general notions, you do not ask for particulars." 
 
 The third chapter, " On the Nature of the Social 
 Science," ought to be the most instructive of all, inas- 
 much as it should define and defend the conception of 
 sociology which, after so much painstaking, we might 
 suppose had been reached by Mr. Spencer. We turn 
 the leaves with awakened interest, expecting on e very- 
 page to find a statement of the improvements which he 
 has made upon Comte and Mill, and especially of the 
 illuminating light which has been poured upon it by 
 the prima philosophia of evolution. We come to the 
 last paragraph and the last line — and what have we 
 found ? Not a single either concise or expanded defini- 
 tion of the new social science — not even a sketch of 
 the materials from which to frame a definition by either 
 condensation or inference. All the chapter yields to us 
 is a series of rambling remarks upon society as an 
 organism, the import or intent of which is to illustrate 
 the analogy between growth in the several forms of 
 living beings, and growth in what we popularly call 
 social organisms. Even these facts and observations are 
 not so much designed to illustrate or prove that social 
 phenomena are explained by the law of evolution as to 
 show that social phenomena follow the laws of organic 
 growth, and therefore prove the doctrine of evolution. 
 Despairing of finding in the introductory volume an an- 
 swer to our question, What is sociology as conceived by 
 Mr. Spencer? we turn to the u Principles of Sociology," 
 
384 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 vol. i., being attracted by the promising table of con- 
 tents of Part II., " The Inductions of Sociology." But 
 after looking through all the chapters, and following 
 the many illustrations gathered on the one hand from 
 the lowest forms of living beings, and on the other 
 from every description of social relations and progress, 
 we are forced to conclude that the author is seeking to 
 establish the universality of the doctrine of evolution 
 by an accumulation of particulars from the two domains 
 of life and society. We have in this an example of 
 what we find everywhere in all his treatises. Whatever 
 the subject-matter may be, they are all written to illus- 
 trate and confirm the law of evolution as everywhere 
 present and controlling all phenomena. 
 
 Looking elsewhere for what we seek, we find the key- 
 note of his system expressed by himself, in the words 
 in which he explains the additions which he has made 
 to what he learned from Comte : " And now let me 
 point out that which really has exercised a profound 
 influence on my course of thought. The truth which 
 Harvey's embryological inquiries first dimly indicated, 
 which was more clearly perceived by Wolff and 
 Goethe, and which was put into a definite shape by 
 Yon Baer, — the truth that all organic development is 
 a change from a state of homogeneity to a state of 
 heterogeneity, — this it is from which very many of 
 the conclusions which I now hold have indirectly re- 
 sulted. There is also manifested the belief, that this 
 evolution is in both cases determined by the coin- 
 cidence of conditions, — the action of circumstances. 
 And there is further in the sections above referred to a 
 recognition of the fact, that organic and social evolu- 
 tions conform to the same law." 
 
 This application of evolution seems to have wrought 
 like new wine upon a head previously wonted to the 
 
SPENCER 'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 385 
 
 weak and watery mechanical philosophy of Comte. 
 The product has been a degradation of the conceptions 
 proper to the organic and the spiritual to a hybrid 
 materialism, and the explanation of all the forms of 
 human thought and feeling, as also of the phenomena 
 of man, whether individual or social, by the attraction 
 and repulsion of original molecules or star-dust. We 
 know, indeed, that the state was conceived by Plato 
 to be that spiritually organized unity which the 
 potently working idea wrought out of crude matter 
 after manifold struggling essays towards its own real- 
 ization. In Aristotle we have a similar conception 
 stated in more accurate and scientific language. But, 
 according to Herbert Spencer, social organization is 
 effected by the spontaneous elevation of material ele- 
 ments, and the adjustment of the relations of matter 
 into structures as these are spontaneously and succes- 
 sively spiritualized, and made capable of the highest 
 and noblest functions and relations. 
 
 This Chapter III., which proposes to define the nature 
 of sociology, begins with what seem to be exact defini- 
 tions, and proceeds with plausible analogies. The critic 
 who follows it with a careful scrutiny is soon con- 
 founded by the dexterity with which the author plays 
 fast and loose with his fundamental notions, and the 
 ease with which he glides from one to another, borne 
 up and onward by the flimsiest and most transparent 
 of metaphors. For example, he starts with the true 
 position, that the shape of the ultimate molecules in any 
 mechanical combination determines the external form 
 of the mass into which they are gathered. He observes 
 next, that in chemical and many' other, if not in all, 
 purely physical adjustments, each combination has a 
 form of crystallization, which is taken to determine its 
 chemical or physical qualities. Here we have function 
 
386 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 dependent on structure. He proceeds to observe, that 
 in living matter the same is true ; for do we not see that 
 the polyp and the begonia, when divided, grow again 
 after the same form as the undivided parent ? " Given, 
 then, the nature of the units, and the nature of the 
 aggregate they form is predetermined." That may be ; 
 but it does not follow that function, as well as shape, 
 depends on structure. It is not on the chemical units 
 as units which enter into water that its properties de- 
 pend, but on their capacity to affect one another when 
 brought into contact. It is not the relative position of 
 the particles which enter into an iron bar that makes it 
 weak or strong, but their mutual action upon one an- 
 other in molecular relations. Let it be granted that 
 the form of a pile of cannon-shot depends altogether 
 on their relative position, it by no means follows that 
 what is true of a pile of cannon-shot explains all that is 
 true of the human brain and the human body, with the 
 functions of life and thought and feeling. Mr. Spencer 
 clears every one of these chasms with flying-leaps ; and, 
 alighting upon that structure which we call society, 
 he concludes, that, as in all lower forms of being the 
 properties or functions depend on the arrangement of 
 the units, so is it with that social structure of which the 
 units are living and thinking men and women. He 
 does, indeed, condescend to say in passing, " Those who 
 have been brought up in the belief that there is one 
 law for the rest of the universe and another law for 
 mankind will doubtless be astonished by the proposal 
 to include aggregates of men in this generalization." 
 They are astonished, and with reason. 
 
 We submit, moreover, that such reasoning strictly 
 construed overthrows the doctrine of evolution as a suc- 
 cession of processes of differentiation and integration. 
 If "the properties of the units determine the whole 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 387 
 
 they make up," then the aggregate equals the sum of 
 the units ; and its functions are expressed by the sum 
 of their united force. Now, it is clear to us, that the 
 aggregates called the human heart and the human 
 liver and the human brain as organs with functions are 
 something more than the sum of the units which compose 
 them ; and it ought to be equally clear to Mr. Spencer, 
 that, if the doctrine of evolution is true, any lower 
 structure of aggregates has the power to transform 
 itself, that is, its own units, into structures which differ 
 from itself in higher capacities and functions. That is, 
 a unit with a given structure or mechanical disposition 
 of molecules not only has the capacity for exercising the 
 functions which this structure makes possible, but, by 
 the aid of a new environment, of evolving another 
 molecular structure with other functions. 
 
 Mr. Spencer barely saves himself from persisting in 
 this oversight of his own essential principle of evolu- 
 tion, by introducing, almost by accident, two qualifying 
 clauses, in which he represents social aggregates to be 
 more than added units. " It " (social science) " has to 
 explain how slight modifications of individual nature, 
 arising under modified conditions of life, make some- 
 what larger aggregates possible ; " and again, u It has to 
 exhibit the stronger and more prolonged social influ- 
 ences, which, by further modifying the characters of the 
 units, facilitate aggregation with further complexity of 
 social structure." 
 
 It must be obvious to any one familiar with this kind 
 of reasoning, that the words structure, function, organs 
 and organism, growth and development, are capable of a 
 great variety of significations ; and these may be easily 
 interchanged with one another by a confident and care- 
 less thinker. A well-known president of the great 
 republic once made himself notorious by calling himself 
 
388 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 " an old public functionary ; " and it is no secret that 
 another was willing to be any " organ " of the people, 
 and boasted that he had been evolved through all the 
 organs intermediate from an alderman up to a president 
 by accident. In such connections these terms seem 
 simple and unambiguous. But when we ask what there 
 is in "the structure " of the commonwealth which pro- 
 duces the organ, or in the structure of " the organ " 
 which enables it to fulfil successively all the varied func- 
 tions from an alderman up to a president, the analogies 
 begin to be uncertain. Moreover, when Comte contends 
 that the highest conceivable perfection of the social 
 structure, and that to which it tends by the law of prog- 
 ress, will be reached when " the individual life shall be 
 subordinated in the greatest degree to the social life," 
 and when Spencer contends that this perfection will be 
 realized under the law of evolution, "when social life 
 will have no other end than to maintain the completest 
 sphere for individual life," we have reason to conclude 
 that the so-called social organism of which the units are 
 intelligent and free includes elements and relations 
 which are very different from those concerned with the 
 form of a pile of cannon-balls, or the shaping of a crys- 
 tal, or even the determination of the functions of a 
 living vegetable or animal. We repeat, that we find no 
 objection to the terms organism, growth, structure, and 
 development. But we find in them, when used in a 
 science of sociology which concerns human beings, rela- 
 tions which are higher than any which mechanism im- 
 plies. To our thinking, they suppose life and spirit, 
 intelligence and personality, freedom and God, in the 
 universe. For these very reasons we cannot consent 
 that they should be turned to baser uses by any kind of 
 philosophical legerdemain, or be employed to dignify 
 and recommend a materialistic view of the forces which 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 389 
 
 control human society, or an atheistic theory of human 
 progress. 
 
 We have said enough of the vagueness of Spencer's 
 conception Of structure and organization and growth 
 when used to explain the nature of social science. In 
 the subsequent part of this chapter he proceeds to 
 " make more definite the conception of a social science " 
 by laying down a few propositions respecting the rela- 
 tions of structure to organization and growth. They 
 are like the following : u Take the general fact, that, 
 along with social aggregation, there always goes some 
 kind of organization." " A differentiation of the origi- 
 nally homogeneous mass of units into a co-ordinating 
 part and a co-ordinated part is the indispensable initial 
 step." "Along with evolution of societies in size there 
 goes evolution of their co-ordinating centres, which, 
 having become permanent, presently become more or 
 less complex." "Men rise into the state of social 
 aggregation on condition that they lapse into relations 
 of inequality in respect of power, and are made to co- 
 operate as a whole only by the agency of a structure 
 securing obedience." " At a higher stage, the power of 
 the chief being well established, he no longer supports 
 himself." 
 
 The relation between structure and growth is also 
 illustrated in order to show that great growth is impos- 
 sible without a complicated structure, and conversely 
 that a complex structure tends to arrest growth, as 
 is seen in appliances for locomotion, drainage, trade, and 
 education, the organs of which, like those of an animal 
 body, first facilitate and then hinder growth. These posi- 
 tions are doubtless designed to shed further light on the 
 nature of sociology as a science, but they all assume the 
 position which has never yet been proved ; viz., that 
 these fundamental conceptions have the same import in 
 
390 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 the so-called mechanical, vital, and social organisms. 
 Upon this much-questioned point the entire chapter 
 throws not a ray of light, however ; and we are conse- 
 quently left as much in the dark at the end as we found 
 ourselves at the beginning. 
 
 The scientific student who requires clear and justified 
 conceptions to begin with might be tempted to close the 
 book in utter disgust and despair, did he not find in 
 Chapter XIV. some ground for hope that it would 
 furnish the needed light as to what sociology is. This 
 chapter is entitled " Preparation in Biology," and pur- 
 ports to show how the scientific study of life is a prep- 
 aration for the scientific study of society. Here, perhaps, 
 the clew may be found which shall explain how the 
 animal is related to the social organism. Early in this 
 chapter the author rises to the doctrine of the develop- 
 ment of organisms one from another, and asserts that 
 this is essential to sociology in its complete and highest 
 achievement. He remarks of Comte, — 
 
 " Nor did he arrive at that conception of the social science which 
 alone fully affiliates it upon the simpler sciences, — the conception 
 of it as an account of the most complex forms of that continuous 
 redistribution of matter and motion which is going on universally. 
 Only when it is seen that the transformations passed through dur- 
 ing the growth, maturity, and decay of a society conform to the 
 same principles as do the transformations passed through by aggre- 
 gates of all orders, inorganic and organic ; only when it is seen 
 that the process is in all cases similarly determined by forces, and is 
 not scientifically interpreted until it is expressed in terms of those 
 forces, — only then is there reached the conception of sociology as 
 a science, in the complete meaning of the word." 
 
 After this he proceeds to show the relation of the 
 two sciences : — 
 
 " There are two distinct and equally important ways in which 
 these sciences are connected. In the first place, all social actions 
 being determined by the actions of individuals, and all actions of 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 391 
 
 individuals being vital actions that conform to the laws of life at 
 large, a rational interpretation of social actions implies knowledge 
 of the laws of life. In the second place, a society as a whole, con- 
 sidered apart from its living units, presents phenomena of growth, 
 structure, and function, like those of growth, structure, and func- 
 tion in an individual body ; and these last are needful keys to the 
 first." 
 
 Taking the second of these positions first, on which 
 the reader will observe the whole question turns, he 
 seeks to show that society, apart from its being com- 
 posed of living units, is analogous to a living organism ; 
 and that the resemblances are more than metaphorical. 
 The parts are mutually dependent : they are diverse in 
 structure, also in function ; and each by its function 
 supplies what the other lacks. These organs communi- 
 cate with one another, they combine with one another, 
 they exchange with one another, they are dominated 
 by a leading organ : all of which is true, but leaves the 
 question still unanswered, whether or not the higher 
 organisms, because of their points of similarity, may be 
 held to be evolved from one another, or whether the 
 operations of the higher can be explained by the laws 
 of the lower ; i.e., whether life does not possess prop- 
 erties which inorganic relations can neither attain to 
 nor account for, and whether social organisms in their 
 turn are not the products of special social propensities 
 and forces. These questions the author does not raise, 
 and certainly does not answer them, but leaves us at 
 the end, as when he met us at the beginning, with the 
 assertion, that the doctrine of development in the two 
 alternate processes of differentiation and integration 
 accounts for all kinds of institutions, as also for every 
 order of existing beings and phenomena. 
 
 It is characteristic of the author, that, having finished 
 what he has to say of biology as a preparation for 
 
392 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 sociology, lie rushes into a long, haranguing discourse 
 on the impolicy of state patronage, interference, and 
 assistance, in respect to the public health, calamities, 
 poverty, education, beyond those limits which biology 
 would dictate when it has established its inductions. It 
 is a small consolation to be told, that in the mean time 
 sociology must wait, and for a long time, till biology 
 has reached and vindicated its own inductions, when 
 sociology may borrow and apply them. 
 
 Thus far we have followed Spencer's exposition of the 
 science, which, in a sense, he claims to have first ade- 
 quately conceived. This exposition occupies only a 
 small portion of the volume, — at the most but two or 
 three chapters. The remaining chapters, are, however, 
 even more significant. They consist of an exposition of 
 the difficulties which stand in the way of the mastery of 
 this science by its leaders, and of its reception by their 
 disciples. Mr. Spencer does not profess to have himself 
 mastered these details. He has only discovered that 
 such a science may be constructed. He has not entered 
 the promised land. He has only seen it from Pisgah, 
 and marked out its boundaries, and assured his followers 
 that it invites to conquest and possession. Meanwhile 
 the difficulties which stand in the way are manifold and 
 almost insuperable. It would seem that centuries must 
 elapse before these can be set aside and overcome. 
 These difficulties are divided into three, roughly classed 
 as objective and subjective plus several distinctive 
 biases. The examples of these difficulties are of a very 
 varied character, and are drawn from the author's 
 abundant reading, and from events and statements of a 
 very piquant and striking, not to say sensational and 
 startling, character. Many of them are offensive to the 
 taste. Not a few of them are indecent in their sugges- 
 tions, and are positively flippant, if not blasphemous, in 
 
SPENCER *8 THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 393 
 
 their treatment of sacred objects, and the feelings of 
 those to whom they are sacred. Many of them, on the 
 other hand, are interesting and striking, even when they 
 do not seem to be pertinent or convincing. Very few 
 of them, however, are fitted to strengthen respect for 
 the sagacity of political leaders or reformers, of moral- 
 ists or statesmen, or for the honesty or competency of 
 Christian teachers, or for the intelligence or benevo- 
 lence of Christian nations. The world, according to 
 Mr. Spencer, is in a very bad way, literally perishing for 
 the lack of sociology ; and the difficulties are manifold 
 and insuperable in the way of its deliverance. In illus- 
 tration of a single so-called objective arising from a sub- 
 jective difficulty in the way of gaining a misjudgment 
 of a fact, the author devotes seven pages (84-90) to 
 the exhibition of the evidence that an entirely " false 
 state of facts " had been accepted by the English public 
 concerning the very rapid spread of the venereal disease 
 as a motive to active public interference by statute for 
 its repression. In illustration of the tendency to mingle 
 inferences very largely with observation, he notices the 
 unfounded conclusions which had been derived from 
 statistics concerning the relative mortality of married 
 and single persons. The objective difficulties in which 
 no subjective modifications are blended are the vast 
 spaces from which the facts must be gathered and gen- 
 eralized, the enormous length of time along which their 
 succession is to be traced, both of which are forcibly 
 illustrated. From the author's discussion of many of 
 these topics valuable results may be derived. 
 
 The subjective difficulties proper begin in the sixth 
 chapter, with those which are " Intellectual." The 
 author begins with a lively story of a mother who im- 
 patiently scolds her child in a railway-car, because it 
 displays a restless curiosity which the mother has out- 
 
394 SPENCER'S TIIEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 grown, and cites this to illustrate the anthropomorphic 
 tendency to judge the operations of others' minds by our 
 own. This is a very formidable obstacle in the way of 
 our judging of the condition of the communities unlike 
 ourselves in which we propose to effect changes by soci- 
 ological appliances. The error here is twofold, — the 
 belief, on the one hand, that man is the same in all 
 times, and the belief, on the other, that human nature 
 may be readily altered. The double belief which at once 
 reconciles and corrects the two extremes, and which is 
 essential to a sound sociology, is " the belief that human 
 nature is indefinitely modifiable, but that no modifica- 
 tion of it can be brought about rapidly." No sound 
 social or political philosopher can object to this principle 
 within certain limits. But as held by Mr. Spencer, as 
 the logical outcome of the doctrine of evolution, it 
 means that every thing which we call human nature, in 
 its holiest and most refined judgments and feelings, is 
 the product of circumstances. Consequently the sacred 
 and the profane, the decent and the gross, the decorous 
 and the lewd, are the creatures of environment and 
 association. Several of the stories told in this chapter 
 to illustrate the want of plasticity in the conceptions of 
 men are sufficiently indecent to exemplify the superior 
 plasticity of Mr. Spencer's own conceptions of what is 
 decorous in a writer for the present decade. We quote 
 one of the least objectionable : — 
 
 " That monogamy is not the only kind of marriage, we are early 
 taught by our Bible-lessons. But, though the conception of polyg- 
 amy is thus made somewhat familiar, it does not occur to us that 
 polyandry is also a possible arrangement ; and we are surprised on 
 first learning that it exists, and was once extremely general. When 
 we contemplate these marital institutions unlike our own, we cannot 
 at first imagine that they are practised with a sense of propriety 
 like that with which we practise ours. Yet Livingstone narrates, 
 that, in a tribe bordering one of the Central- African lakes, the 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 395 
 
 women were quite disgusted on hearing that in England a man has 
 only one wife. This is a feeling by no means peculiar to them." 
 
 In order still further to exemplify the want of plas- 
 ticity which enables us " to see ourselves as others see 
 us," he gives six pages (139-144) to an observer in the 
 far future of the English people of to-day as they might 
 be interpreted by records and fossil and other remains. 
 Of this we quote the following : — 
 
 " This mention of their missionary enterprises introduces other 
 remarkable anomalies. Being anxious to get adherents to this 
 creed, which they adopted in name, but not in fact, they sent out 
 men to various parts of the world to propagate it, — one part, 
 among others, being that subjugated territory above named. There 
 the English missionaries taught the gentle precepts of their faith, 
 and there the officers employed by their government exemplified 
 these precepts : one of the exemplifications being, that, to put down 
 a riotous sect, they took fifty out of sixty-six who had surrendered, 
 and, without any trial, blew them from the guns, as they called it, 
 — tied them to the mouths of cannon, and shattered their bodies to 
 pieces. And then, curiously enough, having thus taught and thus 
 exemplified their religion, they expressed great surprise at the fact, 
 that the only converts their missionaries could obtain among these 
 people were hypocrites, and men of character so bad that no one 
 would employ them." 
 
 Of the bearing of seven-eighths of this chapter on 
 sociology it would be difficult to find any evidence. 
 
 Passing over the seventh chapter, we come to the 
 eighth, on the " Educational Bias," which exhibits the 
 theory of ethics as held by the author to be at once as 
 shallow and as false as could easily be conceived, and 
 by consequence to imply a theory of social progress 
 which is equally defective. It opens with the fol- 
 lowing : — 
 
 " It would clear up our ideas about many things, if we distinctly 
 recognized the truth, that we have two religions. Primitive 
 humanity has but one. The humanity of the remote future will 
 
396 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 have but one. The two are opposed, and we who live midway in 
 the course of civilization have to believe in both. These two reli- 
 gions are adapted to two conflicting sets of social requirements." 
 
 " On the one hand, there must be social self-preservation in 
 face of external enemies. On the other hand, there must be co- 
 operation among fellow-citizens, which can exist only in proportion 
 as fair dealing of man with man creates mutual trust. ... In 
 adjustment of these two conflicting requirements, there grow up 
 two conflicting codes of duty, which severally acquire supernatural 
 sanctions. And thus we get the two co-existing religions, — the 
 religion of enmity and the religion of amity." 
 
 " The religion of enmity nearly all men actually believe. The 
 religion of amity most of them merely believe they believe." 
 
 " From the books of the Jewish New Testament we take our 
 religion of amity. Greek and Latin epics and histories serve as 
 gospels for our religion of enmity. . . . The nobility of self- 
 sacrifice, set forth in Scripture-lessons and dwelt on in sermons, 
 is made conspicuous every seventh day ; while, during the other 
 six days, the nobility of sacrificing others is exhibited in glowing 
 words." 
 
 The alleged incompatibility between the two creeds 
 is illustrated by an incompatibility alleged to be equally 
 extreme confessed between the Christian faith and the 
 scientific physics of Faraday : — 
 
 "A late distinguished physicist, whose science and religion 
 seemed to his friends irreconcilable, retained both for the reason 
 that he deliberately refused to compare the propositions of the 
 one with those of the other. To speak in metaphor, when he 
 entered his oratory, he shut the door of his laboratory ; and, when 
 he entered his laboratory, he shut the door of his oratory. It is 
 because they habitually do something similar, that men live so con- 
 tentedly under this logically indefensible compromise between their 
 two creeds." 
 
 " The religion of amity and the religion of enmity, with the 
 emotions they respectively enlist, are important factors in sociolo- 
 gical conclusions ; and rational sociological conclusions can be pro- 
 duced only when both sets of factors come into play. We have to 
 look at each cluster of social facts as a phase in a continuous meta- 
 morphosis. We have to look at the conflicting religious beliefs and 
 
SPENCER* 8 THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 397 
 
 feelings included in this cluster of facts as elements in this phase. 
 We have to do more. We have to consider as transitional, also, 
 the conflicting religious beliefs and feelings in which we are brought 
 up, and which distort our views, not only of passing phenomena 
 in our own society, but also of phenomena in other societies and 
 in other times ; and the aberrations they cause in our inferences 
 have to be sought for and rectified. Of these two religions taught 
 us, we must constantly remember, that during civilization the reli- 
 gion of enmity is slowly losing strength, while the religion of amity 
 is slowly gaining strength. We must bear in mind, that at each 
 stage a certain ratio between them has to be maintained. We 
 must infer that the existing ratio is only a temporary one, and 
 that the resulting bias to this or that conviction respecting social 
 affairs is temporary." 
 
 The author's theory of ethics is this : Every act and 
 feeling which terminates in ourselves is essentially in- 
 compatible with every act and feeling which benefits 
 another. In other words, a man cannot in any sense 
 love himself or care for himself without hating his 
 neighbor. Moreover, every act of injury to another, 
 whatever be the occasion or the motive, is of necessity 
 dictated by the spirit of enmity. To act for the welfare 
 of ourselves is incompatible with the exercise of a feel- 
 ing or activity which may benefit others. Every act of 
 self-concern or self-defence or aggression in any form of 
 war is dictated by hatred to others. The two tenden- 
 cies are, however, necessary in man's at present imper- 
 fect state. They must continue in inevitable antagonism 
 until society is so modified that the interests of others 
 shall necessarily coincide with our own. When the 
 social forces are re-adjusted, every man must promote 
 his own welfare through every act which promotes that 
 of others. Then and not till then will society attain the 
 perfection to which sociology tends to conduct it. The 
 theory of morals outlined in this volume is more fully 
 expanded in the " Data of Ethics." 
 
398 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 His interpretation of the religion of enmity as taught 
 and accepted by Christendom is singularly paradoxical. 
 That men ought to hate their enemies, or that it is in 
 itself noble to sacrifice them, no man teaches and no 
 man believes. What is extolled in war are skill and 
 courage and self-sacrifice, and chiefly because of their 
 heroic, unselfish aspects, but never the spirit of hate and 
 murder. It may be that men from selfish impulses often 
 devise pretexts for needless and cruel wars. But the 
 pretexts and excuses which they plead are uniformly 
 in reasons of benevolence and virtue and justice. To 
 reason, because men act against their convictions and 
 their religions, and in so doing seek for flimsy pretexts 
 to excuse or defend these acts, that therefore they 
 must believe their actions right, or because under the 
 present imperfect state of society men must necessarily 
 practise "the religion of enmity," that therefore their 
 actions are not wrong, is to fall into fallacies which have 
 been refuted often enough not to need to be refuted 
 again. All these fallacies are accepted and reiterated 
 by the author. 
 
 The religion or ethics of unqualified altruism is as- 
 sumed to be the Christian law, and this is conceived to 
 be as extreme and one-sided as the religion of unquali- 
 fied egoism. " Against the doctrine of. entire selfish- 
 ness it sets the doctrine of entire self-sacrifice." " In 
 place of the aboriginal creed not requiring you to love 
 your fellow-man at all, . . . there came a creed 
 directing . . . that you shall love him as yourself. 
 Nineteen centuries have since wrought some compro- 
 mise between these opposite creeds. It has never been 
 rational, however, but only empirical, — mainly, indeed, 
 unconscious compromise. There is not yet a distinct 
 recognition of what truth each extreme stands for, and 
 a perception that the two truths must be co-ordinated." 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 399 
 
 If Mr. Spencer's theory is to be taken as the last and 
 best interpretation of the Christian ethics, we certainly 
 give our assent to this statement. There are not a few 
 well-taught Sunday-school children, however, who have 
 a more enlightened theory of the Christian law of duty 
 than Spencer finds in the New Testament. 
 
 The remainder and much the larger portion of this 
 chapter on the " Educational Bias " is devoted to the 
 illustration of the overweening influence of the military 
 spirit, and the excessive homage which is paid to the 
 military virtues and to military heroes, ostensibly for the 
 purpose of exemplifying the operation of the religion 
 of enmity. Both lines of argument are made to con- 
 verge in the dreary conclusion, that, till society is per- 
 fected, we must do the best we can, and let the pendu- 
 lum vibrate hither and there between the religions of 
 amity and enmity, till the equilibrium shall be attained 
 in that perfectly balanced society which sociology con- 
 templates as its ideal, — but, so far as we can see, helps 
 us very little towards making a reality. 
 
 The " Bias of Patriotism " is discussed in the ninth 
 chapter, in which the author gives us much lively and 
 piquant writing in illustration of the over-estimate of 
 their country and its doings by the French and Ger- 
 mans respectively. This is followed by a very long series 
 of comments on anti-patriotism as exemplified by Mr. 
 Matthew Arnold in his over-appreciation of the French 
 as contrasted with the English in many lines of science 
 and culture. The bearing of this very lively chapter 
 upon sociology is very remote. 
 
 The " Class Bias " and the " Political Bias " fill the 
 two chapters following, in which there is nothing special 
 to notice save the remoteness of the positions taken and 
 the facts adduced from any very significant or direct 
 application to sociology. 
 
400 SPENCER'S THEOBY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 The twelfth chapter, which follows, on the " Theolo- 
 gical Bias," has attracted special public attention, rather 
 on account of its offensive and contemptuous illustrations 
 than because of any novelty in the opinions expressed. 
 Similar opinions are freely asserted in Spencer's other 
 works. His rejection of any possible divine communi- 
 cation of truth to man, or the manifestation of any 
 divine or supernatural personality, is distinctly avowed 
 in his graver treatises. His position that agnosticism 
 is the only creed which an enlightened philosopher can 
 hold in respect to the Infinite and Self-Existent, in which 
 he acknowledges we must believe, and the kindred doc- 
 trine that every form of theological truth must neces- 
 sarily be temporary in its duration, and every form of 
 positive faith must give way before progressive scientific 
 illumination, has been distinctly avowed and carefully 
 defended elsewhere. The re-assertion of these doctrines 
 in this volume was to be expected, and ought not to 
 bring any special reprobation. That which distin- 
 guishes this volume is the open expression of sarcastic 
 contempt by illustrations and comparisons, which remind 
 us forcibly of Voltaire and Paine, for both of whom 
 manifold excuses might be found which Spencer cannot 
 plead. The fact that these examples are but few does 
 not furnish any sufficient defence of those which do 
 occur. We cite one or two of the least offensive. After 
 copying from a traveller a horrid recital of the cannibal- 
 ism of the Fijians in imitation and honor of their gods, 
 Mr. Spencer proceeds to say, — 
 
 " Such being the account of the Samoans, and such the account 
 of the Fijians, let us ask what the Fijians think of the Samoans. 
 ' The Fijians looked upon the Samoans with horror, because they 
 had no religion, no belief in any such deities [as the Fijian], nor 
 any of the sanguinary rites which prevailed in other islands,' — a 
 statement quite in harmony with that made by Jackson, who, hav- 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY, 401 
 
 ing behaved disrespectfully to one of their gods, was angrily called 
 by them ' the white infidel.' 
 
 " Any one may read, while running, the lesson conveyed, and, 
 without stopping to consider much, may see its application to the 
 beliefs and sentiments of civilized races. The ferocious Fijian 
 doubtless thinks, that to devour a human victim in the name of one 
 of his cannibal gods is a meritorious act ; while he thinks that his 
 Samoan neighbor, who makes no sacrifice to these cannibal gods, 
 but is just and kind to his fellows, thereby shows that meanness 
 goes along with his shocking irreligion. Construing the facts in 
 this way, the Fijian can form no rational conception of Samoan 
 society. With vices and virtues interchanged in conformity with 
 his creed, the benefits of certain social arrangements, if he thinks 
 about them at all, must seem evils, and the evils benefits. 
 
 " Speaking generally, then, each system of dogmatic theology, 
 with the sentiments that gather round it, becomes an impediment 
 in the way of social science. The sympathies drawn out towards 
 one creed, and the correlative antipathies aroused by other creeds, 
 distort the interpretations of all the associated facts." 
 
 He argues further, what is true of a general is also true 
 of a special theological bias : — 
 
 " Everywhere, indeed, the special theological bias accompanying 
 a special set of doctrines inevitably prejudges many sociological 
 questions. One who holds a creed as absolutely true, and who by 
 implication holds the multitudinous other creeds to be absolutely 
 false in so far as they differ from his own, cannot entertain the 
 supposition that the value of a creed is relative. That a particular 
 religious system is, in a general sense, a natural part of the partic- 
 ular society in which it is found, is an entirely alien conception, 
 and, indeed, a repugnant one. His system of dogmatic theology he 
 thinks good for all places and all times. . . . Thus prepos- 
 sessed, he passes over the proofs found everywhere, that a people is 
 no more capable of suddenly receiving a higher form of religion 
 than it is capable of suddenly receiving a higher form of govern- 
 ment ; and that inevitably with such religion as with such govern- 
 ment, there will go on a degradation which presently reduces it to 
 one differing but nominally from its predecessor. In other words, 
 his special theological bias blinds him to an important class of soci- 
 ological truths." 
 
402 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 Designing to be impartial, he turns to the antitheo- 
 logical bias ; and, after giving instances of antitheistic 
 iconoclasm from heathendom and Christendom, he pro- 
 ceeds, with that charming candor which he occasionally 
 affects, to show, that, inasmuch as motives addressed to 
 the reason have comparatively little influence upon the 
 conduct and characters of men in comparison with what 
 addresses their feelings, therefore superstitious and posi- 
 tive religions will be an inevitable necessity for long 
 seons before that millennium when sociological truth 
 shall shine by its own light and warm from its own fires. 
 He concludes by repeating what is very familiar to the 
 reader of his other writings, his confession of faith. Of 
 the object of religious faith he says, — 
 
 " The process of evolution, which has gradually modified and 
 advanced men's conceptions of the universe, will continue to modify 
 and advance them during the future. The ideas of cause and 
 origin, which have been slowly changing, will change still further. 
 But no changes in them, even when pushed to the extreme, will ex- 
 pel them from consciousness ; and hence there can never be an ex- 
 tinction of the correlative sentiments. No more in this than in 
 other things, will evolution alter its general direction : it will con- 
 tinue along the same lines as hitherto. And, if we wish to see 
 whither it tends, we have to observe how there has been thus far a 
 decreasing concreteness of the consciousness to which the religious 
 sentiment is related, to infer that hereafter this concreteness will 
 further diminish ; leaving behind a substance of consciousness for 
 which there is no adequate form, but which is none the less persist- 
 ent and powerful." 
 
 Religion subjectively viewed, or the religious sentiment, 
 is thus characterized : — 
 
 " Without seeming so, the development of religious sentiment 
 has been continuous from the beginning ; and its nature when a 
 germ was the same as is its nature when fully developed. The 
 savage first shows it in the feeling excited by a display of power in 
 another exceeding his own power, — some skill, some sagacity, in 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 403 
 
 his chief, leading to a result he does not understand, — something 
 which has the element of mystery and arouses his wonder. . . . 
 The hypothesis of atoms and molecules enables them to work out 
 multitudinous interpretations that are verified by experiment, but 
 the ultimate unit of matter admits of no consistent conception. 
 Instead of the particular mysteries presented by those actions of 
 matter they have explained, there rises into prominence the mystery 
 which matter universally presents, and which proves to be absolute. 
 So that, beginning with the germinal idea of mystery, which the 
 savage gets from a display of power in another transcending his 
 own, and the germinal sentiment of awe accompanying it, the prog- 
 ress is towards an ultimate recognition of a mystery behind every 
 act and appearance, and a transfer of the awe from something 
 special and occasional to something universal and unceasing." 
 
 From atheism, or the religion of humanity, lie expresses 
 his dissent as follows : — 
 
 " No one need expect, then, that the religious consciousness will 
 die away, or will change the lines of its evolution. . . . That 
 the object-matter can be replaced by another object-matter, as sup- 
 posed by those who think the ' Religion of Humanity ' will be the 
 religion of the future, is a belief countenanced neither by induc- 
 tion nor by deduction. However dominant may become the moral 
 sentiment enlisted on behalf of humanity, it can never exclude the 
 sentiment, alone properly called religious, awakened by that which 
 is behind humanity, and behind all other things." 
 
 The summary of the Spencerian or agnostic creed 
 is forcibly stated in the following lines by another 
 writer : — 
 
 " At the end of every road there stands a wall, 
 Not built by hands, — impenetrable, bare. 
 Behind it lies an unknown land. And all 
 The paths men plod tend to it, and end there. 
 
 Each man, according to his humor, paints 
 
 On that bare wall strange landscapes, dark or bright, 
 
 Peopled with forms of fiends or forms of saints, 
 Hells of Despair or Edens of Delight. 
 
404 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 Then to his fellows, ' Tremble ! ' or ' Rejoice ! ' 
 The limner cries, ' for, lo ! the Land beyond 1 ' 
 
 And ever, acquiescent to his voice, 
 Faint echoes from that painted wall respond. 
 
 But now and then, with sacrilegious hand, 
 
 Some one wipes off those painted landscapes all, 
 
 Muttering, ' O fools, and slow to understand, 
 Behold your bourn, — the impenetrable wall I ' 
 
 Whereat an eager, angered crowd exclaims, 
 
 * Better than yon dead wall, though pale and faint, 
 
 Our faded Edens ! Better fiends and flames 
 By Fancy painted in her coarsest paint 
 
 * On the blind, bald, unquestionable face 
 Of that obstruction, than its cold, unclad, 
 
 Uncallous emptiness, without a trace 
 Of any prospect, either good or bad.' 
 
 And straightway the old work begins again 
 Of picture-painting. And men shout, and call 
 
 For response to their pleasure or their pain, 
 Getting back echoes from that painted wall." 
 
 Of this chapter on the " Theological Bias " we have 
 only to say, as of many passages scattered through the 
 volume, that it is difficult to determine whether it gives 
 more decided evidence of ignorance, narrowness, conceit, 
 or virulence. The writer seems to be ignorant of the 
 fact, that very many Christian theologians and writers 
 have commented as severely as he has done upon the im- 
 potence of a right intellectual belief separated from a 
 sympathizing and man-loving ethics, and that the New 
 Testament itself overflows at every pore with this vi- 
 talizing truth. He is not excusably ignorant, however ; 
 for his contempt of Christian theology and ethics, and 
 the philosophy which both suppose, is too frequently 
 and broadly expressed to be capable of being referred 
 to any other category than what he styles " the religion 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 405 
 
 of enmity " and scorn. That this contemptuous or 
 affected ignorance is narrow is evident from the fact, 
 that in not a single passage of all his works is there any 
 warm or appreciating sympathy with the progress of 
 the peculiarly Christian emotions or Christian virtue or 
 Christian civilization ; still further from the fact, that 
 though in some of his later works, and notably in the 
 fifteenth chapter of this book, he has laid special stress 
 on the emotions as the great force by which man is to 
 be elevated, and has recognized religion in some form as 
 a perpetual necessity to man, he has rarely, if ever, 
 suffered to escape him a word of fervent admiration for 
 the ideal of life which Christianity has held aloft before 
 so many generations to elevate their aspirations and 
 subdue their passions, nor for the Christ whose inspir- 
 ing force, whether he be real or ideal, has been grate- 
 fully and admiringly acknowledged by all magnanimous 
 souls who have studied the comparative history of the 
 religions of mankind. That his narrowness springs 
 from conceit is evident from the supercilious disdain 
 with which he passes over all the cosmogonies of the 
 men who have sought to construct a theory of the 
 world's development on the basis of human freedom 
 and responsibility, and treats with special slight those 
 Christian theists who have accounted for the order of 
 the world's arrangement by the fiat of the Creating 
 will, and the evolution of the world's history from 
 nature to man by the continuous unity of the Creator's 
 plan and purpose. His conceit is abundantly manifest 
 in his confident statements concerning the opinions of 
 men of whom he has only second-hand knowledge, and 
 the assurance with which he criticises opinions and sys- 
 tems which he very imperfectly appreciates. 
 
 Were this volume open to no special objection on in- 
 tellectual grounds for its want of clearness and method, 
 
406 SPENCER'S TEEOBT OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 its intellectual temper, if we may use such a phrase, 
 lays it open to the severest criticism. If Socrates was 
 right in insisting that candor and docility and caution 
 and self-distrust and patience and charity are the prime 
 conditions for success in philosophy, especially for 
 beginners, then a treatise which exemplifies so offen- 
 sively the opposites of these virtues must be almost the 
 worst possible introduction to a science, which, in the 
 judgment of its professed master-builders, is as yet in 
 its rudimentary condition. 
 
 We cannot withhold the remark in this connection, 
 that great as are the evils to which the indiscriminating 
 devotees of Spencer are exposed in the weakening of 
 their traditional faith in Christian theism and Christian 
 ethics, and much as these are to be deplored, these evils 
 are, in our view, by no means so serious as the danger 
 of surrendering their intellectual and moral being to 
 sophistical and shallow methods of inquiry. A man 
 may lose his faith for a while, or be tossed for a longer 
 or shorter season upon a sea of doubt. His old belief 
 he may recover again, and hold it the more strongly and 
 value it the more highly for the labor which it has cost 
 him to regain it, and the renewed joy with which he has 
 recovered his prize. But if the man has yielded his in- 
 tellect to false methods of inquiry, and sold himself to 
 sophistical ways of judgment and shallow and unworthy 
 reasons for Ins belief, he can rarely recover from the fatal 
 lesion to his intellectual and moral nature. So far as 
 we have observed, converts to the Spencerian philoso- 
 phy are not recruited in the legitimate method of 
 beginning with their author's theory of knowledge and 
 a careful scrutiny of his " First Principles." Those 
 who begin at this point rarely desire to go farther. 
 They find so much to question and reject, — the logic is 
 so incoherent, the definitions are so vacillating, and the 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 407 
 
 inductions so venturesome, — that they neither desire 
 nor dare to follow so untrustworthy a leader. The 
 men whom he usually attracts are those who begin with 
 a specialty, either in politics or physiology or history, 
 who, being little versed in philosophy, are prepared in 
 their days of ambitious and manifold reading to accept 
 with an easy faith almost any splendid generalizations 
 which will stimulate the imagination and satisfy rapid 
 and daring hypotheses. Were every student of this new 
 school compelled to begin with Spencer's u Principles of 
 Psychology " and his " First Principles," and were both 
 of these works provided with a thorough and exhaustive 
 index which would compel the reader to compare every 
 term and definition as used in every place, there would, 
 in our opinion, be very little change in the study of this 
 greatly dreaded philosophy in any of its applications. 
 To study it after a proper method, with a mind compe- 
 tently trained after the rigid and honest ways of defini- 
 tion and reasoning, would inevitably be to reject it. If 
 its evolutionary and agnostic assumptions were seen 
 to be invalid, the special applications to ethics and 
 sociology would of necessity lapse. We believe that 
 most of the currency and plausibility which Spencer's 
 materialistic evolutionism and his antitheistic agnosti- 
 cism have gained with his confiding and admiring 
 disciples has been reflected back from the imposing 
 array of facts and instances which he has marshalled 
 from his enormous reading, and the brilliant hierarchies 
 of his generalization. It is beyond all question, that he 
 has devised the most comprehensive and shortest way of 
 answering many questions that has recently been in- 
 vented, and therefore is admirably fitted to addle the 
 weak and empty-headed, and even to intoxicate heads 
 which are strong and self-confident. 
 
 We are tempted to notice one or two remarks in the 
 
408 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 concluding chapter. In reviewing the biases and diffi- 
 culties in the way of a completed and triumphant soci- 
 ology, the author is led to ask what is to be expected 
 from this long discussion in the way of removing these 
 difficulties. The answer which he gives reminds us of 
 the comment of the Prince in u Rasselas," who, after 
 hearing the disquisition of Imlac on poetry, exclaims, 
 " Enough ! thou hast convinced me that no human 
 being can ever be a poet." Similarly Mr. Spencer asks 
 a series of questions beginning with the following: 
 " What is to be hoped from such a presentation of diffi- 
 culties, and such a programme of preparatory studies ? " 
 " Who will think it needful to fit himself by inquiries so 
 various and extensive ? " He answers thus : " To these 
 questions there can be but the obvious reply, — a reply 
 which the foregoing chapters themselves involve, — that 
 very little is to be expected" And the reason given as 
 the outcome of his discussions is, that, according to the 
 law of evolution, the feelings and thoughts of every man, 
 which include the desires and science of every man, 
 being the product of his age, cannot rise very greatly 
 above it. The practical conclusion is, Do not greatly 
 disturb yourself about reform or human progress in 
 yourself or others, neither about private morals nor 
 public institutions. You cannot make over the world 
 or yourself any faster than at a certain pace ; and though 
 it is well to gain as much sociology and apply as much 
 sociology as you can, yet the world will be sociologi- 
 cally reformed at a very slow rate. This small ending 
 of this magnificent beginning, when briefly stated, is 
 this : Take the world easily, gain what light you can, 
 and apply what reforms you may. 
 
 " Thus admitting, that for the fanatic some wild anticipation is 
 needful as a stimulus, and recognizing the usefulness of his delu- 
 sion as adapted to his particular nature and his particular function, 
 
SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 409 
 
 the man of higher type must be content with greatly moderated 
 expectations, while he perseveres with undiminished efforts. He 
 has to see how comparatively little can be done, and yet to find it 
 worth while to do that little : so uniting philanthropic energy with 
 philosophic calm." 
 
 We observe also, that, in this concluding chapter, Mr. 
 Spencer turns with a half-pathetic, half-contemptuous 
 allusion to men with whom, like Mr. Gladstone, "the 
 belief in divine interposition goes along with, and by 
 no means excludes, the belief in a natural production of 
 effects on society by natural agencies set to work." 
 Any compatibility of the two agencies is, in Mr. Spen- 
 cer's view, wholly illogical ; and he dismisses the sug- 
 gestion with a contemptuous allusion to the resort to 
 prayer in the case of the illness of the Prince of Wales, 
 on occasion of whose recovery "providential aid and 
 natural causation were unitedly recognized by a thanks- 
 giving to God and a baronetcy to the doctor." 
 
 And so he ends this long discussion with the assump- 
 tion with which he begins, that in social phenomena 
 we can only recognize natural causation ; because, for- 
 sooth, if sociology is a science, it can admit no other 
 agencies. It was also assumed, that within the domain 
 of natural law no other theory than that of evolution 
 could for a moment be possibly admitted by any one 
 who can claim to be scientific. These assumptions 
 involve a theory of sociology, which, to all intents and 
 purposes, is substantially atheistic. There are many 
 who believe, that, bad as atheism may be in physics, it 
 is immeasurably more to be dreaded in political and 
 social science. 
 
 Moreover, as the result of this protracted discussion 
 of the difficulties which lie in the way of this science, 
 Mr. Spencer has brought us to the conclusion that the 
 progress must necessarily be very slow, the determina- 
 
410 SPENCER'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 
 
 tion of the forces and laws being independently delayed 
 by their complexity ; and at the end we are left with 
 little more than a general faith in the progressive evolu- 
 tion of sagacity in the student, and of phenomena in 
 society itself. From these facts and conclusions of the 
 author, the theist would be led to the following medita- 
 tion, with which we conclude our criticism. 
 
 We wonder that the thought has never occurred to 
 Mr. Spencer, that possibly those relations in the uni- 
 verse which are supreme and controlling are such as, 
 in common speech, men call personal and moral ; that 
 a self-existent person and created persons, under moral 
 law, and acting for moral ends, are no inconceivable or 
 self-contradictory conceptions; that a universe con- 
 trolled by such relations is as dignified and as philo- 
 sophical a universe as one which depends on moving 
 star-dust for its beginning and its explanation, and 
 which ends in a brilliant explosion as its finale ; that a 
 personal being who creates, sustains, and evolves a plan 
 of progress and development for matter and spirit may 
 possibly subordinate fixed causation to moral purposes 
 without necessarily setting aside scientific law. We 
 might even venture to suggest, that, in a book which 
 cannot have been entirely overlooked in Mr. Spencer's 
 manifold reading, the doctrine of evolution with such 
 elements and such agencies is clearly taught, and anal- 
 ogies from physiological processes are as freely applied 
 to illustrate the progress of the kingdom of heaven and 
 of God as they are by Mr. Spencer himself. We might 
 suggest in conclusion, that with such a philosophy, — the 
 philosophy of Christian theism, — sociology may possi- 
 bly become a far simpler science than is possible on the 
 theory that the known and the knower are mutually de- 
 pendent for what they are to be, and for what they are 
 to know, on the molecules from which each is supposed 
 
SPENCEB'S THEORY OF SOCIOLOGY. 411 
 
 to have been evolved. Moreover, the clew to a perfect 
 society is not left wholly nor mainly to the slow deduc- 
 tions of human experience, and the bitter lessons of 
 human sorrow. It is provided for in the law of love, 
 which, were it perfectly obeyed, would be quick to 
 interpret and prompt to regard the teachings, and ap- 
 ply the lessons, which human experience must gather 
 from social observation and experiment. The province 
 of sociology in the service of Christian faith is, indeed, 
 comparatively simple ; for in all its inductions it is 
 guided by faith in the guidance of an instructing Prov- 
 idence, and in the inspiration of the living God. The 
 student of sociology need never find himself half- 
 stranded between the two seas of "philanthropic en- 
 ergy " and " philosophic calm." He would not need to 
 school himself to sneer at self-sacrificing love and self- 
 denying labor and forgiving patience as weak senti- 
 mentalities, which science must disown and despise, 
 but would find in the very exercise and experience of 
 the sentiments of love and patience and hope the assur- 
 ance that they may be safely followed because they are 
 certain to triumph. He would also find the amplest 
 reason to believe, that in the kingdom of God, which 
 God is even now developing on the earth by natural 
 forces under supernatural guidance, the perfect society 
 will be at last real on the earth ; and the science of soci- 
 ology will be illustrated in a living example when " the 
 tabernacle of God shall be with men, and he will dwell 
 with them, and they shall be his people, and God him- 
 self shall be with them and be their God." 
 
XIII. 
 TEE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL} 
 
 It is not easy to overestimate or to overstate the 
 significance of the publication in 1781 of Kant's " Cri- 
 tique of Pure Reason." It is in no partisan or fanatical 
 spirit that the student of philosophy and of human 
 progress observes the centennial year of 1881 in com- 
 memoration of this event, by reviewing the significant 
 changes in human thinking and human institutions — 
 in philosophy and science, in literature and art, in ethics 
 and theology — which may be properly referred to Kant 
 and his great treatise. It is of comparatively little 
 importance what interpretations we give to the leading 
 positions of this memorable work, or what opinions we 
 may hold of their truth or falsehood. We may hold 
 that the conclusions of the author are uncertain or 
 vacillating, that they are wholly or partly true or false ; 
 and yet we may most fervently and rationally believe 
 that he rendered a service to philosophy, to culture, 
 and to faith which should make him immortal. 
 
 This service may be described in a word. The " Cri- 
 tique of Pure Reason " raised questions for human 
 speculation which could never afterwards remain unan- 
 swered. It proposed problems to philosophy which 
 philosophy was compelled to attempt to solve. The 
 " Critique of Pure Reason," if it accomplished nothing 
 more, settled once for all the question that science, 
 philosophy, experience, common sense, and faith rest 
 
 1 The Princeton Review, November, 1881. 
 412 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 413 
 
 on certain fundamental principles which must in some 
 way or other be justified to man's critical examination 
 if he would justify his confidence in any form of knowl- 
 edge. It may be said, and with a show of truth, that 
 this position had been held by every great philosopher, 
 from Socrates down to Locke or Hume. And yet it . 
 had not been so inculcated as to be effectually wrought L-. 
 into the convictions of all thinking men, until Kant 
 made it so clear that no man who knows enough to 
 know what philosophy is thinks of questioning that / 
 philosophy must meet these problems. 
 
 An interesting example of this truth is furnished in 
 the experience of Mr. G. H. Lewes, the clearest thinker 
 and the ablest expounder of a school originally and by 
 tradition at the farthest remove from that of Kant. 
 This writer began his studies in philosophy with the 
 conviction that philosophy is a meaningless dream, and 
 that this could be best demonstrated by its history. 
 He ended, after a series of ineffectual struggles, with 
 the concession, that what he had rejected under the 
 name of metaphysics not only could but must be 
 accepted as met empirics, with this difference, which no 
 man cares to deny, that a priori truths and relations 
 must in some sense be justified by experience. The 
 conversion of Mr. Lewes was slow, but it was sure. 
 He could not face the problems which modern thinking 
 finds in modern science without finding in them ele- 
 ments which are axiomatic and a priori. The late Mr. 
 Whewell was in many respects an incompetent and 
 unskilful expounder of Kant's philosophy; but his ex- 
 position, crude as it was, forced Mr. John Stuart Mill 
 to attempt to solve the problem of induction by the 
 a posteriori method. It would be impertinent here to 
 express an opinion as to whether either failed or suc- 
 ceeded. All that we need to notice is the unquestioned 
 
414 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 fact, that the riddle which both Mr. Whewell and Mr. 
 Mill were forced to attempt to solve was propounded 
 by the new sphinx, which not long before had lifted 
 its weird and mysterious form from out of the sand- 
 wastes of Germany, under the formidable name of the 
 Transcendental Philosophy. The rankest materialists 
 of the present age, like Alexander Bain and his associ- 
 ates, acknowledge certain a priori elements in all scien- 
 tific thinking, even though they find them in those 
 more complicated convolutions of the human brain 
 which have been hardened from the experiences of 
 preceding generations, and Herbert Spencer, with a 
 simplicity peculiar to himself, continues to explain by 
 the relations of growth and organic development the 
 most transcendental of the relations which had been 
 recognized by Kant or evolved by the most imaginative 
 of Kant's successors. Strangest of all, he imagined he 
 could checkmate Hamilton and Mansel, two ardent 
 philosophic theists, by showing that the God whom 
 they supplemented to philosophy by faith is demon- 
 strated to be forever unknown and unknowable by the 
 a posteriori discovery of the doctrine of the conserva- 
 tion of force. Mr. Spencer and Mr. Tyndall are con- 
 fessedly not over-learned in the "Critique of Pure 
 Reason ; " but the First Principles of the one, and the 
 eloquent philosophic apostrophes of the other, give 
 decisive evidence that the u Critique of Pure Reason " 
 has forced philosophers of every school to ask and 
 answer questions which were formerly either totally 
 neglected or superficially solved. 
 
 The influence of Kant upon the Continent, it is 
 almost superfluous to say, has been far more pervasive 
 and permanent. We may think as we please in respect 
 to the truth or falsehood, the reasonableness or the 
 unreasonableness, of the three or four great schools 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 415 
 
 which succeeded one another in Germany so rapidly, 
 and each for the time occupied the attention of so 
 many acute thinkers and eloquent expounders. But 
 we cannot doubt that these discussions have deepened 
 and quickened the thinking of three /generations of able 
 and learned men as no other movements have done in 
 either ancient or modern times, and that the conse- 
 quences, both direct and indirect, have been most valu- 
 able in the lectures and treatises with which they have 
 enriched modern literature. We may think or speak 
 lightly of German philosophy, if we choose, and in some 
 respects, perhaps, with reason. We may wonder to see 
 how rapid has been the growth, how wide-spread the 
 influence, and how sudden the decay, of one of its sys- 
 tems after another, after each had taken possession of 
 a generation of youth, and had controlled the theology, 
 the jurisprudence, the politics, the literature, and the 
 art, of a quarter of a century. One thing we cannot 
 deny, however; and that is, the enormous "potential 
 energy " which was hidden in the single treatise which 
 a century ago was launched into being by this solitary 
 thinker in a remote city lying on the borders of West- 
 ern civilization, from which he had never travelled 
 more than some one or two hundred English miles./ 
 We find, however, that these systems, as they have suc- 
 ceeded and in a certain sense displaced one another, 
 have been concerned with substantially the same ques- 
 tions which Kant propounded at the first, and are 
 consequently connected with the "Critique of Pure 
 Reason" by an obvious course of development. We 
 also find, that, within the last ten years, there has been 
 a spontaneous movement, affecting many minds, of 
 return to Kant, which has been signalized by the pro- 
 duction of scores of treatises in the way of statement 
 and criticism ; as though all the errors into which recent 
 
416 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 philosophy had fallen might be more readily discovered 
 by retracing the steps of all to their original starting- 
 point in Kant, and corrected by a more exact or 
 guarded interpretation of his original dicta. This 
 revival of interest in Kant is something unexampled 
 in the history of philosophy. Whether it has been 
 wholly for good, or not, one thing it most assuredly 
 attests; and that is, the ineffaceable impression made 
 upon German and European thinking by Kant's greatest 
 treatise. 
 
 Were we to illustrate the influence of Kant and his 
 " Critique " upon modern thought, we might take one of 
 the old worn-out and barren heaths of Eastern Prussia, 
 underneath which we should suppose there was a rich 
 stratum of fertilizing material. It had long been tilled 
 with shallow ploughing and superficial tending, till its 
 scanty growth and monotonous and limited crops had 
 become the disappointment and the mockery of both 
 owners and spectators. A bolder operator drives the 
 plough into the substratum beneath, and mingles its new 
 and crude fertilizing richness with the sand which had 
 before drawn upon its wealth in scanty measure. No 
 sooner do the old and new begin to unite, than a vigor- 
 ous growth of weeds and flowers and wheat encumber 
 the fields, to the dismay of the experimenter and the 
 wonder of his neighbors. Plants new to the region 
 spring into life. Flowers of Oriental aspect flaunt their 
 luxuriance and their gaudiness before the eye. But, as 
 one year follows another, new growths surprise the be- 
 holder. By some the fields are thought to be bewitched 
 and uncanny. By others they are regarded with doubt- 
 ful favor as the large and generous growth of substan- 
 tial grain doubtfully contends with the wild luxuriance 
 of weed and flower. Slowly, and at last, however, the 
 field clears itself of these strange misgrowths, till the 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 417 
 
 addition to the substantial wealth of its before impover- 
 ished soil is acknowledged by all beholders. 
 
 The aptness and truth of this illustration will be 
 justified if we recall to mind the fact that the " Systeme 
 de la Nature " of Von Holbach was published in 1770, 
 eleven years before the "Critique of Pure Reason." 
 Though it was published surreptitiously, and no man at 
 first dared to own it, it in a certain sense represented 
 the last word of the philosophy of its time. Though 
 Voltaire disowned it, and Diderot in his better judgment 
 rejected it, though Rousseau denounced its conclusions 
 with a violent protest of what he called his heart, there 
 was nothing in the philosophy which had given law to 
 the scientific world in the Encyclopedia, or was giving 
 tone to the literature of either Germany or France, to 
 justify or enforce any effectual protest against its athe- 
 istic materialism. On the other hand, whatever we may 
 think of the truth or falsehood of the leading positions 
 of the " Critique of Pure Reason," no man can doubt 
 that it made philosophy speak words never uttered so 
 clearly before. No one can question that the beliefs 
 which it seeks to justify are solid realities, or that the 
 problems which it proposes are necessary and funda- 
 mental to all earnest inquiry and to every solid philoso- 
 phy. We may not accept all or any of its concessions. 
 We may reject the most of its cautions as excessive, or 
 as tending to scepticism ; but we cannot question that it 
 proposes to defend the reasonable and necessary practi- 
 cal faiths of man in the soul and the universe, in God, 
 in duty, and immortality, in a rational and yet critical 
 spirit. Its cautious and even its sceptical temper is rev- 
 erent, acknowledging certain truths to be sacred and 
 necessary, of which it fails to find a reason. That some 
 of its positions tended to evil we cannot deny, — even 
 to a scepticism as insidious, though by no means so im- 
 
418 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 moral, as that of Von Holbach ; but that its influence 
 was in the comparison immeasurably more saltuary, the 
 history of European thought and feeling for the last 
 century, especially in Germany, is a living testimony. 
 We do not ascribe to Kant the chief, certainly not the 
 exclusive, agency for the enormous and most salutary 
 re-action in Germany which has taken place since the 
 days of Voltaire and Frederick the Great; but we find 
 in his philosophy a vigorous tonic, which animated and 
 re-enforced the other forces which attended and followed 
 it for the regeneration of Central Europe. 
 
 These general remarks may be more than sufficient to 
 justify the homage which all right-minded and well-in- 
 structed students of history will most cordially render 
 to the great philosopher at the close of a century since 
 the publication of his greatest work. Time, however, 
 is the test of all human productions ; and the " Critique 
 of Pure Reason " has been subjected during this century 
 to manifold and trying criticisms from foes and friends. 
 The significance of this treatise has been specially man- 
 ifested in the searching ordeal through which it has 
 passed, and the spirited discussions which it has awak- 
 ened. Those of us who desire to honor its author most 
 effectually can do so by noticing a few of the criticisms 
 and inquiries which have been suggested by the study of 
 the work which a century ago he gave to the world with 
 so many misgivings, and yet with so much confidence. 
 
 1. We notice, first of all, that the terminology of the 
 work is needlessly artificial and abstract. Speculative 
 men have often speculated concerning the practicability 
 of a philosophical language, and have argued eloquently 
 of the advantages which such a language would bring 
 to the advancement and communication of knowledge. 
 Their arguments would seem to find confirmation in 
 the marvellous advantages which have accrued to many 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 419 
 
 special sciences from a precise and systematic nomencla- 
 ture. These advantages, however, have only been real- 
 ized where the subject-matter is in a certain sense 
 remote from common observation, and can be subjected 
 to the rigorous test of sense experiments, aided by the 
 refined appliances of art. When a few learned pundits 
 are the only persons who are called to use a technical 
 and artificial language with one another, and can 
 speedily bring one another to the book by some decisive 
 example or experiment, there need be no limit to the 
 possibilities or the usefulness of a special scientific dia- 
 lect. Neither of these conditions can be true of the 
 sciences which relate to man's spiritual nature and their 
 products, various as they are, whether they concern 
 man's experiences or interests, his rights, his duties, or 
 his hopes. For all these branches of knowledge, there 
 is a common and every-day dialect, which with the many 
 is very limited and very indefinite, and with the very 
 few is variously extended and more or less exact. This 
 dialect, or terminology, is for this reason capable of easy 
 transitions and ready elasticity as each man attains to 
 more or fewer of the new thoughts which its unusual 
 but not wholly technical words express. Hence, every 
 writer who would gain a hearing and a welcome from 
 his fellow-men for new thoughts in these departments of 
 speculation or discovery is forced to be very sparing and 
 cautious in the use of new terms. Whenever he re- 
 quires his readers to learn a new terminology, whether 
 for old thoughts or new, in the abstract regions of eth- 
 ics, law, or psychology, he is certain to find few readers, 
 for the simple reason that his readers distrust his capa- 
 city to teach them by reason of his manifest little confi- 
 dence in their capacity to learn, or suspect his over- 
 weening confidence in his own wisdom in insisting upon 
 his newly invented vocabulary. 
 
420 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 It has not been easy, moreover, for Kant's critics to 
 explain the history of his peculiar terminology by its 
 history, to determine how far it was invented or devised 
 for a purpose, and how far it grew up in his own mind 
 in a half-unconscious way, as he brooded by himself, as 
 every metaphysician must, over the problems which 
 exercised his solitary thoughts for the twenty years in 
 which the " Critique " was taking shape, if shape it 
 might be called. 
 
 The names of Kant's favorite authors even have not 
 been exactly determined, and the sources of many of 
 his favorite terms in the meanings used by himself have 
 not been satisfactorily ascertained. Whatever their 
 source may have been, it is certain that some of his 
 leading terms are not precisely defined by him, either in 
 the current language of common life, or the more tech- 
 nical language of the schools. Moreover, his style, as 
 is not unusual with metaphysicians, is characteristically 
 abstract, wiredrawn, and repetitious. For these reasons, 
 and because the subject-matter was novel and in some 
 cases startlingly paradoxical, this great treatise, with al] 
 its force and boldness, has always been felt to be many 
 removes from the modes of thinking and of speech 
 which are common to ordinary men. Its special ter- 
 minology cannot easily be mastered. Those who were 
 offended at the new philosophy would insist that it was 
 not worth mastering. Those who rejected the new dis- 
 tinctions, as that between the reason and the understand- 
 ing, would naturally reject the. terminology which ex- 
 pressed them as barbarous and misleading. 
 
 Besides, and worse than all, it must be confessed, that 
 Kant was not always master of his own terminology, 
 either because he was sometimes inconsistent with him- 
 self, or because he did not always hold fast to his newly 
 devised appellations. Moreover, aside from the defects 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 421 
 
 of his special terminology, Kant was not a good writer, 
 however clear and strong he was as a thinker. Though 
 at times he shows great power over language, and sur- 
 prises you with the tenuity with which he draws out 
 his fine distinctions of thought into delicate threads of 
 speech ; yet at other times he seems bewildered and lost 
 in the mazes of both thought and speech, till the impa- 
 tient reader longs for some short and sharp utterance 
 which shall give in three lines the contents of a ram- 
 bling page. The fact is unquestioned, that, even among 
 his numerous German interpreters, many able men put 
 opposite constructions upon his opinions in respect to 
 not a few of the most important topics. Of his English 
 expounders and translators, only here and there one has 
 ventured upon the effort of giving any other than the 
 most literal transferences (rather than translations) of 
 his words into barbarous English : very few have under- 
 taken to expound the great principles of his system by 
 the free use of those conceptions and terms which are 
 current in English philosophy. 
 
 2. Leaving the difficulties of Kant's terminology and 
 style, we are next embarrassed by the significance of 
 the words critique and the critical philosophy, which are 
 used by Kant in senses peculiar to himself. We find 
 no special difficulty in understanding that they describe 
 the attempt to discover the ultimate principles or ele- 
 ments of scientific and trustworthy knowledge, and are 
 antagonistic on the one hand to the scepticism which 
 distrusts and calls in question knowledge of every sort, 
 and on the other to the dogmatism which assumes cer- 
 tain premises without reflection or justification. We 
 can even understand that such principles must exist, 
 if we could but discover and test them ; but when we 
 come to inquire what is the process by which to evolve 
 them from their wrappings, and justify them as univer- 
 
422 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 sal and necessary, it is not so easy to answer our own 
 questions. We naturally inquire, Is the "Critique of 
 Pure Reason" simply a psychological analysis of the 
 functions of the intellect when separated from its aux- 
 iliaries of sense and imagination, — the patient laborer 
 and nimble servitor for the royal judge and imperial 
 lawgiver known respectively as the Understanding and 
 the Reason ? If so, then it were better had this been 
 confessed at once, and had the effort of the writer been 
 limited to a discriminating or analytic record of the 
 steps by which the intellect finds these elements of its 
 knowing everywhere present, and hence finds itself 
 everywhere using them in the products or structures 
 which it calls knowledge. We are embarrassed at find- 
 ing that Kant nowhere takes this simple view of the 
 critical process. He scarcely ventures upon any psy- 
 chological analysis. He does, indeed, accept without 
 discussion or justification the several intellectual facul- 
 ties, as sense, understanding, and reason, with only an 
 incidental and later recognition of the memory and the 
 imagination. His observations and his reasonings also 
 very largely assume and rest upon the correctness of 
 this classification of the faculties, and the assignment 
 to each of its appropriate functions. On the other hand, 
 the largest portion of the treatise is philosophical. Its 
 arguments are confessedly distinguished as metaphysi- 
 cal and transcendental, — the one involving an analysis 
 of complex conceptions which are supposed to be under- 
 stood in a definite sense by all men, and the other the 
 trustworthiness and authority of certain sciences which 
 are assumed to be as universally accepted. And yet 
 Kant will not admit that the " Critique " is a system 
 of metaphysics proper, but only a preliminary discus- 
 sion of certain questions, the right settlement of which 
 was to determine the fate of all the metaphysical sys- 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 423 
 
 terns which should ever afterwards follow. This want 
 of clearness on the part of Kant in appreciating the 
 nature of the critical process, and its relation to psy- 
 chology, on the one hand, and to philosophy on the 
 other, was noticed by some of the ablest of his earlier 
 critics, notably by Fries ; and it has been reiterated by 
 later writers. Had this indefiniteness been avoided 
 from the first, the clearness and convincing force of 
 the treatise would have been greatly increased, the 
 writer and his readers would have understood one 
 another better from the first; and we hope it is not 
 irreverent to say, that the author would have better 
 understood himself in his relations to current systems. 
 Had he at one time been pressed hard by the psycho- 
 logical inquiry, Do the processes asserted comport with 
 the testimony of consciousness and human experience ? 
 and at another by the metaphysical problem, Are the 
 analyses and deductions truly made? he would have 
 taken firmer and surer steps in paths which he would 
 thereby have made easier for others to follow. Certainly 
 his English readers, who know little of metaphysics ex- 
 cept as approached from the side of psychology, would 
 have found less difficulty in understanding his meaning 
 and in accepting many of his principles. It is pertinent 
 to observe at this point, that Locke's Essay is as truly 
 and professedly a critical inquiry into the reach and 
 authority of the human understanding as was Kant's 
 " Critique of Pure Reason." We can hardly say that 
 it is much less philosophical or more psychological in 
 its discussions. We should remember, however, in 
 comparing the two, that the one treatise was published 
 nearly a century before the other. It is not strange 
 that the second should be more exact and profound 
 than the first, and, in its philosophical rigor, should 
 immeasurably surpass it. It is to be regretted, how- 
 
424 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 ever, that in some respects at least it should lack the 
 directness and naturalness, both of its psychological 
 method and its philosophical treatment. 
 
 3. We come next to one of the grandest features of 
 Kant's " Critique ; " viz., his demonstration of the pres- 
 ence of an a priori element in human knowledge, — not 
 in scientific knowledge only, but in knowledge of every 
 kind. The problem itself is as old as philosophy. By 
 few, however, if by any, has it been conceived so dis- 
 tinctly and stated so forcibly as by Kant, in the eluci- 
 dation of the question whether the mind can attain to 
 synthetical propositions a priori, and, if so, under what 
 conditions and by what authority. It was true, this was 
 none other than the old contrast so sharply but imagina- 
 tively made by Plato between aiodrjaig and tTttariffttj, i.e., 
 sense knowledge and knowledge by ideas, and also by 
 Aristotle between matter and form. Even Locke could 
 not escape the recognition of it with all the earnestness 
 with which he combats the doctrine of innate ideas, and 
 refers all human acquisitions to his two sources of human 
 experience; viz., the inner and outer sense, or sensation 
 and reflection. It is only charitable to conclude, that 
 when Locke wrote in his second book of relations, and 
 in his fourth of the nature of knowledge, in both of 
 which he unwittingly introduces a third kind and source 
 of knowledge, he had forgotten what he had written 
 perhaps ten years previously about the only two possible 
 sources and kinds of the same, in the two forms of inner 
 and outer experience. How the inconsistency of Locke 
 can be explained is of little concern to us, so long as we 
 find in his exposition of relations substantially Kant's 
 doctrine of synthetical judgments a priori, given in con- 
 nection with, but not on the ground of, our experience 
 of material or spiritual phenomena. We find the same 
 concession where the critic would least expect it to be 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 425 
 
 made, and where the unconscious witness would be most 
 unwilling to concede that he had made it at all ; viz., in 
 the exposition by Auguste Comte of the cardinal prin- 
 ciple of the positive philosophy. This theory takes its 
 name from its alleged survival and displacement of the 
 metaphysical stage of thought with its a priori abstrac- 
 tions, and its serene and solid contentment with the solid 
 and positive facts of experience. The facts or phenom- 
 ena which it recognizes as real and positive, however, 
 are only material and sensible. And yet even Comte 
 does not content himself with facts alone. Phenomena 
 alone do not constitute science, even in the theory of 
 Comte, but facts or phenomena as connected by the rela- 
 tions of succession and similarity. What time and simi- 
 larity are in the repertoire of the positive scheme, Comte 
 does not explain. He does not seem to suspect that it is 
 all the same so far as the great question between him 
 and Kant is concerned, whether there are ten or twenty 
 a priori forms, categories, or ideas, or whatever they 
 may be called, or whether there are only two, as he him- 
 self unconsciously admits and provides. 
 
 The signal service which Kant rendered in this dis- 
 cussion was, that he settled beyond all controversy this 
 long-vexed and much-disputed question, that knowl- 
 edge is made up of two elements ; viz., isolated facts 
 and permanent principles, or phenomena on the one 
 hand, and relations on the other. If the one element 
 comes by experience, and in it the mind is a recipient 
 and passive, the other comes by the mind's innate power 
 and prerogative to know, in the exercise of which the 
 mind is pre-eminently active, and appeals to its own 
 sovereign authority. When we say that he settled this 
 question beyond all dissent, we certainly do not intend 
 that no thinkers have entered a protest against his posi- 
 tion in the form in which he asserted it, but that in 
 
426 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 some form or other all thinkers now admit it in fact. 
 Even the grossest of materialists at present seem dis- 
 posed to endow the ultimate atoms which they accept 
 as the semina rerum with an original capacity to develop 
 themselves under favoring circumstances into new 
 forms of being, and even into thinking agents. More- 
 over, when these atoms rise to the dignity of thinking 
 agents, they not only begin themselves to geometrize, 
 but they assume, by an enormously comprehensive syn- 
 thetic judgment d priori, that the Eternal Force which 
 animates the universe has also geometrized from the be- 
 ginning of the nebular accretions. If also we know 
 him as Force, though we know nothing more of him, we 
 must know this at least a priori, that he is a causative 
 agent, and acts according to law ; and law implies at least 
 number and measure. If also there has been develop- 
 ment and evolution from the beginning, then we are 
 forced to interpret this all-pervasive and all-explaining 
 relationship by a plan of progress vast enough to in- 
 clude every description of successive phenomena, and 
 enduring enough to cover every step and stage of 
 manifestation, from the simplest to the most complex 
 of events. 
 
 4. The strength and consistency of Kant's position 
 in respect to the d priori element in knowledge as a 
 product is strikingly contrasted with the weakness and 
 vacillation of his views of the nature and authority of 
 knowledge as an act. In analyzing human knowledge 
 as a product, without reference to the agent, he shows 
 beyond question, that it must imply axioms or d priori 
 truths. In criticising the power in man by which this 
 act is produced, he concedes that much if not all which 
 is thus assumed as true by him may not be real in fact. 
 This results from the want of clearness which we have 
 already noticed in his conception of the critical process 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 427 
 
 by which he at one time tries the product, and at another 
 confounds and blends the two. It is not surprising 
 that the operator or analyst should fail in using the in- 
 strument, the nature of which he fails fully to define. 
 
 One or two examples will illustrate our meaning. 
 Kant distinguishes three several capacities and modes 
 of knowledge : (1) Intuition, in the two forms of the 
 outer and inner sense ; (2) Thought or judgment, giv- 
 ing concepts or generalized attributes or relations ; (3) 
 The reason, giving the ideas of the soul, the cosmos, 
 and God. It is in the analysis of sense-perception that 
 he conspicuously brings our confidence in the act of 
 knowledge into suspicion and distrust. While he finds 
 here both space and time relations as d priori elements, 
 and proves them to be such by the self-evident charac- 
 ter of the pure mathematics, he concedes that they may 
 be a priori to human beings only, and therein concedes 
 that his synthetic judgments a priori may be true and 
 necessary of man alone. They may be true universally, 
 but we are not justified in asserting that they are. 
 They are certainly transcendental to man, — possibly to 
 other beings ; but, whether they be so or not, we can 
 neither affirm nor deny. This gives us a transcenden- 
 tal idealism ; i.e., axiomatic or a priori truths for our 
 human ways of knowing, or for the universe only as 
 known to us, but not necessarily for the universe as 
 existing in fact. What we desire and demand is a tran- 
 scendental realism, — a knowledge of those necessary 
 principles which hold of the universe of fact or actual 
 being. This can only be attained as we set off with the 
 assumption, that knowledge is the correlate or counter- 
 part of being or reality. This Kant never either admits 
 or asserts, and always fails to appreciate and propound. 
 
 It is not difficult to see how Kant committed this 
 fatal error, and at what point he shifted the switch which 
 
428 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 shunted a long train of consequences in a wrong direc- 
 tion. We find it at the very outset, where he contrasts 
 the power of sense (both inner and outer) as receptivity 
 or passive with the understanding as spontaneity or an 
 active energy. What led Kant to assert for sensibility 
 passiveness only, it is easy enough to see. The senses 
 as such, in their physiological or psycho-physiological 
 nature, are receptive, and change with the changing 
 constitution of each individual animal. But the sense 
 or perceptive power as such, so far as it involves the 
 function of knowledge, is as truly active and spontane- 
 ous as is the act of the intellect upon any other object- 
 matter. The knowable objects with which it has to do 
 are also as real and as trustworthy, so far as they are 
 properly known, as are the objects of what are called its 
 higher functions. That it falls into error, and frequently 
 when it has to do with both, is a matter of e very-day 
 experience. This no man calls in question. The only 
 question with which we are concerned is, whether the 
 a priori relations which are assumed in sense knowledge 
 are any the less real than the d priori relations which are 
 assumed in the higher. That they are, was conceded 
 by Kant in calling sense a receptivity only, in contrast 
 with that spontaneity which he limits to the higher 
 functions. 
 
 The false position thus taken was weakened rather 
 than strengthened by the expedient resorted to by Kant 
 in order to defend and justify it. The receptivity thus 
 assumed, so far as man is concerned, is obviously shut 
 up forever within the flaming bounds of space and time. 
 Whether the objects we know are objects of sense or 
 experiences of the soul, we must know them as ex- 
 tended or enduring, — one or both. This Kant was for- 
 ward to assert, and here he finds the first example of a 
 transcendental element in sense experience. How, then, 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 429 
 
 could he connect this higher and necessary element with 
 the passive receptivity from which he had apparently bar- 
 gained away the prerogative to attain to any necessary 
 or permanent truth ? Fortunately for him, the shadows 
 of a defunct philosophy had not all vanished ; and he 
 proceeds to endow this passive receptivity with form. 
 Form here came to his aid, — that magic term with which 
 Aristotle had displaced the ideas of Plato, and which 
 had served the Schoolmen many a turn in their meta- 
 physical perplexities. So far as the mind is receptive in 
 sense and consciousness, it has to do with the matter 
 of human experience. So far as it is active, it receives 
 this matter in sundry for ms which are universal. These 
 forms are space and time, — the one for the outer and 
 the other for the inner sense. This magic term was no 
 sooner suggested than it seemed whispered by some 
 philosophic Egeria in the holy cave of musing contem- 
 plation. First of all, it squared with the conception of 
 receptivity already assumed of sense as contrasted with 
 thought. Next, if man is a recipient of the universe in 
 sense, he cannot receive the whole of it at once; it 
 must be divided into morsels and poured out into gob- 
 lets : then, too, the viands must be served in order ; and 
 over against the infinitude and possible chaos without, 
 there must be subjective capacities to receive after a 
 particular fashion provided in the constitution of each 
 recipient within. Then, again, space and time relations 
 are in their nature different from the commonly recog- 
 nized attributes of matter and spirit, and refuse to be 
 classed with those sensible qualities which presuppose 
 them. Above all, space and time themselves are some- 
 thing ultimate, which are assumed in all special and 
 determinate relations of place and shape, now and then. 
 To all these requisitions the woid form seemed admi- 
 rably adjusted. 
 
430 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 Justice to Kant requires us to notice that he does not 
 fail to raise the question, whether it follows, because 
 space and time are the necessary forms of our human 
 receptivity, that they have no objective reality? To 
 this he frankly replies in the negative, but adds, with 
 equal frankness, that, inasmuch as they are necessarily 
 a priori only to ourselves, we are utterly disqualified 
 from deciding the question whether they are a priori to 
 beings otherwise constituted. In other words, he leaves 
 us with the conclusion, that, whether they are or not 
 objectively real, it is all the same to our perceptions and 
 to our science, because we are forced to receive, i.e., to 
 know, the phenomena of matter and of spirit under the 
 relations of space and time, and to think and talk and 
 reason as though these relations are ultimate and d 
 priori, and, so far as our knowledge is concerned, are 
 objectively real. This establishes our confidence in 
 science and philosophy by proving, that, in sense and 
 consciousness, the synthetic judgments of time and space 
 are necessary and a priori, — at least to man. 
 
 This sums np the doctrine of Kant in respect to the 
 nature of sense knowledge, considered as a mere recep- 
 tivity. We may speak of his views of consciousness in 
 another connection. Our criticism of this theory may 
 be summed up in a word. So far as sense perception is 
 receptive, and excludes spontaneity, it is not an act of 
 knowledge at all, and cannot be at all concerned with 
 space itself, but only with objects related in space. The 
 convincing demonstrations of Kant, that space relations 
 are apprehended in connection with sense experiences, 
 and yet are independent of the same in their self-evi- 
 dence and authority, are founded on an analysis of the 
 conceptions and processes of the pure mathematics, 
 which confessedly have nothing to do with the act of 
 sense knowledge when conceived as a passive recep- 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 431 
 
 tivity. The suggestion of the possible idealism of space 
 and time as the best explanation of their a priori neces- 
 sity in human thinking, is a skilful expedient to make 
 the best of a fatal and unnecessary concession. This 
 fatal concession was an inadequate and mischievous 
 conception of the nature of human knowledge. The 
 concession was dictated by Kant's extreme caution in 
 taking his positions, joined with his acceptance of some 
 of the traditions of his time. The materialistic concep- 
 tions of the mental processes and their products, which 
 had literally swarmed in the pages of Hume, were not 
 easily exorcised ; and the readiness with which in our 
 time they have come again into the kneading-troughs of 
 our magicians, like the frogs and flies of the Egyptian 
 plagues, under the guise of physiological and cerebral 
 psychology, forms the best explanation of the false con- 
 ceptions which embarrassed the well-meant but unsuc- 
 cessful struggles on the part of Kant to establish a 
 better system. He would have cleared himself of all 
 these embarrassments had he but clearly asserted that 
 in knowledge man is always active, and that to knowl- 
 edge reality is always a necessary correlated object, 
 whether that object be a phenomenon or a relation. 
 
 5. Kant's distinction between phenomena and noumena 
 is both vague and vacillating. It is neither clearly 
 stated nor consistently maintained. The phenomenon 
 is represented clearly enough as the temporary, the indi- 
 vidual, and the contingent ; and the noumenon, on the 
 other hand, as the permanent, the universal, and the 
 real. The one is the thing in itself, a permanent and 
 abiding force or cause or agent ; the other is a manifes- 
 tation which is casual and conditioned. The one is dis- 
 cerned by the senses or consciousness, the other is in- 
 terpreted by the mind. So long as these contrasted 
 conceptions are popular, they are intelligible. It is only 
 
432 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 when they are strictly scanned and carefully defined that 
 we find a difficulty in fathoming or stating the meaning 
 of Kant. We say very intelligibly of our relatively su- 
 perficial knowledge of any material or spiritual object, 
 as contrasted with a deeper insight into its nature and 
 laws, that we know its appearances, but not the thing 
 in itself. We fancy, moreover, that the accomplished 
 chemist or physiologist can somehow penetrate with 
 magic look or touch into the real essence of a compound 
 or a tissue or an organ ; but we find, on second thought, 
 that his knowledge is only more manifold or more recon- 
 dite, better classified or better defined, than that of com- 
 mon insight and common speech. The deeper insight 
 into the real essences of things as they are and not as 
 they appear, which is attained by the most consummate 
 specialist or the most accomplished scientist, is rather 
 a promise to the ear than an attainment to the mind, if 
 more is expected from either than a statement of a rel- 
 atively greater number of effects which the agent can 
 achieve under the greater variety of conditions under 
 which it occurs, or of purposes to which it can be applied. 
 So far as the world of sense is concerned, it may be 
 true, that we cannot know things in themselves, that we 
 are limited to phenomena alone, and that human science 
 can go no farther than multiply its observations, add to 
 its inductions, and make its definitions more precise, 
 comprehensive, and systematic. But, should we concede 
 all this of material things in themselves, it does not there- 
 fore follow that more is not true of the mind's knowledge 
 of itself. Let it be granted that sense knowledge gives 
 us the phenomena only at which we gaze as they fly, 
 that these are formed into things as the masses of vapor 
 are held in form and place and color by the great forces 
 which penetrate and mould them into mountains and gla- 
 ciers and pasture-lands and forests and rocks, till in an 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 433 
 
 instant they vanish into smoke. Let this be granted, and 
 still it may be none the less true, that the thinking agent 
 is known to and by itself as a thing in itself, i.e., a potent 
 and permanent and identical reality, and, indeed, that it 
 must be so known in order that any contrast should even 
 be suspected by the mind between a thing in itself and 
 its manifestations or phenomena. All this Kant over- 
 looked, and, in overlooking it, in effect denied. As in 
 the sense-world he found phenomena only, so in the 
 spirit-world he recognized only ideas; or, rather, by 
 recognizing only phenomena in either, he reduced the 
 world of both matter and spirit to the ideas appropriate 
 to each. Starting with the laudable purpose to emerge 
 from the shadowy world of impressions and ideas into 
 which the scepticism of Hume had brought him, he suc- 
 ceeded so far as to find it necessary for the purposes of 
 science to connect these phenomena by a priori forms and 
 categories and ideas. He found, however, that, even if 
 the relations which connected phenomena were real and 
 necessary, the materials were shadowy still, and that 
 consequently the universe of matter and spirit must be 
 resolved into a system of related ideas or phenomena 
 given in what we call sense and consciousness. Things 
 and realities were nowhere at the end because they were 
 denied at the beginning. The conjurer had undertaken 
 to draw out of his pocket more than he had put into it ; 
 i.e., to evolve realities from ideas by metaphysical jug- 
 glery. He thought by the force of necessary and a 
 priori relations to make a real universe of matter and 
 spirit out of the phenomena of each, not reflecting, that 
 however authoritative and permanent may be the re- 
 lations of time and space and causation, and even of 
 design, if the agents or forces which they connect and 
 explain are not real, then the conclusions to which they 
 lead, and the combinations into which they enter, must 
 
434 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 be as shadowy as the data from which they are derived, 
 and the materials of which they are composed. 
 
 It is worthy of special notice, that Kant seems spe- 
 cially sensitive in his hostility to every argument which 
 might be urged in favor of the reality and knowable- 
 ness of spirit as a thing in itself. It would seem as 
 though at times he was more than suspicious that here 
 was the weakest side of his entire theory. Again and 
 again he denies that the soul has any other unity than 
 that unity of apperception by which many sensations 
 are connected in a one so-called material thing : there 
 is no proper continuity of being known to and by 
 itself, but only an uninterrupted flow or succession 
 of phenomena ; no substantiality, because the concept 
 of substance can be affirmed only of the subjects of sense 
 in space or picturable phenomena; no permanence or 
 immortality, because these could belong only to sub- 
 stantial, i.e., material, things. In other words, the ego 
 in all these contrasts is reduced to a psychological ex- 
 pression, as insignificant and contemptuous as had been 
 done before him by Hume, or in our days by Mr. Hux- 
 ley. We find also the distinct denial of the capacity of 
 the soul for self-consciousness of its own states or of it- 
 self ; indeed, for any thing more than the "thread of 
 consciousness " or the unity of apperception by which 
 successive mental states are connected as one. 
 
 Over against these jealous and violent efforts of Kant 
 to deny the knowableness of the soul as an agent with 
 a definite nature of its own, we would set the whole 
 argument of the " Critique," from beginning to end, so 
 far as it defends and expounds transcendental ideal- 
 ism. We contend that its doctrines of the forms of sense, 
 and of the categories of the understanding, and the 
 ideas of the reason, are, from beginning to end, a series 
 of psychological conclusions or assumptions in respect 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 435 
 
 to the nature of the soul as a thing in itself. They not 
 only imply and assert that the soul has an essential 
 nature, but that this essential nature is knowable by 
 man. They not only in fact, but by profession, penetrate 
 beneath its phenomena, and find there a nature or con- 
 stitution capable of moulding the universe of sense and 
 matter by subjective forms, categories, and ideas. They 
 propose to show that all the knowledge which man can 
 attain is only phenomenal, and this by an analysis into 
 the nature of the soul itself. They find, beneath the 
 forms, the categories, and the ideas, the soul with a 
 nature which compels it to mould and connect and sys- 
 tematize and interpret the phenomena of the inner and 
 outer universe by the relations and into the products 
 which its own constitution requires. This is the logic 
 of the entire treatise, the height of whose great argu- 
 ment would have been reached had Kant climbed with 
 careful steps to its summit, and reviewed its result 
 somewhat as follows: The pure reason is an agent 
 known to and by itself as so constituted, or of such a 
 nature that it discerns the phenomena which it is ca- 
 pable of receiving, under those relations by which it 
 necessarily connects and explains them. So far as the 
 soul can critically examine and study these experiences, 
 so far does it penetrate into its own nature as an agent 
 or thing in itself. Philosophically conceived, a thing 
 in itself — whether it be matter or spirit — is known 
 and is knowable so far as its powers to act or achieve 
 effects under varying conditions are known. The ef- 
 fects achieved, as distinguished from the agents which 
 produce them, are phenomena. The One Mind which 
 originated and sustains the universe of things, alone 
 knows all the capacities of any of the agents which he 
 creates; and he alone fully knows the nature of the 
 simplest as well as the most complex, as it is in itself. 
 
436 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 Surely Kant ought to have conceded, that if nothing 
 else is known to man as a tiling in itself, or a nowmenon, 
 this is true of the reason itself as revealed to itself by 
 the critical process. 
 
 As we have seen, our philosopher reached no such 
 conclusion, but wandered in endless mazes till he often 
 seems bewildered and lost. But, whatever else he loses, 
 he never loses courage. In his extremest bewilderment 
 he ever and anon catches up his clew, and threads his 
 way backwards and forwards till he seems to strike his 
 path afresh, and go forward with unabated courage. 
 But he never could overcome the fatal inconsistency 
 involved in the attempt to analyze the essential nature 
 of the pure reason in the abstract, in order to show that 
 it has no nature in the concrete which can be analyzed. 
 
 Did our space allow, we might show that the reality 
 of matter, and its knowableness by man as a thing in 
 itself, are also perpetually assumed by Kant whenever 
 he refers to the universe as phenomenal only. Even if 
 the senses are only receptive, they suppose reality in the 
 matter which acts upon them. The receptivity of the 
 senses supposes an agent which lies beyond and without, 
 from the causative activity of which the recipient can 
 never escape. To say that we are not sensitive to all 
 the capacities of these agents, is to confess that we are 
 finite. If we must know any of them completely in 
 order that we may know any thing at all, then we can 
 know nothing of any thing, whether material or spirit- 
 ual. The result of such experiments might teach us 
 that it were wiser to dig for the pot of gold which lies 
 under our own feet, and be content with what we find, 
 rather than to chase round the earth till we lay hold 
 of the end of a rainbow. 
 
 It might be contended, that Kant's theory of knowl- 
 edge, whether of mind or matter, is not complete till 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 487 
 
 the action of the understanding is superadded with its 
 categories, and of the reason with its ideas. This in 
 one sense is true. So far, however, as the points are 
 concerned which we have introduced, we need go no 
 farther. Kant does not profess that the understanding 
 and reason can bring deliverance from the circle of lim- 
 itation and helplessness within which he had shut him- 
 self by the concessions to which we have referred. That 
 circle shuts him off forever from the knowledge of things 
 as they are. The phenomena of matter and spirit are 
 all preserved. Science pure and applied is provided 
 for in its axioms and methods. Man believes and 
 reasons as if his soul, the universe, and God were real- 
 ities. But reality is beyond man's reach ; for all that 
 he knows is phenomenal, and things in themselves or 
 their essential nature he cannot know. To this condi- 
 tion of conscious strength and confessed weakness did 
 Kant's " Critique of Pure Reason " bring him and his 
 disciples. 
 
 It is no paradox to say that both the weakness and 
 the strength of the critical school lifted it to a position 
 immeasurably superior to that of the shallow sensual- 
 ism and the dogmatic scepticism which it had effectu- 
 ally displaced. The pretensions of mere experience and 
 the authority of so-called facts it had silenced forever 
 by demonstrating that either or both without relations 
 and principles must be insignificant and worthless. The 
 sceptical caution which refused to affirm a priori rela- 
 tions of any other than the human reason was in its 
 turn a rebuke to the dogmatism which had hitherto 
 been regnant in the schools. Both introduced a new 
 spirit and method into modern speculation, and em- 
 phatically taught the new generation that there are 
 more things in heaven and earth than had been dreamed 
 of in its traditional philosophy. 
 
438 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 6. We notice next the profoundly ethical spirit of 
 Kant's philosophy. It is a commonplace to say, that 
 what Kant failed to reach in the domain of the pure 
 reason, — rather what he demonstrated could not be 
 reached, — he believed was fully attainable through the 
 practical or moral reason. What he blindly clutched 
 at in the dim and uncertain light of intellectual specu- 
 lation, he imagined he could firmly and strongly grasp 
 under the broad noonday of the moral convictions. 
 These convictions he assumed to be as real as the indis- 
 putable and axiomatic certainties of the pure mathe- 
 matics. Much after the same fashion as he found that 
 geometry and number implied the assumptions of space 
 and time, did he reason that the intuitions of duty 
 implied the actual validity of the ideas of the soul, 
 of immortality, and of God. If this were so, then the 
 mind is no longer limited to the relatively a priori^ 
 with which it is forced to content itself as the utmost 
 to which it can attain. Through the practical reason, 
 nay, at its command, it can lay hold of things in them- 
 selves. It confidently fastens itself to the actual first 
 and supreme, because it commands itself to accept those 
 verities which it must believe in order that it may com- 
 mand itself to be and do what it knows it ought to 
 attain. In using the categorical imperative, man also 
 knows himself to be free. In asserting that he is free, he 
 pierces through the shell of phenomena, and reaches the 
 thing in itself which lies beneath; viz., the soul's own 
 veritable existence. In asserting the actual existence of 
 man, we imply the necessary conditions of his moral life 
 and destiny. These give reality to the world of matter, 
 to the immortality of the responsible soul, and the moral 
 providence and retribution of God. So long as we rest 
 in the intellectual sphere, all is dim and uncertain. We 
 are in a world of shadows, — a world orderly, systematic, 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 439 
 
 and rationalized indeed, but still necessarily uncertain 
 and phenomenal. But, the instant we emerge into the 
 ethical, these shadows are crystallized into realities. 
 What was a weird and ghostly structure is trans- 
 figured into a temple built without hands, eternal in 
 the heavens. 
 
 Whatever we may think of the soundness of this 
 theory, we cannot but admire its boldness and its eleva- 
 tion. However fervently we may protest against the 
 gratuitousness of the concessions by which the battle 
 seemed so near to being irrecoverably lost, we cannot 
 but admire the boldness of the movement by which it 
 seemed to be more than recovered. The effect of these 
 positions upon the subsequent course of modern specu- 
 lation has been most salutary. Ethical relations were 
 henceforward exalted to a supreme place in philosophic 
 thought. Freedom, duty, immortality, and God were 
 not only recognized as subjects of the highest dignity in 
 speculative schools, but it has been more than acknowl- 
 edged, that any system which did not recognize these 
 conceptions and relations, and explain the phenomena 
 which they involve, must be superficial and defective. 
 So soon as the school of Kant was established, the friv- 
 olous and insincere dogmas and critiques of savans, the 
 sensual orgies of the voluptuaries of the salon, and the 
 sentimental declamations of the school of nature, were 
 by common consent set aside and displaced by the grand 
 and commanding relations which the categorical imper- 
 ative introduced and enforced. 
 
 It was impossible that modern thought should ever go 
 back from the point to which it was carried forward by 
 the uplifting and surging force of Kant's eloquent and 
 impressive utterances in respect to man's moral convic- 
 tions and emotions. We believe, indeed, that the moral 
 dignity and strength of Kant's system have been the prin- 
 
440 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 cipal sources of its enduring popularity. Multitudes 
 who could understand little, and who cared less, about 
 the speculative questions which he raised, and who were 
 ready to find in their own incapacity to follow his analy- 
 ses a decisive argument that all purely speculative in- 
 quiries are incapable of any solution by the human under- 
 standing, have been ready to assent to the comparatively 
 easy analyses of his critique of the practical reason, and 
 his positive assurances that these must settle every ques- 
 tion of speculative import. It was as an ethical system 
 that Kant's teachings first found introduction to the 
 English mind through Coleridge, Carlyle, and others. 
 The so-called agnosticism which came in afterwards was 
 originally taught by Hamilton and Mansel, in the ethical 
 spirit of Kant, and with the ethical adjuncts with which 
 he fortified his speculative system. It ought not to be 
 surprising, that, when it lost these adjuncts, it experienced 
 a sad degeneracy. When freedom was sacrificed to the 
 remorseless dominion of natural law, and responsibility 
 and self-command were resolved into physiological out- 
 growths, and the moral law itself was sublimated into a 
 fiction which society may make and unmake at its will, it 
 is not surprising that the noblest speculative conceptions 
 of Kant should be travestied into cheap imitations under 
 hallowed names, and the unknown and unknowable of 
 the speculative reason should be boldly interpreted by a 
 material force, and reason itself, both practical and 
 speculative, should be resolved into highly convoluted 
 and intensely specialized masses of nervous matter. 
 
 But, while we assert for Kant's ethical system an un- 
 questioned dignity and practical importance, we do not 
 thereby accept it as true. First of all, we do not accept, 
 for the reasons already given, his theory of the limita- 
 tions and impotence of the speculative reason which 
 in any sense should demand such a buttress and supple- 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 441 
 
 ment as his practical reason furnishes. We do not see 
 why, if the self-conscious spirit should be able in the 
 special experiences of moral freedom to discern the real 
 as contrasted with the phenomenal ego, it should not 
 be able to discern the same in the ordinary activities of 
 the man. We grant, that, in his ethical activities and 
 judgments, its existence and activity may seem more 
 energetic and positive, but not necessarily more real ov 
 trustworthy. Again, we cannot accept his reasoning 
 that the free, substantial, and therefore the possibly 
 immortal, ego must be assumed, or morality is impos- 
 sible, when the very question of questions nowadays has 
 been inverted into, " Is man free, and therefore is mo- 
 rality possible ? " We do indeed allow the test of prac- 
 tical consequences oftentimes to decide the question of 
 truth. But this signifies only that the actual convic- 
 tions of men are best ascertained when tried by prac- 
 tical rather than speculative tests, and that his ethical 
 convictions are pre-eminently positive and certain. 
 
 Nor, again, for an instant can we accept the doctrine 
 of the categorical as contrasted with the hypothetical 
 imperative, which Kant's system has made so familiar. 
 We assent most heartily to the emphatic utterances 
 with which he asserts the reality of freedom and per- 
 sonality and obligation ; but we cannot, for this reason, 
 believe that the law of duty is not derived from the 
 known nature of man, and imposed on man by himself 
 in view of its discerned excellence and worth, and is in 
 this not blindly, i.e., categorically, commanded, but in 
 view of the excellence of the activities and results 
 which its realization involves. If the last is true, it is 
 hypothetically commanded in terms like these : If you 
 would fulfil the high ends for which you exist, and take 
 the place in the universe for which you are fitted, you 
 will choose so-and-so. Such a choice is morally right. 
 
442 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 Therefore, it is your duty to make this choice in view of 
 the excellence of which your intellect is a competent 
 judge. This view of the imperative of duty makes it 
 no ultimate category of either belief or action, but 
 assigns it a place under that of purpose or design. It 
 connects the practical and speculative reason by this 
 one relation common to both. The view of Kant severs 
 them by an impassable chasm, which Kant's frankness 
 seems more ready to suspect than his ingenuity is com- 
 petent to bridge over or fill. Last of all, the rejection 
 of all relationship between the natural and ethical sen- 
 sibilities and conceptions, in order that the last may be 
 kept pure from all empirical content, or any considera- 
 tions of happiness or well-being, is open to the most 
 serious speculative and practical objections. Schiller 
 felt and acknowledged it, even in the fervent glow of 
 his first conversion to the stoical severity and lofty 
 idealism of the Kantian ethics. His well-known lines 
 have often been quoted which express the speculative 
 and practical dilemma which the theory involves. A 
 difficulty is proposed : — 
 
 " Willing serve I my friends all, but do it, alas ! with affection ; 
 And so gnaws me my heart, that I am not virtuous yet." 
 
 It is answered thus : — 
 
 " Help, then, but this there is none : you must strive with might to 
 contemn them, 
 And with horror perform, then, what the law may enjoin." 
 
 The objection urged by Kant against any system which 
 founds moral relations on the relative excellence of the 
 natural sensibilities, when brought under voluntary con- 
 trol, that it is Eudsemonistic and necessarily wwmoral, is 
 answered against Kant himself by the well-known fact, 
 that he rests his argument for the reality of God's ex- 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 443 
 
 istence and his moral dominion altogether on the eternal 
 fitness enforced, as he claims, by the categorical imper- 
 ative, that the morally good should be made sensitively 
 happy. If this is true, then it must be assumed that 
 virtue should be rewarded by happiness ; or, to express 
 the truth in abstract terminology, there is an eternal 
 and d priori relationship between virtue and happiness. 
 The only possible escape from a palpable contradiction 
 of thought in this argument can be reached by taking 
 the position, that though there is an eternal and a priori 
 and self-evident necessity that the virtuous should be 
 made happy, yet, if they act under the knowledge of this 
 fact, they will cease to be virtuous. In other words, 
 while it is absolutely necessary that God should exist 
 in order that the virtuous should be made happy, it 
 is equally necessary that they should not know this 
 necessary truth, or at least not be influenced by their 
 knowledge of it, in order that their acts should be 
 virtuous. 
 
 It would be quite out of place, however, to attempt 
 any extended criticism of Kant's ethical system. Schleier- 
 macher, Trendelenburg, Lotze, and Bona Meyer, and 
 others, have recognized and exposed its weak points. 
 Its practical excellencies and the services which it ren- 
 dered are most emphatically confessed by those who are 
 most alive to its defects. 
 
 7. It remains that we should notice the influence of 
 Kant upon theology. That his immediate influence 
 should have been disturbing was most natural. A sys- 
 tem so positive, so peremptory, and so highly technical, 
 could not but exert a positive effect upon the current 
 modes of thinking and writing in respect to the funda- 
 mental truths of theological speculation. Its novel and 
 highly technical dialect would seem to express new 
 ideas, whether with or without reason. But whatever 
 
444 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 novelty of ideas or terminology might have invaded 
 theological circles as a consequence of the teachings of 
 Kant, and however puzzled the old theologians might 
 have been by the Babylonish dialect of the new, the- 
 ology itself was recognized by him as the haven of all 
 man's contemplations, and the mistress of all human 
 sciences. Both the Kantian metaphysics and ethics 
 were emphatically and confessedly theological. God 
 was assumed as in some sense an ethical, if not a specu- 
 lative necessity to all human thinking ; and the destiny 
 of the soul, if not its future existence, was held to re- 
 quire and to rest upon faith in God. Indeed, we may 
 say with confidence, that one of the most memorable 
 services rendered to modern thinking by Kant's essay 
 was its introduction of God as a necessary element and 
 axiom to all subsequent thinking which should claim to 
 be called philosophical. In 1771 the "Systeme de la 
 Nature " was supposed to have finally and effectually 
 banished the idea of God from all philosophical schools 
 as an exploded figment of the human imagination. In 
 1781 the " Critique of Pure Reason " demonstrated that 
 it is not possible even to think of the universe rationally 
 and systematically without the assumption of a thinking 
 God. Such a God must consequently be a personal 
 being, who may accept personal worship and affection, 
 and is able to make himself known to man by personal 
 manifestations. Whatever vagueness or uncertainty 
 might be suggested or implied on the speculative side 
 in respect to the knowableness of God, or man's capa- 
 city to define or formulate his conceptions of God, these 
 difficulties were all set aside by the demands and capa- 
 cities of man's ethical nature. The beginnings of our 
 modern agnosticism were doubtless suggested in Kant's 
 antinomies, and his misgivings as to any possible adjust- 
 ment of the categories of the understanding with the 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 445 
 
 ideas of the speculative reason ; but these difficulties 
 were thought to have given way to the overbearing 
 demands of the practical reason. So long as man 
 knows himself to be free, and commands himself to 
 reverence the law of duty, and so long, also, as he 
 requires that virtue shall be rewarded and vice shall be 
 punished, so long is it not only possible, but necessary, 
 that God shall be believed in as himself personal and 
 free. Since theology, then, as distinguished from reli- 
 gion, rests on an ethical sanction, it can be tested by its 
 ethical import, and this whether it is natural or re- 
 vealed. So far as it has a moral content, it may be 
 accepted as true. So far as it is immoral, — i.e., in so far 
 as it fails to commend itself to the practical reason, by 
 which all religion stands, — so far is it known to be false. 
 Positive or revealed religion, however, must also be 
 morally necessary. Such necessity Kant recognized in 
 the sinfulness of man, which he conceived as a perma- 
 nent and universal supremacy of desire or passion over 
 the practical reason; furnishing an obvious occasion for 
 the interposition of supernatural influences in the econ- 
 omy of grace. 
 
 But, while Kant found a place for all the funda- 
 mental conceptions and many of the special teachings 
 of Protestant orthodoxy, it must be confessed that he 
 placed chief emphasis upon the moral rather than the 
 supernatural, — upon the ethical import rather than the 
 historical or supernatural facts of the Christian system. 
 For this the theologians of his time are largely respon- 
 sible. With scanty exceptions, the Protestantism of 
 his day had become a system of dead orthodoxy and 
 political ritualism, in which facts, dogmas, and worship 
 had become largely emptied ' of all their quickening 
 ethical significance, and had lost much of their spiritual 
 meaning and power for the conscience and the heart. 
 
446 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 The feeble religious life which survived, and was slum- 
 bering in the embers which had outlived those fiery con- 
 troversies in the schools and on the field which succeeded 
 the Reformation, had little or no intellectual or scien- 
 tific significance. 
 
 It is very common to charge what is called modern 
 rationalism upon the rise of the critical philosophy, and 
 to denounce it under the vague designation of transcen- 
 dentalism. It were altogether more exact and rational 
 to find in the teachings of Kant the germs and explana- 
 tion of a powerful religious movement in two opposite 
 directions, one positive, and the other negative. 
 
 We have briefly explained the definite recognition 
 of the ethical which we find in Kant's own system, 
 leading to a positive faith in the supernatural, as also 
 the importance with which this was invested by him as 
 a source of natural, and a recipient or medium of super- 
 natural knowledge. By many of his successors, nota- 
 bly by Jacobi and Schleiermacher, Faith, more carefully 
 phrased as the Sense of dependence, or the God -Con- 
 sciousness, was definitely substituted for the practical 
 reason, and made to do duty as an organ of speculative, 
 ethical, and theological truth. In England, Coleridge, 
 Hamilton, and Mansel were more properly disciples of 
 Jacobi than of Kant; and it is through these repre- 
 sentatives that the first type of transcendental super- 
 naturalism became familiar to the English mind. The 
 influence of the theological school which thus originated 
 among English-speaking people has been profound and 
 pervasive, and its existence and strength is a convin- 
 cing refutation of the charge against the Kantian phi- 
 losophy as necessarily anti-supernatural. It is neither 
 false nor extravagant to say, that many of the ablest 
 expounders and defenders of supernatural Christianity 
 during the last two or three generations upon English 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 447 
 
 and American soil have been of the so-called transcen- 
 dental school. 
 
 It is equally undeniable, that we find in Kant's 
 teachings the germs of three schools of anti-Christian 
 or anti-supernatural theology ; viz., the naturalistic, the 
 pantheistic, and the agnostic schools, all having this 
 feature in common, that they reject the miraculous as 
 either unnecessary or impossible, and therefore as his- 
 torically incredible or false. 
 
 The naturalistic or rationalistic school is represented 
 by all those who hold, inasmuch as the leading truths 
 of morality and religion must justify themselves to the 
 practical reason of man, that therefore they cannot be 
 made the matter of supernatural revelation, or do not 
 need to be so enforced. The dilemma into which they 
 seek to drive their antagonists is the following : Man 
 can or can not know all essential moral or religious 
 truth without the instruction or aid of supernatural 
 communications. If he can, there is no need of such a 
 revelation. For why should that truth be revealed 
 which is or may be known already ? A supernatural 
 revelation in such a case is superfluous. If he cannot 
 know these truths, then such a revelation is impossible ; 
 for the ideas and truths which man cannot understand 
 by their own light, or be convinced of by their own 
 evidence, can neither be made intelligible by any extra- 
 neous explanation, or credible by any external proof. 
 A supernatural revelation is therefore impossible. It 
 follows, that a supernatural revelation is either super- 
 fluous or impossible. This argument is the staple or 
 current argument with many well-known English 
 writers, who are more or less emphatic and conspicu- 
 ous in avowing their adhesion to Kant's ethical system. 
 Such are Theodore Parker, Francis W. Newman, Fran- 
 ces Power Cobbe, James Anthony Froude, and Thomas 
 
448 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 Carlyle. How Kant provided against this application 
 of his own theory, we have already explained. Other 
 reasons, indeed, are urged by these writers to enforce 
 their rejection of an historical and miraculous revela- 
 tion. But this position is common to them all. 
 
 The pantheistic school is only indirectly related to 
 Kant. Historically it can be traced to him through his 
 doctrine of the impotence of the pure reason to define 
 or justify man's belief in the Infinite. While he pro- 
 fesses to overcome this impotence by means of the 
 practical reason, and so escapes the immediate pressure 
 of the difficulty which he acknowledges, he leaves all 
 its difficulties to those who do not accept the relief 
 which he provides. There are not a few who not only 
 fail to find this sharp contrast between the pure and 
 practical reason, but to whom the contrast itself is 
 philosophically offensive, and to whom the difficulty of 
 accepting the proffered solution of the problem only 
 enhances their sense of its inherent difficulties. To 
 such the conception of an organism with the interde- 
 pendence and interaction of its constituent parts with 
 one another and the whole as mutually means and ends, 
 presents the most satisfactory solution of the existent 
 universe and its orderly arrangements. That the uni- 
 verse is a self-existent organism, in which matter and 
 spirit are mutually dependent for being and function, 
 is to many the most rational explanation of all finite 
 existences and finite phenomena. The pantheistic doc- 
 trine and the pantheistic school are only indirectly de- 
 rived from Kant. His many-sided and enlarged un- 
 derstanding was the first to do ample justice to the 
 conception of an organism and the organic, — concep- 
 tions which, since his time, have played so distinguished 
 a role in the sciences of nature, and pre-eminently in the 
 sciences of life. Schelling, with quite as much of a 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 449 
 
 poet's quickness to suggest analogies as ot a philoso- 
 pher's solidity in critically judging them, used the fact 
 of the organic interdependence of the finite viewed 
 from within as equivalent to its complete independence 
 on any self-existent from without, in a manner which 
 Kant had been too cautious to sanction by example or 
 authority. The consequence was, that, upon the sober 
 background of man's demonstrated incapacity to formu- 
 late the self-existent, Schelling did not hesitate to 
 portray in brilliant diagrams the successive stages of 
 the process by which the self-existent universe devel- 
 oped itself into beauty and life. Spinoza, in place of 
 Kant, became the hero of the hour ; the chief relation 
 of both Schelling and Spinoza to Kant consisting in 
 the fact that they confidently answered the many ques- 
 tions which Kant had the sagacity to propound, but 
 professed to be unable to answer. Hegel followed 
 Schelling ! But it is not within our province to indi- 
 cate through what phases of thought Schelling and 
 Hegel sought to solve the problems which Kant pro- 
 posed in respect either to theism and Christianity, or 
 in regard to man's power to know. 
 
 The agnostic school, technically so called, interprets 
 the Kantian position, that man cannot formulate the In- 
 finite by the relations of the logical understanding as 
 equivalent to the assertion that he cannot know God by 
 the intellect at all, and proceeds to supplement the same 
 by the analogies suggested by the doctrine of the cor- 
 relation of force to the conclusion that though we can 
 know that God is, we cannot know what he is ; thus 
 philosophically demonstrating that God cannot be 
 known by man, either through the axioms of intuition, 
 the interpretations of nature, or the revelations of mir- 
 acle. Moreover, inasmuch as the great law of evolution 
 must be accepted as holding true of all growths what- 
 
450 THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 
 
 ever, of phenomena and of being alike, of the categories 
 as well as the objects of knowledge, of man's concep 
 tions of things earthly as truly as of his faiths in things 
 divine, it follows that the concessions of Kant concern- 
 ing the intellectual unknowableness of God have, in the 
 light of the evolutionary metaphysics, become as solid 
 as any truth can be made by a system which rests 
 axioms and experiments alike upon a formula which 
 subjects all knowledge to uncertainty and change. It 
 requires but little knowledge of Kant to justify the 
 assertion, that the logical connection of the materialis- 
 tic agnosticism of Spencer with the intellectual caution 
 and moral fervor of the philosopher of Konigsberg is 
 slender in the extreme; while the moral unlikeness of 
 the two theories is as great as can easily be conceived. 
 
 Nothing more strikingly illustrates the intellectual 
 and moral greatness of the sage whose centennial year 
 we observe, than the depth and breadth of the problems 
 which he proposed, and the sagacity with which he meas- 
 ured the difficulties which must beset their solution. 
 
 We ought not to be surprised that the countrymen 
 and students of Kant have of late turned to the study of 
 his writings with a quickened interest. Their interest 
 is more than a critical curiosity into the import of his 
 terminology and the interpretation of his sentences. As 
 we have already stated, we find the explanation and the 
 justification of this revived interest in Kant in the clear- 
 ness and comprehensiveness with which he appreciated 
 the great problems of philosophical inquiry, and the 
 acuteness with which he states and answers the ques- 
 tions which must be forever renewed by man, and, above 
 all, in the thorough and honest love of truth by which 
 he was animated. It is to the credit of the present 
 generation that it does not despair of philosophy, and 
 that for this reason Immanuel Kant to-day finds more 
 
THE KANTIAN CENTENNIAL. 451 
 
 readers in Germany, France, and England — to say 
 nothing of America — than when, a century ago, he 
 summoned all Europe to hear the interpretations of the 
 new philosophy, and all Europe responded to his call. 
 
XIV. 
 
 TEE COLLAPSE OF FAITE 1 
 
 The manifold phases of religious doubt and question- 
 ing which have succeeded one another so rapidly in this 
 our sensitive and mobile generation, are well expressed 
 by a few descriptive phrases, which are more or less 
 significant and forcible. The metaphor which lurks 
 behind each one of these phrases is at least suggestive 
 of reflection and inquiry. "The Eclipse of Faith" 
 suggests the darkness and gloom which for the moment 
 may oppress the individual or the community. But it 
 also suggests the conviction, or at least the hope, that 
 this condition may be only temporary. The sun is not 
 extinguished because it is darkened. The individual 
 man, or the community, perhaps needs only to change 
 its position in order to come again into the bright and 
 blessed light. " The Decay of Faith " emphasizes some 
 diseased or abnormal action of the powers, from which 
 recovery is possible. Should such a decay terminate in 
 the dissolution of the individual, the life of the com- 
 munity may still go on, and perhaps with renewed 
 energy. Both these phrases imply, if they do not ex- 
 press, the underlying conviction, that faith has solid 
 grounds of truth on which it may rest ; and conse- 
 quently, though an individual or a generation may falter 
 in its allegiance, the truth will not fail to shine upon 
 other souls and upon other generations with intenser 
 brilliancy and effect. 
 
 1 The Princeton Review, March and May, 1882. 
 452 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. ' 453 
 
 But what phrase shall we select to express that type 
 of unbelief which seems to have taken so strong a hold 
 of not a few of the present generation, — whether they 
 are unwilling sceptics, agnostic seekers who never find, 
 or earnest and reverent souls who are in terror lest God 
 and his truth have ceased to be because so many wise 
 men deny them ? What shall we say of the alarm of 
 those lookers-on who observe, not merely that many 
 faintly believe, but discover the more appalling evidence, 
 that multitudes are drifting into the half-formed convic- 
 tion that the reasons for faith seem one after another to 
 be dissipated by the advance of science and culture as 
 morning clouds melt before the morning light ? 
 
 No phrase seems more fitting for this state of mingled 
 doubt and fear than " The Collapse of Faith," whether 
 it describes the failure of faith, or the fear that this fail- 
 ure is reasonable, and is likely to be universal. Other 
 phrases make the presence or absence of faith to be 
 dependent on the subjective condition of the persons 
 concerned. Whether the hinderances to faith in these 
 cases be intellectual or moral, they have only to be 
 removed, and the light of truth will appear again. The 
 condition for which we seek a suitable appellation is the 
 more or less settled and prevailing conviction, that faith 
 is not only failing, but that it is doomed to a slow but 
 certain dissolution, and that all the indications of the 
 prevailing time-spirit justify this conclusion. 
 
 We are well aware that the presence and prevalence 
 of such a conviction are no new phenomena in the his- 
 tory of Christendom. Bishop Butler recognized a simi- 
 lar collapse of faith in his time in the words so often 
 quoted : " It is come, I know not how, to be taken for 
 granted by many persons, that Christianity is not so 
 much a subject of inquiry, but that it is now at length 
 discovered to be fictitious ; and, accordingly, they treat 
 
454 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 it as if in the present age this were an agreed point 
 among all people of discernment, and nothing remained 
 but to set it up as a principal subject of mirth and ridi- 
 cule, as it were by way of reprisals for its having so long 
 interrupted the pleasures of the world." It was doubt- 
 less his reflections on this condition of opinion which led 
 him on one occasion, when walking in his garden with 
 his chaplain, to stop suddenly, and ask the question, 
 " Why might not whole communities and public bodies 
 be seized with fits of insanity as well as individuals ? " 
 and in response to the reply, to add, " Nothing but this 
 principle, that they are liable to insanity equally at least 
 with private persons, can account for the major part of 
 those transactions of which we read in history." The 
 amiable yet sharp-witted Berkeley has drawn a lively 
 portrait of the freethinker of his time, which, with cer- 
 tain inconsiderable changes, finds its exact counterpart 
 in the advanced thinker of our own time. Niebuhr, 
 the leader and almost creator of modern historical criti- 
 cism, recognized the atheistic unbelief of his own day 
 as worse than insanity, — as almost a demoniacal frenzy. 
 It avails but little, however, to refer to Butler or 
 Berkeley, or even to Niebuhr, with the old-fashioned 
 notions about Providence and prayer and moral retribu- 
 tion which he so obstinately retained along with his new 
 theories of the philosophy of history. The advanced 
 critics of our time are characteristically averse to any 
 comparison of old times and old thoughts with the events 
 and thoughts of the present. Butler and Berkeley, in the 
 opinion of many, have been altogether left behind by the 
 prodigious advances of modern science, and the deeper 
 insight of modern philosophy. Development and evolu- 
 tion are no longer used in the high spiritual significance 
 in which Niebuhr employed these terms. It is only as 
 these terms have become wholly materialized by Comte 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 455 
 
 and Spencer that they are accepted in the most modern 
 philosophy. 
 
 The authority of Butler has not only been set aside, 
 but, by the dexterous use of modern dialectics, it has 
 been shown that the cumbrous and old-fashioned bat- 
 tery which he contrived for the defence of Christianity 
 is capable of being used with deadly effect by the new- 
 fashioned assailants of theism. And, as for Berkeley, 
 the new atheistic materialism is ostentatiously Berke- 
 leian in its creed, — using the very arguments which 
 Berkeley devised for the annihilation of matter to de- 
 monstrate that spirit and matter are in substance but 
 one. 
 
 Leaving the times of Butler and Berkeley to them- 
 selves, with their historians and critics, and returning to 
 our own, we cannot deny the fact that a collapse of faith 
 has befallen us in a somewhat peculiar and a very for- 
 midable fashion. Its most alarming feature is this, that, 
 whether reasonably or unreasonably, men of knowledge 
 and culture are so extensively taking it for granted that 
 Christian theism, in the essential truths of personality in 
 God, responsibility in man, and the providential and 
 supernatural conduct of human history, is doomed to 
 vanish before what is called modern science and cul- 
 ture. They do not all affirm that this collapse will be 
 final. But they find unmistakable and alarming indi- 
 cations that it is making rapid progress among thinking 
 and cultivated men. We could cite many arguments and 
 concessions to this effect from numberless essays and 
 criticisms proceeding from very able and discerning 
 writers, who represent various schools of thought and 
 feeling. This conclusion is held, indeed, in various 
 forms, — by some in the form of a fixed and logical 
 conclusion, by others as a gloomy and unwelcome fore- 
 boding, by others as a shivering misgiving, by others in 
 
456 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 a spirit of sorrowing but patient fortitude, by others 
 in a temper of frivolous refinement, and by others in a 
 mood of malignant recklessness or despairing pessim- 
 ism. But, in every quarter, there is alarming evidence 
 that a positive and scornful contempt of Christian the- 
 ism as a doctrine and a life, a desponding or malignant 
 disbelief in its truth, and a more or less assured confi- 
 dence in its downfall, have become more or less defi- 
 nitely the creed of many young men in England and 
 America. 
 
 We propose to examine the reasons for these con- 
 clusions, in whatever form or spirit they may be held, 
 and whether by the friends or the foes of the Christian 
 faith. To give greater definiteness to our theme, we 
 would propose the definite inquiry, whether faith has in 
 the last century gained or lost in the argument, and 
 especially whether, under the critical and confident 
 attacks which are peculiar to the present age, her cause 
 is weaker or stronger at the court of the last resort, — 
 the court of the sober second thoughts of considerate 
 and competent men. By the argument we do not 
 mean the argument as viewed in the light of a rigid 
 and dry logic, but in the actual hold which the truths 
 in question have gained and are likely to keep in the 
 convictions of the present and the next generation. 
 We are prepared to concede, that in no century since the 
 Protestant Reformation have the opinions of believers 
 in Christian theism been modified in so many particu- 
 lars as during the present. And yet we would contend, 
 that in spite of these changes, and in many cases in 
 consequence of these changes, faith in Christian theism 
 and all which it involves never stood so strongly on 
 grounds of reason in the minds of those who accept it 
 as true, and never could urge so many arguments in its 
 defence. Our position implies, that we do not accept as 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 457 
 
 final the confident, and, in a sense, the honest unbeliefs 
 of not a few scientists, who may be narrow in propor- 
 tion to their eminence. Nor are we convinced by the d 
 priori assumptions of pantheistic or agnostic philoso- 
 phers by profession, nor by the logical deductions of 
 any school of critics who in their theories and interpre- 
 tations of human history deny the possibility that God 
 can direct or interfere with it as puerile or fanatical. 
 We do not sympathize with the supercilious tone of 
 that literary criticism which is moved by no fervent 
 sympathy with those views of duty or spiritual aspira- 
 tion which are characteristically Christian, whether 
 Christianity be true or false. While we recognize the 
 force of all these classes of negative arguments and 
 prepossessions, we find stronger reasons for rejecting 
 than for accepting them. While we would do the 
 amplest justice to the considerations which induce so 
 many to adopt negative conclusions, and while we sym- 
 pathize with the alarm which is felt by so many honest 
 inquirers after truth lest the foundations of faith should 
 be destroyed, we would re-assure them and re-assure 
 ourselves with a brief survey of the argument for and 
 against the Christian faith as it stands at the present 
 time, under the several heads to which we have referred. 
 
 1. It will be conceded by common consent, that what 
 is called modem science should be considered first of all, 
 as well for its intrinsic claims to attention as for the 
 confidence with which its authority is appealed to. We 
 are also compelled to connect philosophy with science ; 
 because, by a naive and therefore pertinacious effrontery, 
 modern science claims to have become a philosophy, 
 and as such to furnish materials and to dictate the 
 principles, methods, and laws for every department of 
 special investigation. Even when science ignores and 
 
458 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 denounces metaphysics and speculation, it unconsciously 
 sets up and uses a metaphysics of its own ; though this 
 is often nothing better than a transformed and amplified 
 physiology or physics. 
 
 Connecting for these reasons science and philosophy 
 together, we propose, as our first inquiry, What effect 
 upon the great argument before us has been wrought 
 during the preceding century by the changes in each 
 and in both, whether considered separately or as one ? 
 We limit our view to the last century ; because, with 
 the exception of the Newtonian physics, terrestrial and 
 celestial, modern science in every one of its divisions 
 has been the growth of this period. Within this time 
 also every variety of metaphysics, including the trans- 
 figured or rather the disguised physics of which we have 
 spoken, has had its ardent representatives and devotees. 
 
 Going back a little earlier than a century ago, we 
 find that in 1770 the " Systeme de la Nature," by Baron 
 Von Holbach, very generally attracted the attention 
 of the philosophers of Europe, and claimed to express 
 the ultimate and prevailing thought of the age. It 
 was grossly and avowedly atheistic, painfully but not 
 brilliantly imaginative, violently and contemptuously 
 arrogant with respect to any and every form of reli- 
 gious faith and feeling. It called forth at once the 
 indignant protest of Voltaire, who represented the rea- 
 soned deism of the logical school; and subsequently the 
 passionate remonstrances of Rousseau, the founder and 
 leader of the sentimentalists. Far gone in its nega- 
 tions as the new illumination of science and philosophy 
 had proceeded, it had not gone far enough to respond 
 with distinct and full-mouthed assent to Von Holbach's 
 outspoken and defiant assault upon theism. And yet 
 this writer in a most important sense had the argument 
 of his time on his side. He commanded the assent of 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 459 
 
 the hour. Against his logic, whether weak or strong, 
 whether it were the logic of science or sentiment, Vol- 
 taire's ingenious protests and Rousseau's eloquent 
 appeals could avail but little, and that little but for a 
 little while. When we say he had the argument, we 
 certainly do not mean that he had the truth on his side, 
 but that all the logic was on his side which was pro- 
 vided in the principles and premises which were cur- 
 rently recognized by cultivated men as constituting the 
 science and philosophy of the times. To use a current 
 if not a cant phrase of our time, Holbach and his gospel 
 of atheism represented the Zeit-Geist of 1770; and 
 therefore it carried the day. 
 
 The " Systeme de la Nature " has little meaning and 
 less force for thinkers of the present generation. The 
 few who read it now, read it as a philosophical curi- 
 osity. It is wholly disregarded by fresh and earnest 
 seekers after truth. This is partly owing to its defects 
 of style, and to the abundant use of its verbose and 
 flowery rhetoric in place of soberly reasoned deductions 
 from accepted principles. A better reason why it has 
 lost favor with the present generation is, that its science 
 is antiquated; having literally been left behind in every 
 point of detail by the rush of discovery and experiment 
 since 1770. The modern reader of this old argument, 
 if argument it may be called, is therefore compelled to 
 read it over against a background of assumed scientific 
 truth which has been exploded or outgrown. Or, if it 
 is not wholly outgrown, in place of what was a scanty 
 and shadowy framework is seen a finished and elabo- 
 rate structure of verified forces and laws. The scientific 
 reasoner of the present day literally lives in a new 
 physical and spiritual universe, with its correlated 
 forces, its formulated laws, and, above all, with its long 
 history of developed progress, which promises a still 
 
460 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 more imposing future. Splendid as were Holbach's 
 fantastic dreams of the undeveloped forces of nature, 
 lie did not anticipate the half of what has since been 
 realized of her then undiscovered capacities and her 
 correlated laws. 
 
 Two treatises of the present day may- not unfairly be 
 taken as representing the fullest expression of the 
 negative attitude of modern science with respect to 
 theism. The one is atheistic, the other is agnostic. 
 Positive atheism is taught in U A Candid Examination 
 of Theism," by Physicus. The theory of agnosticism, 
 or agnostic atheism, is expounded at length in Mr. 
 Herbert Spencer's " First Principles." The first is a 
 reasoned argument to the conclusion that modern 
 science, by its discovery of the doctrine of the conser- 
 vation of force, finds no occasion whatever to believe 
 in design or in God. The introduction to the second 
 professes to prove, that, while modern science finds 
 reason to believe that there is an Absolute, it finds 
 equal reason for denying that this Absolute can ever be 
 known. Both these writers seem at first thought to 
 have an immense advantage over Von Holbach in the 
 vast and imposing additions which modern science has 
 made to our knowledge of verified facts, and to our 
 stock of stimulating and quickening theories. A close 
 examination of each will show, however, that neither 
 of these gains, nor both together, have made the logic 
 of the new atheism or the new agnosticism a jot more 
 convincing than the logic of the old. They have 
 neither added a single new link to the old chain, nor 
 made a single old link stronger than it was before. 
 They have neither introduced a new method of using 
 the old facts or the new, nor weakened in any particu- 
 lar any of the old methods of inference, or any of the 
 old grounds of belief. The new universe of modern 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 461 
 
 science has, indeed, become immensely expanded to 
 man's certain insight, and been made immeasurably 
 more impressive to his instructed and quickened im- 
 agination. Its spaces stretch out in every direction 
 before the eye in immeasurable tracts, which the imagi- 
 nation falters in its attempts to traverse. But the 
 instructed eye finds in these most distant provinces 
 examples of order, beauty, and goodness as brilliant 
 and overwhelming as in those which are near. New 
 agents have been discovered in the far and the near, 
 the products and actings of which have made science 
 familiar, even to uninstructed minds, as the minister 
 and magician of art. 
 
 It would seem at first that these brilliant discoveries, 
 these verified facts, and these determined laws would 
 have made the old theory of a self-existent, creating, 
 and loving Intelligence more necessary and more ac 
 ceptable to the scientific intellect. At the least, we 
 might conclude that the logic of atheism would find no 
 advantage in modern science above the logic of theism. 
 Such at least is the judgment of the unsophisticated 
 intellect when first confronted with the facts and rela- 
 tions which modern science reveals. 
 
 It becomes, therefore, a question of more than curious 
 interest, by what processes of intellectual legerdemain 
 has the new atheism become so plausible, and by what 
 subtle transitions of thought have the atheistic and 
 agnostic theories so largely taken possession of the 
 Zeit-Geist of the present generation. The strength 
 of these theories and the likelihood of their endurance 
 may be estimated by a brief review of their history, 
 involving as it must a critical judgment of the logical 
 value of the steps in the processes by which they have 
 grown into such gigantic proportions and been applied 
 to such appalling conclusions. 
 
462 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 The least informed of the students of science is not 
 ignorant that the so-called galvanic force, originally a 
 product of the subtle chemistry which was almost un- 
 known in 1770, has enabled us to excite and regulate 
 in various ways that molecular action of which we so 
 glibly speak, but which we very imperfectly under- 
 stand. We have gone so far at least that we can talk 
 by threads of metal beneath and athwart the sky. We 
 have learned, by processes as simple as they are daring, 
 to interpret the constituents of the nearest and the 
 remotest of the stars. Many of the forces and agents 
 which we had counted as diverse we have learned to 
 regard as one. We can even convert the one into the 
 other backwards and forwards, forwards and backwards, 
 till they seem to assume the arts and ways of a mocking 
 and mischief-loving Proteus. And yet we have learned 
 to predict and trace these arts and ways so far as to 
 have found the expression and condition of each form of 
 force in some mode or rate of molecular action. Molec- 
 ular action, again, we have connected with the motion 
 of masses, and to this have found affinities in the 
 undulating light and in the supposed pulsating and 
 heat-bearing ether. We have concluded, by legitimate 
 theorizing, that the so-called physical forces are cor- 
 related by a common measure or by mensurable motion, 
 and that the agents or atoms which defy the discern- 
 ment of the senses, whether differing in quantity only 
 or also in quality, do yet perform their several func- 
 tions after common relations of number and propor- 
 tion. 
 
 We have learned far more than this. The observed 
 interchange of material forces very naturally enforced 
 attention to the possible interdependence and reciprocal 
 action of the constituents and agents of the physical 
 universe- It has forced science to recognize the uni- 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 463 
 
 verse itself as an organism of co-acting and conspiring 
 parts, each of which must act with and upon all the 
 rest, and in turn be acted on by each and all, in order 
 that any one may perform its humblest or its noblest 
 office. This relationship, which had always been more 
 or less distinctly recognized in the sphere of life, and 
 which has given its plausibility and charm to pantheism 
 in its grosser and more spiritual forms, had struggled 
 almost in vain to find a place within the domain of the 
 inorganic, until the doctrine of the correlation of force 
 flung the door widely open for its admission. This 
 gave it authority and prestige with a class of scientists 
 who would otherwise have rejected it as utterly strange 
 to the traditions and axioms of the mechanical philoso- 
 phy. With organic relations, a way was also opened 
 for development or evolution. These were first limited 
 to the familiar processes of the growth of living beings 
 from simpler to more complex forms, and from humbler 
 to nobler functions. For this progress some definitely 
 working agency must be subsidized, and some sem- 
 blance of law and regularity must be provided ; and 
 forthwith heredity, and tendency to variation, and the 
 struggle for existence, and natural selection, emerged in 
 succession upon the arena, all being summed up under 
 the general title of evolution. Some of these forces or 
 laws were hospitably admitted within the temple of the 
 new physics without the tests and passwords usual to 
 science, of verification by induction and formulation 
 through laws. They have certainly enriched our scien- 
 tific vocabulary, if they have not added to the definite- 
 ness of our scientific conceptions. They have immensely 
 stimulated if they have not completely satisfied the 
 scientific imagination. 
 
 But the entire history has not yet been told. At a 
 somewhat early stage of this history which we have 
 
464 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 traced, palaeontology had begun to read in the records 
 of the remoter ages an undeniable testimony to progress 
 and development of some sort, such as would be alto- 
 gether consistent with the working of the law of evolu- 
 tion, so soon as it should be hypostasized as an agent 
 or force in the way already explained. Plausible anal- 
 ogies suggested themselves between the development 
 of living germs into complicated organisms, and certain 
 mechanical changes in form, structure, or orbit. These, 
 again, were assumed to have been provided for in some 
 original impulse of motion, which it was conjectured 
 might involve the development of the several forms 
 of molecular activity which were required to account 
 for the phenomena of heat, light, and color, etc. Very 
 suddenly — all at once, as it were — our scientific dialect 
 is enriched by three separate conceptions used in swift 
 and unnoticed interchange with one another ; viz., devel- 
 opment mechanically viewed ; evolution in the organic 
 sense ; and, last of all, differentiation, — a purely logical 
 relation. These three, as we have said, are used inter- 
 changeably by many scientists, and not infrequently 
 are inextricably confounded. Similarly, mechanical 
 accretion, structural growth, with a capacity for special 
 functions, and logical integration, were included under 
 one indiscriminate generalization. Last of all, by one 
 gigantic leap of personification founded on a most com- 
 prehensive analogy, the progressive movement of evolu- 
 tion was exalted as at once the originating force and 
 the ultimate law of all being, whether living or dead, 
 whether material or spiritual, and crowned with all the 
 glories which had formerly been accorded to a self- 
 existent and intelligent person, but are now transferred 
 to the unknown and unknowable Absolute. 
 
 These wide-reaching conclusions, it should be ob- 
 served, are claimed by many to be severely and strictly 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 465 
 
 scientific. There are, indeed, many scientists — we trust 
 they are very many — who know that some of them are 
 nothing more than simple hypotheses, and as such 
 belong to pure philosophy. They are none the worse 
 for this reason, if they are only recognized as mere 
 speculations. Their claims to acceptance or authority 
 should be firmly resisted whenever it is claimed that 
 they have been demonstrated or verified as scientific 
 truth. 
 
 Historically considered, the theory of evolution can 
 be shown to have been, not only speculative in its 
 origin, but theistic in its assumptions and tendencies. 
 The physics of the last century knew nothing of or- 
 ganic interdependence, much less did it know any thing 
 of organic evolution. It was the mechanical philoso- 
 phy of Descartes and Newton which furnished the 
 premises from which the atheism of Von Holbach was 
 reasoned. It is true he insisted on the distinction 
 between dead and living matter, but his living matter 
 was only matter in motion. Our modern creative evo- 
 lution and the unknowable Absolute would never have 
 been thought of had not Kant for the second time intro- 
 duced the element of organic relationship with its im- 
 plied theism into the arena of physics and metaphysics, 
 and this just at the moment when chemistry, physiology, 
 and palaeontology stood ready to give to this more ele- 
 vated medium of interpretation the sanction of theii 
 splendid and almost bewildering discoveries. It follows 
 that the new atheism of Physicus and Spencer builds 
 on a philosophy which is essentially spiritual, if not 
 theistic, in its assumptions. 
 
 Leaving this point, as tempting us aside from the 
 right line of discussion, we proceed to inquire whether 
 the science of to-day, with its splendid discoveries and 
 its magnificent generalizations, and the philosophy of 
 
466 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 today, with its organic relationships and evolutionary 
 progress, are any more demonstrative of either atheism 
 or agnosticism than were the science and philosophy 
 of a century ago, as represented in the " System of Na- 
 ture." For convenience we separate the atheism of 
 Physicus from the agnosticism of Spencer. 
 
 The first point which we notice is, that the doctrines 
 of the indestructibility of matter and the persistence 
 of force, on which Physicus relies to set aside the 
 necessity of a self-existent creator, are purely scientific 
 conceptions, and as such pertain only to the finite uni- 
 verse. These ultimate generalizations are as truly lim- 
 ited propositions, and only concern a limited subject- 
 matter, as do any of the special scientific conclusions 
 which can be deduced from either. The fact that they 
 explain every physical phenomenon by a general affirma- 
 tion of the force or the law which holds of each, only 
 makes them more wonderful and comprehensive than 
 the phenomena which they explain ; but it does not for 
 this reason take them out of the realm of the finite. 
 If a scientific ultimate can satisfy the mind, remaining 
 finite, as the scientific atheist contends it must be, 
 in order to be understood and assented to, then the 
 creed of an atheist of the school of Physicus must be, I 
 believe, in indestructible matter, or in persistent force, 
 in extent w, in powers n, and in laws r, all finite. So 
 far science conducts him, and only so far. The instant 
 he affirms any or all of these finites to be self-existent, 
 he leaves the domain of science, and steps over the 
 boundary which divides it from the region beyond, 
 whether this be called the domain of philosophy, or the 
 domain of faith. He does the same when he assumes 
 the position of agnosticism pure and simple ; i.e., when 
 he will neither affirm nor deny that man can know any 
 thing besides. Physicus himself confesses that his 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 467 
 
 elaborate attempt to demonstrate that modern science 
 can dispense with God, only carries us to the bounds 
 of the finite, to the flammantia moenia mundi, and that 
 his magic formula of the persistence of force, and the 
 indestructibility of matter, are purely scientific doc- 
 trines, which concern the finite as we find it, and go 
 no farther. He frankly admits, that metaphysically a 
 self-existent infinite is supposable ; i.e., it involves no 
 inconsistency with scientific principles, conclusions, or 
 experiments. With his purely metaphysical arguments 
 for and against such an Infinite, we have at present no 
 concern. We are interested only in the question 
 whether the position which he so triumphantly urges 
 has any force, that modern science has enabled us to 
 dispense with a self-existent infinite by reason of its 
 axioms or discoveries that matter is indestructible and 
 force is persistent, — whether, in brief, the new atheism 
 of Physicus has any advantage over the old atheism of 
 Von Holbach. We find that the universe of each is 
 a finite, and only a finite. So far as either is claimed 
 to be self-existent, it is claimed to be so, not on grounds 
 of science, but of philosophy or faith. More is known 
 of the extent, the powers, and laws of the new uni- 
 verse than of the old. But we look in vain for the 
 slightest evidence that the universe of matter and of 
 spirit as known to the scientist of 1881, with its forces 
 and its laws, with the history of its evolutions in the 
 past so distinctly recorded, and its prophecy of the 
 developments of the future so clearly revealed, is, on 
 grounds of philosophy, any the less dependent for its 
 being and its order on a self-existent intelligent origi- 
 nator than the universe as known to the Encyclopaedist 
 of 1770, when as yet there was. no chemistry, no geol- 
 ogy, no spectroscope, no Darwinism, and no Herbert 
 Spencer. 
 
468 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 Herbert Spencer, as all our readers should know, 
 takes a position entirely different from that of Physicus 
 in respect to the Absolute or the unknowable force. 
 He is not content with arguing back to the reality of 
 such a force, on the grounds of science, nor with show- 
 ing that indestructible matter and persistent force are 
 interchangeable conceptions; but he is moved in his 
 " First Principles " to inquire whether there is not or 
 may not be, besides, an unknowable object of faith and 
 worship. Confounding in his sudden zeal the scientific 
 or unformulated unknowable (still finite) which evo- 
 lution supposes, and which reveals itself in manifold 
 phases or effects under changing and progressive con- 
 ditions and laws, — confounding this with that meta- 
 physical Absolute which theists had so long ignorantly 
 worshipped in the form of a personal God, but which 
 the new apostle solemnly says, I now declare unto you, 
 and being especially moved with concern that Hamilton 
 and Mansel should have been so rash as to deny the 
 great Unknown whose altars are found everywhere, — 
 he proceeds to construct an elaborate argument to 
 prove that such a metaphysical Absolute exists. He 
 finds evidence that it exists in that religious or meta- 
 physical faith which is common to the race, and is 
 continually reaching after the not-finite or the ultra- 
 scientific. The evidence that he is unknowable he 
 finds in the general truth, that all finite force or matter 
 is unknowable in its essence, and is only known by 
 its manifestations or effects; and therefore, by analogy, 
 or some sort of salto mortale, he concludes that the 
 Infinite and Absolute beyond cannot be known. Q.E.D. ! 
 
 We have considered these theories in detail, that we 
 might satisfactorily answer our main question ; viz., 
 whether faith in a self-existent and personal God is in 
 danger of final collapse because of the discoveries cf 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 469 
 
 modern science, and especially by reason of the general 
 popularity of the doctrine of evolution. We have 
 compared the atheism of Von Holbach, so far as its 
 logic is concerned, with the atheism of Physicus and 
 the agnosticism of Spencer. We submit the question, 
 whether atheism has gained any thing in its logic dur- 
 ing the past century from the wonderful discoveries 
 of modern science, or from the suggestions which these 
 discoveries have made to philosophy. The thought 
 may occur to some, that argument does not always win. 
 We reply, that, if argument does not win in science 
 and philosophy, nothing else can. We believe that 
 argument always wins in the long-run, and that this 
 was never so true as at the present time, when criti- 
 cism was never so sharp, and critics were never so 
 numerous. 
 
 The temporary popularity of an imposing and am- 
 biguous formula is no new event in the domain of 
 science or philosophy. The only security or remedy 
 against it for either scientists or philosophers, is that 
 both should become better logicians, and never fail to 
 remember that A is always A, and A can never be 
 self-evolved into not-A. Let these time-honored rules 
 be but faithfully applied, and it will soon be discovered 
 that both atheistic and agnostic evolutionism are prod- 
 ucts of a natural tendency in speculative men to hypos- 
 tasize logical abstractions into real agents. If the same 
 agent under varying conditions produces varying effects 
 in any fixed order, these effects can very easily be 
 conceived as develbped from the agent which begins 
 the series, provided the order be fixed, and the phe- 
 nomena are more and more varied and complex as 
 they proceed. By the aid of modern science we find 
 this progressive and intelligible order more and more 
 signally manifested in the structure and past history 
 
470 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 of the universe itself, indicating and implying a plan 
 which no single scientist can grasp, and a history 
 which no finite mind can remember or interpret. Sci- 
 ence, moreover, being impossible without definition and 
 classification, the moment we begin to think, we aim 
 to discover those forces and laws which are the most 
 comprehensive. These we naturally place highest in 
 our logical scheme ; i.e., first in the order of our ex- 
 planation, as we follow the geometry, the thinking, 
 the history, and the progress which all science uncon- 
 sciously assumes must control the universe. We pro- 
 ject on our logical maps, and draw in our scientific 
 sketch-books, a hierarchy of conceptions, constructing 
 our frameworks of outlined abstracta according to our 
 theory of nature's operations and their rationalized 
 order. Into this diagram we write as fast as we may 
 our hierarchy of genera and species, of families and 
 varieties, as fast as observation or experiment will 
 warrant. As our logical tree is developed under our 
 hand by twos and twos, in ramifications and sub-rami- 
 fications, it is not surprising that we poetically imagine 
 that the genus originates the species, and the species 
 is transformed into the variety by an inherent force 
 belonging, not to the individual agent, but to its ab- 
 stract counterpart. Finding, moreover, in the world 
 of life of both plant and animal, that the boundary- 
 lines which we had drawn between kindred species 
 are neither so definite nor so rigid as had been sup- 
 posed, we necessarily correct our observations by ascrib- 
 ing to the organic power of the individual agents, 
 whether material or spiritual, a greater flexibility to 
 varying conditions, and to environment a correspond- 
 ing modifying power. Finding also in the progressive 
 history of the generations of life ample evidence of 
 progressive variations from simple to complex forms, 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 471 
 
 with corresponding advances from lower to higher en- 
 dowments, we necessarily accord to the original germs 
 or molecules, whatever these may be, a sensitiveness to 
 varying circumstances such as had never been dreamed 
 of under the old hierarchies of genera and species. 
 When, with these results, we go back again to our 
 familiar and time-honored logical schemes, it is not 
 surprising, that by an unconscious hypostasis we ascribe 
 to the logical genus or species the capacity of perpetu- 
 ally differentiating itself into sub-species or varieties, 
 and of fixing these results in more or less stable subor- 
 dinates; or, conversely, that we assert for individual 
 agents a limitless and planless capacity to affect and 
 be affected by their fellows. Hence have originated 
 two forms of development or evolution. Hegelian- 
 ism was first in order, which, out of the splendid 
 poetry of Schelling, constructed its logical universe 
 by the development or evolution of every form of the 
 concrete by means of the self-moving and self-differ- 
 entiating power of abstract notions; beginning with 
 being, and ending with the most complicated agent 
 which is destined to exist in nature, and the most con- 
 summate event which shall occur in history, uniformly 
 finding a self-existent Infinite in the organic total of 
 the whole that has been, and is, and is to be. Next 
 emerged materialistic evolution, which begins its appar- 
 ently infinite, yet actually finite, cycle with the seem- 
 ingly impotent and unpromising star-dust which has 
 within itself the potency and promise of all the highest 
 forms of life, and ends with the completed possibilities 
 of these wondrous agencies in a universe that signalizes 
 its finished perfection by falling into a chaos, in whose 
 ruins are certain to be found the elements of renewed 
 development and order. These two forms of evolution, 
 the logical and the biological, are alike in their genesis 
 
472 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 and their essential features. The logic of both is sub- 
 stantially the same. The Hegelian or metaphysical 
 evolutionism has had its day. Though it has not ceased 
 to exert its special fascinations upon men of special 
 culture, it has lost its power to dogmatize in the name 
 of either philosophy or science. Biological evolution- 
 ism is at present especially noisy and pretentious, and 
 claims to furnish both foundation and method for every 
 science of nature and of man. The first saves both 
 philosophy and science, but sinks man's free and per- 
 sonal life into the abyss of logical necessity. The 
 second subjects, not only personality, but science itself, 
 to the uncertainties of blind materialism. For the 
 time, materialistic and biological evolutionism will 
 doubtless have special fascinations for men of limited 
 culture and dogmatic temper. It is our belief, that so 
 soon as the logic of time shall convince those men who 
 know how to reason that this form of evolutionism not 
 only destroys faith, but strangles science, they will 
 reject it with contempt, if not with abhorrence. 
 
 But, while we contend that logic in the long-run is 
 destined to win, we concede that many other elements 
 decide the question whether it will conquer sooner or 
 later. The convincing force of an argument or theory 
 is one thing, and the conviction which it produces or 
 fails to produce is another. We may not judge of the 
 strength or weakness of faith in a community or a pe- 
 riod solely by the logical strength or weakness of its 
 accepted philosophy. In former times, says Coleridge, 
 principles were better than the men: nowadays the 
 men are better than their principles. This is as true 
 of the actual as contrasted with the theoretic faiths of 
 men as it is of their characters as compared with their 
 creeds. We find abundant reasons for believing that 
 many scientists and philosophers are by no means so 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 473 
 
 atheistic or agnostic in their actual thinking as their 
 speculative avowals and reasonings would seem to 
 imply. There is certainly no lack in the confidence, if 
 it be not sometimes the bravado or effrontery, with 
 which the agnostics of our time propound their conclu- 
 sions, and their reasons for holding them. The cool- 
 ness with which they assert that the new doctrines 
 solve all the mysteries of matter and spirit, of life and 
 organization, and the confidence with which they dis- 
 pose of creation and design, are equally refreshing. The 
 bravery also with which they profess their readiness to 
 accept any martyrdom for their most hallowed convic- 
 tions to which they may be called by their loyalty to 
 science is also imposing, if it is not inspiring. We ob- 
 serve a difference, however, between the outspoken and 
 plucky antagonism of the old materialistic atheism and 
 the half-reluctant consent which many of our negative 
 thinkers affect as they accept the conclusions to which 
 science compels them, or the blushing euphemisms with 
 which they utter their half-extorted confessions of un- 
 belief or blasphemy. The imaginative mysticism with 
 which the new atheism drapes the hideous idols of nega- 
 tion is another indication that the scientific unbelief of 
 our day is less hearty, less positive, and less self-satisfied 
 than were the coarser and rougher denials of other 
 times. These phenomena are not difficult to be recon- 
 ciled with the more accurate knowledge and the higher 
 cultivation of the times in which we live. They are 
 exactly what we ought to look for in a period distin- 
 guished by intense activity in limited spheres of observa- 
 tion, and sagacious and splendid generalizations within 
 the wide ranges of hypothesis and speculation. The 
 habit of careful observation engenders confidence as 
 well as caution. The successful confirmation of a few 
 happy conjectures may inflate to a romantic reliance on 
 
474 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 the most improbable hypotheses. In this way the sense 
 of obligation to logical coherence may become gradually 
 relaxed, the judgment concerning the true and the real 
 be enervated, and the universe of tremendous fact be 
 transformed into any unreal phantasmagoria of specu- 
 lation which may illustrate or confirm some newly 
 broached imaginative theory. Faith in moral and re- 
 ligious truth, on the other hand, though intellectual in 
 its activity and its grounds, is, in its very essence, in- 
 tensely realistic and practical. It is not necessarily 
 carefully adjusted, even by men of high intellectual cul- 
 ture, to their scientific or philosophical theories; and 
 hence it is not always helped or hindered by either so 
 seriously as would seem to be inevitable. The fact is 
 certainly unquestioned, that orthodox and even ultra- 
 orthodox Christian believers not infrequently accept a 
 theory of the universe which is utterly atheistic or 
 agnostic, or a doctrine of man which is hopelessly materi- 
 alistic, with little or no interruption to a fervent Chris- 
 tian experience. 
 
 2. This distinction between the logical and practical 
 faiths of men forces itself upon our attention as we pro- 
 ceed to our next topic, and inquire what we ought to 
 think of the ethical theories and tendencies of our times. 
 That many of these theories are eminently dangerous 
 and destructive no man can possibly deny. Viewed 
 from a purely logical stand-point, nothing seems more 
 clear than that every theory of ethics which is derived 
 from materialistic evolutionism must deprive moral 
 obligation of its permanence and sacredness. The ut- 
 most that any can do is to enforce the most sacred 
 duties of life, by associations which are confessed to be 
 factitious in so far as they are creatures of social forces. 
 Every such theory must resolve the authority of duty 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 475 
 
 itself into the right of the strongest to compel by the 
 bayonet when directed by science and wisdom, or by 
 the shouts and jeers of an ignorant and brutal mob. It 
 finds the original rudiments of conscience in the dread 
 of the war-club and the bludgeon. " The imperious 
 word ought" says Mr. Charles Darwin, "seems merely 
 to imply the consciousness of the existence of a persist- 
 ent instinct, either innate or partly acquired." A ma- 
 tured and cultured conscience is only that inextricable 
 web of associations which society weaves about every 
 one of its members for and against the impulses which 
 it chooses or finds necessary to encourage or repress as 
 society rises or sinks. These associations form the con- 
 science of the individual into a swift witness against, or 
 it may be for, murder and lust and violence. The law 
 of duty, supposed by the older atheists and deists to be 
 written upon the heart of man so clearly as to need no 
 enforcement or authority from the voice of God, is now 
 held to be written on the brain through physiological 
 agencies, which, when hardened by social repetitions, 
 are transmitted by the hereditary force of a thousand 
 generations. It is assumed, indeed, that this social 
 movement must be upward and onward, — from the 
 lower to the higher, from the worse to the better, — but 
 without reason. These theorists seem never to have 
 asked themselves, and no reason is provided in the facts 
 and analogies of their system, why some interruption of 
 development may not produce a single brain of mighty 
 force, seething with the impulses of murder and lawless- 
 ness, which shall break the law of heredity, and cast out 
 the better conscience from its brain-shell, and proclaim 
 to the willing multitude some new code of license in the 
 name of some newly developed theory of property, the 
 state, or social order. The advocates of the new ethics 
 are professed logicians and practised reasoners, who 
 
476 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 pride themselves on their coherent thinking, and the 
 unflinching courage with which they adhere to the logic 
 of their convictions. And yet they show no timidity 
 for themselves or their fellows lest these consequences 
 should be acted out in some drama of terrific horror by 
 men whose associations are not yet rightly or strongly 
 adjusted, or lest a new code of scientific communism, 
 murder, and lust should be thrust up into their own 
 lecture-rooms from the hell which lies beneath, or be en- 
 forced upon the community by the law of the bludgeon, 
 or the shouts of a maddened public sentiment. Spec- 
 tators and critics who do not accept these opinions are 
 filled with alarm as they follow out the logic of these 
 new ethics, for to them the logic seems as direct and as 
 cruel as the ball of the rifle towards its mark. But 
 their advocates and exponents are as cool and uncon- 
 cerned about these or any consequences as if they were 
 tracing the path of a blank cartridge, or the orbit of an 
 asteroid. The story is credited of Voltaire, that, on a 
 certain occasion, the conversation at his table was 
 becoming somewhat free in respect to God and immor- 
 tality, when he suddenly rose, and locked his servants 
 out of the room, saying that he did not care to be mur- 
 dered or robbed as the consequence of the free theories 
 which might be expounded in his own house. Our 
 modern theorists would esteem such a precaution emi- 
 nently unscientific and puerile. Even the atheists of 
 the last century held with a sort of fervor to permanent 
 laws of nature in favor of temperance and kindness and 
 courtesy, which enabled them to dispense with God. 
 But the atheists of the modern school make duty to be 
 the chance and changing growth of a society of humans 
 who have slowly struggled upwards from brutes to men, 
 and may at any moment exalt into a law of duty what 
 strain of brute or devil still lurks in their blood. 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 477 
 
 We think it right to argue, that, were the faith of the 
 new theorists as earnest as it purports to be, they would 
 not and could not be so indifferent as they are to these 
 possible consequences. It would seem that they must 
 inevitably recoil from them with terror for themselves 
 and for their kind. It would scarcely be courteous to 
 assert that they are not serious in holding their premises. 
 It would be positively discourteous to insinuate that 
 they do not understand the necessary conclusions of 
 their own logic. How, then, may we explain the fact, 
 that they either do not forecast or do not fear the prac- 
 tical consequences to which their premises lead ? A 
 partial explanation may be found in the suggestion, that 
 scientific speculation in these times seems to be practised 
 in some sort as a species of diversion, or exercise of inge- 
 nuity, — a setting up of one hypothesis against another 
 in the way of logical pastime, with now and then a flight 
 of poetic enthusiasm enlivened with a sharp hit, not 
 always in the best temper, against theologians. If this 
 is true, speculation has become less dangerous to prac- 
 tical faith in duty, simply because it is less earnest as it 
 becomes more audacious, — seeming more brave, in pro- 
 portion as it lacks the courage of its own convictions. 
 
 Another and more satisfactory solution is found in 
 the fact, that ethical truth shines so clearly by its own 
 light, and stands so strongly upon its own foundations, 
 as to be regarded by theorists of every description as 
 practically unassailable. Even the advocates of the 
 most destructive theories justify their audacity by the 
 secret conviction that moral truth in the long-run can 
 never suffer from any assault of science. Accordingly, 
 not a few reasoners, who pride themselves on the rigor 
 of their logic, and the sharpness of their analysis, take 
 refuge from their own deductions in some convenient 
 shelter of faith or feeling. They would fain save their 
 
478 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 faith in duty from the scientific assaults which they 
 themselves make upon its supremacy, by some special 
 Te Deum of sentimental worship in their private chapel 
 of common humanity or common sense. We do not 
 defend the reasonableness of this divided allegiance. 
 We simply notice the fact as explaining how faith in 
 duty can be made to survive the destructive influence 
 of the most dangerous theories, and why active religious 
 convictions seem to be able to exist in some minds along 
 with an anti-religious philosophy. We are forced to 
 adopt some such theory in order to explain some of the 
 strange incongruities of our times. In this speculative 
 age many believe more earnestly in duty and in good- 
 ness than their theories provide for, and seem to hold 
 their shallow and destructive ethics more as exercises 
 for scientific ingenuity than with the spirit of martyr- 
 like or even of manly conviction. The negative theo- 
 ries of morals which are so zealously defended would be 
 more dangerous were the disbelief more positive and 
 earnest. Scientific frivolity, however, is a poor excuse ; 
 and yet it may be the best excuse which can be given for 
 the unbelieving and destructive ethics of the day. 
 
 3. Leaving the unbelief of the agnostic and materi- 
 alistic types, with their ethical corollaries, we proceed 
 to those forms which question or lower personality in 
 both God and man, and inquire how strong is the hold 
 which they have upon the speculative and practical 
 thinking of the present generation. Under this group- 
 ing, pantheism and naturalistic deism are placed side by 
 side, so far as the doctrine of God is concerned. So far 
 as we have to do with man, and God's relations to man, 
 the supernatural is excluded alike by each. Miracle, 
 inspiration, providence, prayer, personal sympathy and 
 help from God, are all rejected, or vaguely and faintly 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 479 
 
 believed. The questions which we propose to answer 
 are these : Has the alleged collapse of faith proceeded 
 farther in these directions in the present generation than 
 ever before ? or, on the other hand, are there signs of 
 recovery and re-action ? In reply to these questions, we 
 cannot deny that faith in the divine personality has 
 been greatly weakened by the indefinite haziness into 
 which the idea of God is resolved by the pantheistic 
 metaphysics, or overlaid by pantheistic imagery. The 
 same result has followed the remoteness of distance to 
 which the Supreme is removed by the complicated ma- 
 chinery of forces and laws which the deism of the 
 mechanical physics interposes between man and his 
 Maker, or the unfeeling indifference to human interests 
 which Epicurean culture and dilettanteism ascribe to 
 the Deity. 
 
 But when we ask whether pantheism or deism or Epi- 
 cureanism are stronger in evidence or argument than 
 they were in the last generation, or are rooted more 
 firmly in the rational convictions of the thinkers of the 
 present day than in days gone by, we find no evidence 
 that either is true. There are signs that, the bewilder- 
 ing wonder evoked by the pantheistic metaphysics is 
 giving way to a soberer and clearer philosophy of the 
 Infinite. The imaginative tendency which was satisfied 
 for a while with the brilliant turnings of the kaleido- 
 scope is beginning to find the sharp-cut visions of the 
 telescope more restful to the eye. In the judgment of 
 the cool and well-instructed intellect, personality, in 
 both Creator and the created, ranks higher than any 
 quantity of matter, or energy of force, or complexity of 
 laws. It is now more than suspected that the intelli- 
 gent direction of forces to definite ends is a nobler 
 function than the unconscious subjection of the all to 
 either blind force or uninstructed law. Self-existence is 
 
480 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 less of an offence to the clearest and coolest intellects 
 * when affirmed of a Person whose resources are within 
 himself and consciously known to himself, than when 
 affirmed of unnumbered particles of star-dust which hap- 
 pened to find themselves together in such relations as to 
 constitute a cosmos in embryo, with the promise and 
 potency of a wondrous history. A Deity who is capa- 
 ble of sympathy and care for beings who, in turn, can 
 remember or forget him, stands far higher in dignity, 
 and is far more worthy to be believed in, than a some- 
 thing or somewhat who is too imbecile or too dignified 
 to .respond to the longings of the human heart. It 
 would seem that it is beginning to be discovered that 
 the pantheist has exhausted all there is of argument in 
 the assumption that Infinitude excludes any division or 
 separateness of being, or in the vastness of the finite as 
 revealed by modern science, or in the mystery of any 
 organic dependence and activity by which parts and 
 wholes share and contribute to a common life. The 
 deist of the mechanical philosophy is becoming rather 
 tired of a God who, having made and continuing to up- 
 hold the universe, and after an intelligent plan, is con- 
 demned to be a mere inspector of its workings, with no 
 opportunity for that personal agency which begets per- 
 sonal trust or submission or comfort or hope. A special 
 providence, and a prayer-hearing and prayer-answering 
 Father in heaven, would bring some relief from the stu- 
 pidity and tiresome monotony of a god so limited and 
 inert. Even the Epicurean dilettante is so desirous of 
 a new sensation as almost to be ready to welcome it in 
 the form of the hope of a heaven of established holi- 
 ness, even if joined to the fear of a hell of matured and 
 energetic depravity. 
 
 We do not contend that there is any general or 
 formal abandonment of either the pantheistic or the 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 481 
 
 cleistic theories of the universe. We are also aware 
 that the pre-occupation of so many of the active-minded 
 thinkers of the time with physical theories of society 
 and history has had something to do with the ebbing 
 tide of pantheistic and deistic theologies. We do not 
 assert that the one class of these theories is greatly to 
 be preferred to the other. But we find evidence that 
 the logic of neither is invincible, if men of similar gifts 
 and culture so readily exchange the one for the other. 
 We find also reason to believe that the truths which 
 have satisfied the speculative and practical wants of 
 many generations will gain a more favorable hearing, 
 and a kindlier reception, so soon as the tide shall begin 
 to recede, as it surely will, from an atheistic science and 
 philosophy. The clearness and severity of the processes 
 which are enjoined in the physical sciences, the exact- 
 ness of definition, the severity of crucial experiments, 
 and the demand for general consistency with the expe- 
 riences and observations of common life, are rapidly 
 disciplining the present generation to habits of judg- 
 ment and reasoning which are favorable to a philosophy 
 which finds room for personality in man and the Deity, 
 and which, with personality, opens the way for personal 
 worship and communion between living men and the 
 living God. 
 
 4. But let all this be conceded, and let us assume 
 that the old faith in God's personality and providence 
 may again resume its place in the schools of philosophy 
 and science, what shall we say of the old faith in the 
 supernatural of the Christian Scriptures and the Chris- 
 tian Church f Is not faith in ' the supernatural, and 
 even in the providential, of actual history becoming 
 weaker and more vacillating than ever? And has not 
 the new historical criticism given such deadly blows 
 
482 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 to the naive confidence of men in the miraculous element 
 of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, that it must 
 needs fall into a fatal collapse, from which it can never 
 again revive ? Is it not as obvious as it is true, that, 
 from the days of Lessing to the days of Kuenen, the 
 traditional confidence of the Christian Church in the 
 Hebrew and Christian miracles has been gradually giving 
 way before the searching scrutiny of scientific criticism 
 until less of it than ever remains among leading schol- 
 ars, and the little that survives is asserted in proposi- 
 tions of more indefinite vagueness and feebler energy 
 than ever before ? While it may be true that super- 
 naturalism as a possible theory is coming more into 
 fashion, — and not always to its honor, — are not Moses 
 and Jesus fast becoming thoroughly naturalized, and 
 by critical tendencies which cannot be resisted? 
 
 Of these assertions, and the facts on which they rest, 
 the following may be taken as a truthful estimate. It 
 is doubtless true, that within the present century scien- 
 tific criticism has been applied to every description of 
 history as never before ; and from this scrutiny sacred 
 history could not and ought not to escape. While it is 
 by no means true that sacred and critical learning were 
 previously unknown, and while it perhaps might be 
 shown that every one of the newest destructive theories 
 had been broached and defended by earlier critics, it 
 will not be denied that the learning of the last three 
 generations, especially in history and philosophy, has 
 become more exact and scientific, and consequently 
 more trustworthy, than ever before. A keener historical 
 discernment, a more just and vivid imagination, and a 
 more penetrating insight into causes and principles, have 
 certainly been applied to all historical conclusions, 
 whether the subject is sacred or secular. As a conse- 
 quence, the old admiring credulity with which ancient 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 483 
 
 life and ancient men and ancient institutions were al- 
 most worshipped, as something grandiose, if not super- 
 human, has been abandoned, if not shamed out of sight. 
 The old legends have been read into common, if not into 
 vulgar, prose ; the ancient myths have lost their gor- 
 geous coloring and their imposing drapery; and the 
 most venerated personages have come down from the 
 lofty pedestals on which they stood like statues, and 
 been forced to try the common, and, at times, the awk- 
 ward, gait of ordinary mortals. From this severe ordeal 
 the ancient religions have in one sense suffered most, 
 while in another sense they have suffered least. They 
 are no longer any of them accounted for by deliberate 
 knavery and conscious fraud as their sole or chief 
 originators, but are largely explained as the natural 
 and necessary outgrowths of the sentiment of worship 
 as it has wrought out for itself an objective symbolic 
 environment from nature and history. It was natural 
 and necessary, that, as these theories have been suc- 
 cessively matured, they should be applied to the Chris- 
 tian history, including the life of Jesus and the origin 
 of the Christian Church, — pre-eminently to the super- 
 natural element in the same, — as possibly natural phe- 
 nomena. What has been the result ? and first on the 
 positive side ? In answer to this question we may con- 
 fidently affirm, that, so far as the drapery, or setting, of 
 the supernatural is concerned, the confidence of men 
 in its substantial exactness has been greatly increased. 
 The geography, the chronology, the literature, the life- 
 likeness, of the story as we find it, and whatever else 
 rewards the historic sense, or confirms the trustwor- 
 thiness of the narrative, or connects it with accredited 
 knowledge from other sources, have successfully with- 
 stood the ordeal ; and the sacred story in all these 
 particulars — the supernatural in it being excluded — 
 
484 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 is now acknowledged to be more real and more credi- 
 ble than before. Renan may be taken as in some 
 respects the most plausible of the rejecters of the 
 supernatural in this history; and yet he is the most 
 positive and outspoken in asserting that the Gospels 
 and Epistles, in the perfect verisimilitude of place and 
 time, give the most decisive evidence of their early 
 origin. All negative critics do not agree with Renan 
 upon this point ; but Renan has the advantage above 
 them all in being more free from merely scholastic 
 presuppositions, and more open to the broader lights 
 of common sense. For the history of the first Chris- 
 tian centuries, modern criticism has also rendered an 
 inestimable service in sweeping away a vast amount 
 of rubbish in respect to the supposed superhuman intel- 
 ligence of the early believers, and their miraculous 
 exemption from the frailties incident to their times, 
 and to their inferior position in respect of culture, 
 wealth, and political influence. It has done for the be- 
 ginnings of Christianity what a good field-glass achieves 
 for a distant landscape : it has made every outline 
 sharp, and every color fresh and glowing, and the whole 
 field of vision vivid with life and reality, none the less, 
 but all the more, because it has forced upon the eye 
 the sticks and stones and mud and gravel, and every 
 variety of disagreeable literalness which a less fresh 
 and realistic vision would fail to represent at all. It 
 certainly cannot be denied, that the new criticism has 
 brought into very distinct and prominent relief the 
 human side of the gospel and early Christian history. 
 But what has it done for the supernatural element? 
 How has that been affected by the new and fresh lights 
 which have been poured upon the past? Has not the 
 miraculous disappeared under the lights which modern 
 science has focussed into these vivid pictures? As the 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 485 
 
 vague has become distinct, and the dim outlines have 
 been sharpened, and the distant has been brought near, 
 has not the supernatural vanished from the wondrcfus 
 picture, and "the splendid vision" of our once rev- 
 erent, admiring faith faded into the "light of common 
 day"? To this question of questions but one answer 
 can be given. Whether the supernatural vanishes out 
 of sight, or stands forth from the picture in bolder 
 relief, depends on the eye which looks upon the picture, 
 more than upon the artist who uses the lens to bring 
 it near. The sharper and more vivid setting of the 
 past simply serves to bring the student of the present 
 century into the immediate presence of the first, and 
 to confront him face to face with the wondrous per- 
 sonage who is acknowledged to be the central figure 
 in the gospel story. It does for him the most that it 
 can ; for the frequent wish of the heart and intellect, 
 either expressed or unexpressed, has invariably been, 
 " Would that I had lived in the days of Christ, that I 
 might see him for myself, and judge of him by myself." 
 Modern criticism does this effectively, but it does no 
 more. This is all which it can do, and all which it 
 should promise to do. The literalness, the homeliness, 
 and the entangledness of the natural with the human 
 serve only to bring out more strikingly to the mind pre- 
 pared to believe the supernatural and the divine in 
 the picture. Over against this background of homely 
 reality, — made more homely just in proportion as it is 
 made real, — the supernatural Christ stands forth in a 
 contrast so striking, and with a relief so startling, that 
 the man prepared to respond says with a depth and 
 fulness of conviction which the new criticism alone 
 could make possible, " Never man spake like this man," 
 " Truly this was the Son of God ! " 
 
 Moreover, the new criticism has rendered a striking 
 
486 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 service to faith by the violent expedients to which it 
 has driven the determined rejecters of the supernatural 
 in-their attempts to account for Christ and Christianity 
 on naturalistic principles. These expedients have de- 
 monstrated their own unsatisfactory and violent charac- 
 ter by their uniform failure to satisfy the critics of 
 more than a single generation. In some instances, as is 
 welL known, they have been abandoned by their own 
 originators. The naturalistic theory of Paulus, the 
 mythical theory of Strauss, the tendency theory of 
 Baur, the romantic theory of Renan, and the various 
 mosaics, or, rather, kaleidoscopic pictures, made up of 
 parts of each, have all failed permanently to answer 
 the questions which the new criticism has forced upon 
 the attention of men. They have failed altogether to 
 account for the origination and first triumphs of the 
 gospel story on the supposition that the supernatural in 
 it was false. It would seem as though the entire round 
 of possible negative hypotheses had been traversed by 
 adventurous critics, to say nothing of sundry amazing 
 aerial flights by manifest romancers, and -in vain, and 
 as though nothing was left for the rejecters of super- 
 natural Christianity, except to select some one of the 
 many old paths which have so often returned upon 
 themselves, and ended in disappointment and disgust. 
 
 We are fully aware that very many of the rejecters of 
 the supernatural in the Christian history remain uncon- 
 vinced, notwithstanding the confessed failures of these 
 manifold negative theories. We know too well that in- 
 credulity in respect to the truth of the gospel history — 
 if it should not rather be called the extreme of credu- 
 lity — has become a fixed fashion or affectation in many 
 cultivated circles. But we find no special strength, 
 certainly no special novelty, in the arguments which 
 they so confidently urge. Their attitude is not so 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 487 
 
 much an attitude of conviction as of uncritical dogma- 
 tism ; and this savors quite as much of scornful self- 
 assertion as of docile and open-minded readiness to 
 revise the fashionable opinions of a coterie, or to rouse 
 themselves to fresh and earnest investigation. Indeed, 
 if to be willing to revise one's creed is a test of the 
 truth-loving and liberal spirit, the anti-supernaturalist 
 critics are generally sadly deficient in this important 
 indication. 
 
 The relations of the new criticism to the supernatural 
 element in the Jewish history differ somewhat from those 
 to the gospel story, for the reason that the materials and 
 data in this case are relatively scanty, inaccessible, and 
 uncertain. Sundry important questions may be said to 
 be still sub judice, and may remain for a long time unde- 
 cided. A new and exciting interest has recently been 
 aroused by the startling theories which have found a for- 
 mal and earnest advocate in Professor Robertson Smith. 
 At first thought, it might seem that if the traditional 
 views in respect to the history of the Levitical system 
 and the authorship of parts of the Old Testament are 
 to be disturbed so seriously as he and his teachers af- 
 firm, then the deeper and older foundations in Mosaism, 
 on which Christianity professes to stand, must inevi- 
 tably give way, and both Mosaism and Christianity as 
 supernatural systems must be ingulfed in one yawning 
 chasm of ruin. A second thought reminds us that the 
 new theory seems to require more than any other a con- 
 tinually acknowledged and ever-present supernatural 
 agency with a people whose institutions were capable 
 of constant expansion. The sudden enlargement of a 
 ritual system already established with a significance so 
 spiritual, and its acceptance by the people at a time, 
 too, when their spiritual insight was rapidly advancing, 
 can be accounted for satisfactorily only by the presence 
 
488 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 of the prophetic office and of prophetic authority. But, 
 whatever may have been the relations of the prophets 
 to the priesthood, one thing is certain, — that the more 
 we study the past of the Hebrew nation, and compare 
 it with that of any other, the more conspicuously do 
 Moses and Elijah, Abraham and David, Isaiah and 
 Ezekiel, stand forth as qualified and commissioned by 
 supernatural gifts, and so qualified as to speak in the 
 name of God to the men of their times and to the men 
 of all times. What their message was to their own 
 people, and what through them it is to us, may be ques- 
 tions which it is not always easy for us to answer in 
 detail. Some of these questions it may not be possible 
 for us to answer at all ; and yet, in the light of modern 
 criticism, we may hold with firmer faith than ever be- 
 fore, that the God who "of old time spoke unto the 
 fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers 
 manners " is the same God who " at the end of these 
 days hath spoken with us in his Son." 
 
 The special researches which are now prosecuted with 
 such zeal into the documents which have always been 
 and still continue to be the treasure and the pride of the 
 Jewish people, all serve to establish their high antiquity. 
 The discovery of other documents, whether unrolled 
 from mummies, or transcribed from tablets of clay, is 
 constantly bringing the elder days nearer to our vision, 
 and connecting the Hebrew people with their contempo- 
 raries by manifold relations which glow with manifested 
 reality. They attest the high antiquity of the Hebrew 
 story and its essential truth in ways and by evidence 
 which could never be so well appreciated as now. 
 Whatever else is uncertain, of one thing we may be 
 confident; and that is, that the existence of the Hebrew 
 nation, with their conception of Jehovah as their na- 
 tional God, — while yet in a real and spiritual sense he 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 489 
 
 was the rightful though the rejected sovereign of other 
 nations, — with their belief in his miraculous presence 
 and constant faithfulness, with their ritual, their sacri- 
 fices, and their hopes, with their history of backslid- 
 ings and recoveries, can be in no way so satisfactorily 
 explained to any man who believes the supernatural 
 agency of God to be possible as by the belief that God 
 was supernaturally present with Israel in fact. To this 
 conclusion we believe that sooner or later all critics and 
 students of history must come. Thither the stream of 
 tendency must bring them all at last, and with them 
 the consenting judgment and the warm approval of all 
 intelligent and right-thinking men, who do not profess 
 to be scholars, but who are yet competent to under- 
 stand and sympathize with any great movement in the 
 world's thinking and feeling. 
 
 5. These considerations very naturally suggest the 
 inquiry, What evidence is furnished by the culture and 
 literature of the times in respect to the relative strength 
 or weakness of the believing spirit, and the consequent 
 energy and prospects of faith in Christianity and in 
 Christ? We include under literature all those intel- 
 lectual products which by their perfection of form, their 
 attractiveness to the imagination, and their popular 
 character, are fitted to move and sway the minds and 
 hearts of the more or less cultured part of the com- 
 munity. The literature of a period is in one sense the 
 reflex of its beliefs and its sentiments, representing, as 
 it does, all its phases of activity from its profoundest 
 reflection up to any sparkling play of wit or trivial sally 
 of humor. In a most important sense, it forms and fixes 
 the principles of the times, by its re-acting force, as it 
 expresses these in its pithy utterances, holds them by its 
 arguments, pictures them in its imagery, makes them 
 
490 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 brilliant by its wit, or burns them into the heart by 
 its eloquence. What Plutarch in a memorable utter- 
 ance says of poetry is eminently true of literature, 
 that " it mediates between philosophy and life," if we 
 understand by philosophy the solid convictions of the 
 schools, and by life the practical sentiments and im- 
 pulses which control the mass of the community. Lit- 
 erature in these times has a wider field of activity than 
 ever, and more properly assumes to be representa- 
 tive of our general and pervasive life. The time was 
 when it was a separate estate, more or less an independ- 
 ent and lawless power, which tyrannized over the 
 consciences and tastes, and arrayed its independent 
 energies against the church, the state, and whatever of 
 morality or prescription was dependent on either. This 
 explains why literature is thought by many to be the 
 natural and necessary foe of faith and spirituality, and 
 in its very genius to be necessarily destructive. The 
 self-called wits of the previous generations in England 
 are conceived to have been freethinkers of necessity for 
 no other reason than that the Christianity of the church 
 was an inviting target for their wit and ribaldry. The 
 enormous destructive power which was wielded by the 
 literary class in France cannot easily be over-estimated. 
 Literature is not, however, necessarily destructive or 
 unbelieving, especially in countries in which thought is 
 free, and the expression of it is untrammelled ; and 
 letters are at once the arena and the instrument for 
 those assaults and defences of which opposing parties 
 avail themselves. In the earlier days of England's 
 better life literature was believing and devout, for the 
 reason that the best thought and feeling glowed with 
 such intensity that it could not but find expression in 
 the highest forms ; and hence literature, though often 
 sensuous, and passionately free of speech, was character- 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 491 
 
 istically religious. When the faith of England was less 
 fervent, and her morals became rotten, poetry and criti- 
 cism could not but emit a rank and noisome odor. When 
 religion revived again, a better school of poetry revived 
 with it, criticism became more self-respecting and con- 
 siderate, and philosophy more profound and religious. 
 Whatever may be said of the literature of the present 
 generation, it cannot be justly charged with indecency 
 or indecorum of sentiment, with flippant scepticism, or 
 rude blasphemy of speech. Its moral sympathies are 
 elevated, and its language is studiously decorous and 
 reverential. The spiritual truths which faith accepts, 
 and the faith which warmly cleaves to them, are both 
 honored with studious respect. The Christian motives, 
 the Christian life, the characteristically Christian vir- 
 tues, are warmly recognized as the highest and purest of 
 all human experiences, and the nearest real approxima- 
 tions to the ideals of ethical and spiritual realization. 
 It is not too much to say also, that the philosophy, 
 the history, the poetry, and the criticism of the present 
 era are, to a large extent, positively and avowedly 
 Christian. 
 
 If we exclude science and philosophy, as we properly 
 may, we find that the only considerable exception to 
 the prevailingly Christian character of English litera- 
 ture is its criticism. Inasmuch as the age itself is char- 
 acteristically critical in all its activities, it ought to 
 occasion no surprise that its critics by profession should 
 often be questioning and sometimes sceptical ; nor, in- 
 deed, that the attitude of those writers who study point 
 and effectiveness should often be negative and even 
 sarcastic with respect to a positive Christian faith 
 and an earnest religious life. It is an age in which 
 every received tradition, every positive principle, every 
 fashion and maxim even, must be justified by a fresh 
 
492 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 analysis of its nature, and a review of the grounds on 
 which it stands. The verities of conscience and of faith 
 on the one hand, by their very nature fundamental 
 and authoritative, and of individual judgment on the 
 other, not only challenge but demand fresh investiga- 
 tion from every man who thinks. 
 
 It may be questioned, however, whether these critics 
 by profession and occupation always represent the de- 
 liberate convictions of the ablest men, even of a criti- 
 cal generation. Not a few of the ablest and most active 
 of them are young men, whom marriage and a profes- 
 sion will bring into closer fellowship with those facts and 
 truths which experience only can enable them justly to 
 measure and estimate. Very many of the veterans who 
 are justly honored as foremost among critics have 
 drifted into a literary career as a consequence of the 
 morbid sensitiveness which disqualified them for being 
 actors in life, and forced them to be lookers-on, with the 
 consequent defects of mere spectators, upon a drama 
 which demands faith in reality at every turn, whether 
 for the present or the future, whether the action turns 
 upon prudence or duty or courage, or fidelity or prayer 
 or hope. Men who fling themselves out of the ring 
 from any confessed distaste or disqualification are not 
 likely to be the best judges or umpires of the forces 
 which are destined to win in any battle. Emerson, Car- 
 lyle, Clough, Matthew Arnold, Leslie Stephen, J. A. 
 Froude, F. W. Newman, and W. R. Greg are all exam- 
 ples of men who take a more or less negative attitude 
 with respect to the Christian history, the Christian veri- 
 ties, and the Christian affections. Their critical nega- 
 tions fairly and truly represent, so far as they them- 
 selves are concerned, that collapse of faith which some 
 of them so eloquently portray and even passionately 
 and pitifully deplore. That in speaking for themselves 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 493 
 
 they also speak for others, and so far represent a distinct 
 phase of modern thought, and especially of our cultured 
 life, cannot be questioned. That this scepticism is real 
 and fundamental and most tenacious, we cannot doubt, 
 and do not care to deny. But we find reason to believe 
 that it is not so hopelessly negative as the painful con- 
 fessions and the occasional caustic and contemptuous 
 denials of this class of writers would seem to imply, 
 However much of commonly received Christian truth 
 these men fail to accept, they show most unmistakably 
 that there is very much to which, either as symbol or 
 fact, they most tenaciously cleave, and to which they 
 attach a serious significance, — so serious that without it 
 the earth would be to them a waste, life a dream, and 
 man a contemptible enigma. While the Christian the- 
 ology, the Christian church, and the Christian emotions 
 and activities awaken but feeble responses of sympathy, 
 the Christian patience and self-denial and reverence and 
 self-control are more than ever admired : they are even 
 worshipped, — sometimes, it would almost seem, in place 
 of the Christ who first exemplified and inspired them. 
 What does all this signify, except that the best ideal of 
 what a Christianized humanity should become has taken 
 too strong a hold of the best side of modern criticism 
 ever to be eradicated by any influence, whether open or 
 subtle, whether direct or indirect ? Perhaps this criti- 
 cal scepticism is but a one-sided manifestation of that 
 scrupulous caution in judging of evidence which the 
 Christian love of truth originally inspired. Possibly 
 this want of sympathy with the ordinary manifestations 
 of Christian life is largely and justly to be ascribed to 
 the glaring inconsistencies and defects of this life as 
 estimated by these keen-eyed and unsympathizing ob- 
 servers. The distorted and grotesque images of the 
 Christian life, which are reflected by this sensitive ideal- 
 
494 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 ism, when tested by what it ought to he, may incapaci- 
 tate these critics from candidly judging what it is in 
 fact. The church itself, with all its zeal and saintliness, 
 is by no means so pure or so wise in its earthly mani- 
 festations of the divine life as not to give abundant 
 occasion for the sharpest criticism on the part of its 
 sympathizing friends. It is not surprising that its less 
 sympathetic observers, especially those who are critics 
 by occupation, should at times flood it with showers 
 of sparkling satire. And yet, were not its faith and 
 life a positive and an augmenting power, its defects and 
 inconsistencies would attract less attention, and awaken 
 a feebler criticism. 
 
 6. This brings us to the very portals of the church 
 itself, and bids us look into the inner sanctuary, and 
 ask with somewhat fearful solicitude whether faith 
 glows or smoulders upon the altars within, well know- 
 ing that so will faith weaken or prevail in every other 
 department of human activity. We find to our sur- 
 prise, that, in the judgment of not a few, the saddest 
 indication of a hopeless collapse of faith is discerned 
 by many in a general weakening of orthodoxy among 
 so-called Christian believers. The creeds which were 
 once held as so sacred are now freely, if not profanely, 
 criticised. Some of the discriminations and watch- 
 words of the Protestant theology are resolved into the 
 traditions of scholastic speculation, or the compro- 
 mises of practised dialecticians. Christian doctrines 
 which are rightly regarded as fundamental are pro- 
 pounded in novel phraseology, are explained by new 
 analogies, and are defended by new proof-texts. With 
 some of these texts, which have been cited without 
 question for generations, the new exegesis deals in 
 merciless forgetfulness that they have been made sacred 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 495 
 
 by the associations of centuries with the catechism and 
 the pulpit. Nay, logical theology itself and creed- 
 making are publicly denounced as a device of the 
 Devil ; and one form of stating the Christian faith is 
 declared to be as good as another, where all are neces- 
 sarily so imperfect and one-sided. 
 
 It is not easy to prove to a certain class of alarm- 
 ists, that even these extravagant speeches are only the 
 foam' of a great movement of Christian thinking, which 
 bodes good rather than evil to Christian theology and 
 Christian catholicity. It is difficult to allay the honest 
 fears of men who cannot distinguish between those re- 
 flective or reasoned statements of religious truth which 
 must characterize every formulated creed and school 
 theology, from those picturesque and emotional ex- 
 pressions of religious truth, largely in popular lan- 
 guage, with which the Scriptures abound. Even if this 
 difference can be made clear, it is not easy to demon- 
 strate, that with the revolution in the principles and 
 rules of exegesis, together with what is almost a revo- 
 lution in the principles of religious philosophy, the 
 old methods of handling proof-texts, and of translating 
 their import into catechetical and theological propo- 
 sitions, must be modified in some essential particulars. 
 And yet the conviction of this necessity is confessed 
 by the deeds, if not in the words, of the majority of 
 Protestant theologians now living. Most of them, cer- 
 tainly all who have the ear of their generation, whether 
 consciously or unconsciously, whether avowedly or dis- 
 avowedly, use proof-texts in a manner which differs ma- 
 terially from the traditions of other generations. They 
 accept, if they do not acknowledge, the principle that 
 the Christian theology of an age must be more or less 
 manifestly the product of its philosophy conjoined with 
 its scientific interpretation of proof-texts. These new 
 
496 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 principles and methods are as certain to gain ground 
 as Christian and philosophic truth are certain to tri- 
 umph. So fast and so far as they prevail, they must 
 essentially modify the unquestioned authority of tra- 
 ditional creeds and formulated theological systems. 
 The faith of the church of the remote future and of 
 the near present may be less dogmatic and unquestion- 
 ing than formerly ; and yet for this very reason it may 
 be more discriminating, catholic, and devout. While 
 we are not so simple as not to be fully aware that 
 faith in Christ as a Person involves faith in a possi- 
 ble creed and a reasoned and formulated theology, 
 we contend that the one may exist without the de- 
 velopment of the other, and that, under certain cir- 
 cumstances, faith in Christ and in Christian truth may 
 increase in proportion as zeal for a system or a creed 
 declines. While it is certain, that, when faith in Christ 
 declines or vanishes, faith in Christian creeds and theol- 
 ogies must go with it, the converse is not necessarily 
 true. 
 
 We contend that this increased catholicity, or, it 
 may be, indifference, of Christian believers in respect 
 to theological definitions and controversies is not neces- 
 sarily an indication of diminished loyalty to Christian 
 truth, or to the great Teacher of the Christian Church. 
 It may, and, to a large extent, we think it does, arise 
 from a profounder reverence for his majesty, a more 
 loving gratitude for his mercy, and a firmer faith in 
 the power of his life and death. The presence of these 
 practical emotions may show that the faith of the 
 church is the more tenacious and fervent with respect 
 to what it holds just in proportion as it thinks less 
 of many of the propositions or catchwords which have 
 been flaunted so conspicuously on the banners of the 
 church militant, or have been shouted from the throats 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 497 
 
 of its brazen-voiced leaders. It does not necessarily 
 follow, because the five points of Calvinism are made 
 less of than formerly by those who call themselves 
 Calvinists, or because the counter-propositions of this 
 or that school of Arminians are less confidently asserted 
 as containing the last and best words of Christian 
 truth, or because questions of church organization or 
 church millinery or church ritualism are now esteemed 
 of less vital importance than formerly, — it does not fol- 
 low from all this, that faith in whatever truth commends 
 God's authority or his love, or in the order and decency 
 of worship as of supreme importance, is weaker now 
 than it was two generations ago. We ought to say 
 more than this. We ought positively to affirm, what 
 every enlightened philosopher or theologian knows and 
 believes in his heart of hearts, that the methods of 
 conceiving, stating, and defending theological truth 
 have immensely improved in the last two generations ; 
 that, as theology has become more modest and less 
 dogmatical, it has become immeasurably more confident 
 and strong ; that what it may have conceded as uncer- 
 tain, and as possibly incapable of positive definition or 
 argument, has been more than supplied by what it can 
 affirm with augmented confidence, and urge upon the 
 conscience and heart with fearless and rational posi- 
 tiveness. Moreover, we also believe, that, with all the 
 flippancy and scepticism of the public mind in respect 
 to much that is asserted as Christian and vital truth, 
 there was never a time in which the defenders of Chris- 
 tian supernaturalism, who are competent and willing 
 to discriminate between strong and weak arguments, 
 were certain to meet with a more ready response in the 
 understanding and hearts of intelligent men. It is 
 true that formal and traditional arguments pass for 
 little in these days. The droning repetition of old 
 
498 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 statements of doctrine, in which there is no fresh and 
 modern life, is listened to with indifference, and dis- 
 missed with contempt. The platitudes of unctuous 
 exhortation are stale, flat, and unprofitable. The repe- 
 titions of the so-called evidences may be as dry as 
 remainder biscuit; and yet it may be true, that the 
 arguments of an earnest believer, and, above all, the 
 life of a man or woman of fervent faith, never had 
 greater power to waken trains of convincing reason- 
 ing, and to urge fervent appeals, than at the present 
 moment. 
 
 7. Our argument had brought us within the portals 
 of the church, and led us to inquire whether faith 
 was still glowing upon its altars. We had almost for- 
 gotten that faith by its very nature cannot be limited 
 to priests and teachers, but in its very nature must live 
 or die in the hearts of the mass of living worshippers. 
 The question whether faith is suffering a fatal collapse, 
 cannot be answered till we have discovered how far 
 and with what energy it animates and directs the life 
 of the Christian Church. We have examined the athe- 
 istic and agnostic science and philosophy, the new-fan- 
 gled ethics, the learned and the literary criticism, and 
 the shifting theology of our times, in order that we 
 might ascertain how far faith may have, relatively de- 
 clined, and what are the signs of its dissolution, or, it 
 may be, of its revival. It remains for us to inquire 
 what indications in respect to its recovery or decline 
 are furnished by the religious life of Christendom. 
 Our readers will hardly suspect us of attaching too 
 little importance to the influence of speculative opin- 
 ions and literary associations. But, while these re-act 
 with enormous power on the thinking and feeling of 
 every generation, they themselves are also to a large 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 499 
 
 extent the creations of the spiritual and ethical life of 
 a generation. The great thinkers and writers of every 
 time were each trained in a home where faith glowed 
 or smouldered, where God was worshipped or was dis- 
 honored, in a. community where Christian duty and 
 inspiration were honored or scorned, at a school or uni- 
 versity where science and letters fostered or sneered at 
 faith and devotion, and by teachers who honored or de- 
 nied God and Christ. The lives of Kant and Schleier- 
 macher, of Voltaire and Rousseau, of Mill and Parker, 
 show that those speculative opinions of theirs, which 
 moulded the opinions of one or more generations, were 
 themselves largely determined by their personal spiritual 
 and ethical life. 
 
 If the leaders of thought often determine what the 
 people believe, the faith of the people is as often ex- 
 pressed in what their leaders teach. Faith can never 
 die out of the science, the philosophy, the ethics, and 
 the literature of a people so long as faith is cherished in 
 their hearts and rules in their homes. If, then, we are 
 to find decisive indications of a popular collapse of 
 faith, we must find them in a decline in the spiritual 
 and ethical life of the Christian church, and in the reflex 
 of this decline in the waning respect of the community 
 for sincere and earnest Christian living and sacrifice. 
 We couple the two together, for we shall always find 
 the two together so soon as the partisan or persecut- 
 ing age has gone by. What, then, shall we say of the 
 Christian life at present as an evidence of the earnest- 
 ness of the faith beneath? and what of the heartfelt 
 respect for Christian earnestness as a pervasive impulse 
 in the community ? 
 
 First, what is the relative tone and strength of the 
 Christian life of the present day ? Many things may be 
 said, and said truly, in criticism and satire of its shal- 
 
500 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 lowness and its inconsistencies, of its fickleness and its 
 mistakes, of the want of judgment in its zeal, and of the 
 want of zeal with its judgment, of its pitiful lack of 
 practical wisdom, and its more pitiful lack of Christian 
 simplicity. The unsympathizing critic has reason to be 
 offended if not disgusted at times at the strange motley 
 of this-worldliness and other-worldliness which it wears, 
 at the flashy character of its excitements, and the more 
 flashy character of its exhorters and pulpit mounte- 
 banks. But suppose we look beneath, and ask ourselves 
 about the patient continuance in well-doing of the mul- 
 titudes who seek for glory, honor, and immortality in a 
 secret life which is hid with Christ in God, or endeavor 
 to do justice to the purified atmosphere of those thou- 
 sands of humble but happy Christian homes, in which 
 Christ is honored as supreme, and is never forgotten by 
 day or night, however hard and obscure may be the lot 
 in life, or limited the sphere of thought or action. It 
 would not be easy to compute the " potential energy " 
 which slumbers in the faith of these myriads of believing 
 souls, but which now and then makes itself felt when 
 times of stress come upon the land. Let it be granted 
 that the forms of its acting may occasionally reveal 
 narrowness and ignorance, and that with the pure fire 
 of genuine love there may be mingled much strange 
 fire of fanaticism and folly. All that we are concerned 
 to know is, whether the genuine faith of men is dead or 
 dying. In the midst of manifest uncertainty and fickle- 
 ness of opinion, do the men who profess to believe in 
 God and immortality and the gospel believe less firmly 
 than in former times? If they are less positive in re- 
 spect to many points, do they hold less confidently and 
 warmly to the truths in which a man cares to live and 
 to die ? Let the answer be found in the practical fruits 
 of Christian living which abound in the individual and 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAIT II. 501 
 
 social life of the present day, and which are confessedly 
 the products of faith in a present and living Christ. 
 After all the concessions which we must make in respect 
 to the unwisdom and fickleness of the external forms of 
 Christian living, we are constrained to say that there 
 was never a time when faith in Christ and in distinct- 
 ively Christian truth was so energetic a force in indi- 
 vidual and social life as it is at the present moment. 
 Its energy was never so great, its modes of action were 
 never so varied, its penetrating and re-creating force 
 was never so widely felt, never so transforming and so 
 all-subduing, as at this moment ; and its wise applica- 
 tions to the complex relations of human activity in 
 individual and social life were never so manifold and so 
 beneficent. 
 
 And what is thought and felt in respect to the energy 
 and earnestness of this faith by those lookers-on who 
 are severe and not always sympathizing witnesses? 
 There is plenty of satire for its follies and mistakes, 
 often well deserved ; there is keen distrust of its over- 
 weening pretensions ; there is many a secret joke if not 
 an open rebuke at its sharp practices ; there is much 
 severe and sometimes uncharitable questioning of the 
 motives and professions of inconsistent zealots; there 
 is much honest and more affected wonder that the 
 church is not more unworldly by men who profess no 
 other godliness for themselves than the worship of gain. 
 But it is very rare that in any community, however 
 small, there are not found a few men and women who 
 are acknowledged to be worthy Christian disciples, and 
 whose worth enforces respect for the faith which they 
 profess. We do not deny that there are points of serious 
 weakness in the Christian life at the present day, — ■ 
 points of weakness which but few are quick to discern, 
 or care to criticise. In this country and in all countries 
 
502 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 these are largely incident to the rapid material develop- 
 ments of the times, and the forms of individual and social 
 culture which must attend such a growth. This mate- 
 rial growth has also been attended by the development 
 of science, inventive arts, and literary tastes at even a 
 more rapid pace, which has partially withdrawn the 
 allegiance of many from spiritual aims, and the higher 
 ends and types of life. With the development of phys- 
 ical science, though in no sense as its legitimate effects, 
 a shallow materialism, a pretentious and more superfi- 
 cial atheism, and a still more shallow ethics, have made 
 more or less headway, all of which have weakened the 
 legitimate force of the higher truths, and have tended 
 to satisfy men with thoughts and cares for the present 
 life. That the Christian church has so well main- 
 tained its allegiance to its Master under temptations 
 so manifold and so dazzling is, perhaps, more surprising 
 than that it has yielded so much to the spirit of the 
 times. 
 
 But let it be granted that the Christian church re- 
 mains true to its Master, and retains much of the fresh- 
 ness of its faith and zeal ; does it follow, that with the 
 decay of faith among men of letters, and its collapse 
 with men of science, it will not sooner or later also fail 
 among the intelligent and reflecting in common life? 
 How can it be reasoned that the natural originators and 
 directors of thought shall not finally control the opin- 
 ions of all classes, and so the old faith shall not grad- 
 ually die out from root to branch of the intelligent life 
 of the community ? How can it be contrariwise that 
 the sturdy or the quickened faith of the masses of men 
 shall make itself felt by way of re-action against the 
 dicta of scientific associations and metaphysical dog- 
 matists and literary critics ? Can faith in these days 
 make headway against reason, and especially against the 
 
THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 503 
 
 instructed reason of positive science and the illumi- 
 nated time-spirit ? These questions are often asked, 
 and they admit and require a distinct and positive 
 answer. We answer them as follows : — 
 
 The lines of evidence and argument which are deci- 
 sive of the great truths with which faith need concern 
 itself are equally open to all men who are capable of 
 cool reflection. Science often hinders rather than helps 
 to the exercise of such reflection by limiting the atten- 
 tion to special activities and special relations, by the 
 glare and bewilderment of brilliant discoveries, by the 
 narrow conceit of independence or novelty of opinion, 
 and by the excitement attendant upon the reception of 
 a parodoxical theory. The activity of its defenders and 
 the novelty of its subject-matter may so pre-occupy the 
 mind as to shut out those familiar relations which would 
 decide the argument with a simpler and more limited 
 understanding. Faith, so far as it is an intellectual 
 process, being when philosophically conceived either an 
 intuitive or inductive act upon moral or spiritual data, 
 requires concentrated attention to a few comprehensive 
 but easily apprehensible facts and relations. These 
 facts and relations are given, or, rather, they are offered, 
 to every man's experience and to every man's reflection. 
 They concern God, duty, immortality, personality, moral 
 perfection, sin, guilt, redemption on the one hand, and 
 the acts and manifestations of God in providence and 
 human history which are suited to man's condition. 
 The believer in common life would only ridicule the 
 atheism of Physicus, and, having no special reverence 
 for authority, would only respond, " The fool hath said 
 in his heart, No God." He smiles at the laborious piety 
 of Mr. Spencer in charging impiety upon the man who 
 thinks of God as a father, and professes to believe that 
 he may worship him ; for to him personality is a veiy 
 
504 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 positive ajid dignified fact, and he cannot even under- 
 stand what Mr. Spencer means by dishonoring it. The 
 new ethics he practically rejects and abhors ; because he 
 has rights to defend and sacred duties to perform, and a 
 private and family and social life to live, with its mani- 
 fold obligations and its needed laws and restraints. His 
 difficulties about the agency of God in the affairs of 
 men were all settled when he had occasion to use prayer, 
 or to trust in the guidance of Providence. A revelation 
 in which there is no supernatural would be improbable 
 and one-sided to him, — too vapid and mean either to 
 live or die by. Critical difficulties about the Old Tes- 
 tament or the New, and the solutions of them, he leaves 
 to scholars to decide ; having ample warrant for the 
 truth which, as a believer in Christ, he is called to 
 accept. Having decisive reasons for all that he is called 
 on or able to believe, his faith is completely rational. 
 
 He may be perplexed and disturbed by what he hears 
 and reads of scientific atheism and philosophical natu- 
 ralism : but if he falls back upon what he believes, and 
 confines his attention to this, and the reasons for holding 
 it, his faith is unmoved ; and out of a convinced under- 
 standing he fights the battle of life, by faith in his divine 
 Master. More than this : he helps to keep faith alive 
 on the earth, as he gives his testimony to that truth of 
 which he has become doubly convinced by the most sat- 
 isfactory of all trials, — the trial of personal experience, 
 the trial of a life which is hidden with Christ in God, and 
 often the trial of a death which is anticipated and over- 
 come by faith. 
 
 The strength of faith in any period and in any com- 
 munity depends on the number of individual souls who 
 accept these truths as practical principles, and the en- 
 ergy with which their inner and outer life are controlled 
 by them. Whether the argument in respect to the other 
 
TUB COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 505 
 
 questions and lines of thought seems to be the stronger 
 or weaker, or whether fewer or more individuals take 
 the unbelieving or the believing side, so long as earnest 
 men believe in the supernatural Christ with rational con- 
 viction induced by moral and spiritual evidence, and 
 act out their faith in energetic and zealous Christian 
 living, faith can never collapse. It is, then, in this 
 direction that the activities of all believing men should 
 be turned if they would gain strength for their prac- 
 tical convictions from the broad and obvious grounds 
 by which Christianity must stand or fall. It is in this 
 sense that the truth is always so significant, and pre- 
 eminently at the present time, that Christianity is not a 
 philosophy, nor a history, nor a theology, but a Life. 
 It is because Christianity is attacked from so many 
 quarters, and what is assumed to be essential in it is 
 assailed with so much zeal and plausibility on grounds 
 which are familiar to but few, that these strong argu- 
 ments should be brought into the foreground, while 
 those which are limited to specialists, or are of inferior 
 significance, should be occasionally or sparingly used, 
 It were better to abandon every outwork and redoubt, 
 even the strongest, and most capable of successful 
 defence, than to be driven out of a single position. 
 The loss of a weak position is nothing, but the disgrace 
 of not having known it to be defenceless is injurious to 
 any cause. The real weakness of the Christian cause, 
 as it is often defended, lies in the ignorance on the. part 
 of its friends of the real strength of the arguments by 
 which it stands. Whether still other sharp lessons of 
 temporary defeat or disgrace shall be needed to enforce 
 wiser judgments remains to be proved. While the de- 
 fenders of the Christian faith, as we have argued, have 
 no reason for fear, or even for misgiving, they have no 
 occasion for bravado. The frequency with which these 
 
506 THE COLLAPSE OF FAITH. 
 
 obvious precepts of wisdom have often been disregarded 
 gives point and emphasis to the remark, that one of the 
 most convincing proofs of the divine authority of Chris- 
 tianity is the fact, that it has survived so long in spite 
 of its defenders. 
 
Men and Books; 
 
 OR, STUDIES IN IIOMI LETICS 
 
 Lectures Introductory to the "Theory of Preaching." 
 By Professor AUSTIN PHELPS, D.D. 
 
 One Volume. Crown Svo. - - $2.00 
 
 Professor Phelps' second volume of lectures is more popular and gen- 
 eral in its application than " The Theory of Preaching." It is devoted to 
 a discussion of the sources of culture and power in the profession of the 
 pulpit, its power to absorb and appropriate to its own uses the world of 
 real life in the present, and the world of the past, as it lives in books. 
 
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 — Professor George P. Fisher. 
 
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 ow m-n a^e most apt to be influenced, and what are the most telling qualities in the va- 
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 *#* For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of 
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A A'EW EDITION. 
 
 Books and Reading. 
 
 BY 
 
 NOAH PORTER, LL.D., President of Yale College. 
 
 With an appendix giving valuable directions for courses 0} 
 
 readings prepared by James M. Hubbard, late 
 
 of the Boston Public Library, 
 
 1 vol., crown 8vo., - $2 OO. 
 
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 most thorough and exact, and his judgments are eminently 
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 "The great value of the book lies not in prescribing courses of reading, but in a 
 discussion of principles, which lie at the foundation of all valuable systematic reading." 
 
 — The Christian Standard. 
 
 "Young people who wish to know what to read and how to read it, or how to pursue 
 a particular course of reading, cannot do better than begin with this book, which is a 
 practical guide to the whole domain of literature, and is full of wise suggestions for the 
 improvement of the mind.'''— Philadelphia Bulletin. 
 
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 with abundant knowledge, and with what is of equal importance to him, with a very 
 definite and serious purpose to be of service to inexperienced readers. There is no better 
 or more interesting book of its kind nuw within their reach." — Boston Advertiser. 
 
 " President Noah Porter's ■ Books and Reading ' is far the most practical and satis- 
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 *** For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt of 
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The Theory of Preaching, 
 
 OR 
 
 LECTURES ON HOMILETICS. 
 
 By Professor AUSTIN PHELPS, D.D. 
 
 One volume, 8vo, - $2. DO 
 
 This work, now offered to the public, is the growth of 
 more than thirty years' practical experience in teaching. 
 While primarily designed for professional readers, it will be 
 found to contain much that will be of interest to thoughtfi 1 
 laymen. The writings of a master of style of broad and 
 catholic mind are always fascinating ; in the present case the 
 wealth of appropriate and pointed illustration renders this 
 doubly the case. 
 
 CRITIC \I4 NOTICES. 
 
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 cannot be found for a conscientious, scholarly, and exhaustive treatment of the theory 
 and practice of preaching. * * * To the treatment of his subject Dr. Phelps brings 
 su h qualifications as very few men now living possess. His is one of those delicate and 
 sensitive natures which are instinctively critical, and yet full of what Matthew Arnold 
 happily calls sweet reasonableness. * * * To this characteristic graciousness of 
 nature Dr. Phelps adds a style which is preeminently adapted to his special work. It is 
 nervous, epigrammatic, and racy." — The Examiner and Chronicle. 
 
 "It is a wise, spirited, practical and devout treatise upon a topic of the utmost con- 
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 but not redundant, rich in the fruits of experience, yet thoioughly timely and current, 
 and it easily takes the very first rank among volumes ot its class. — 'Ihe Congrega- 
 tionalist. 
 
 "The layman will find it delightful reading, and ministers of all denominations and 
 of all degrees of experience will rejoice ia it as a veritable mine of wisdom." — New York 
 Christian Advocate. 
 
 "The volume is to be commended to voting men as a superb example of the art in 
 which it aims to instruct them." — The Independent. 
 
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 burning within him under its influence. We < ould wish it might be in the hands of every 
 theological student and of every pastor." — The Watchman. 
 
 "Thirty-one years of experience as a professor of homiletics in a leading American 
 Theological Seminary by a man of genius, learning and power, are condensed into this 
 valuable volume. 1 '— Christian Intelligencer. 
 
 " Our professional readers wi'l make a great mistake if they suppose this volume is 
 simply a heavy, monotonous discussion, chiefly adapted to the class-room. It is a 
 delightful volume for general reading.'" — Boston Zion's Herald. 
 
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THE RELIGIOUS FEELING. 
 
 By Rev. NEWMAN SMYTH. 
 
 One Volume, 12mo, cloth, $1.25. 
 
 In this volume Mr. Smyth has it for his object to formulate the relig- 
 ious feeling as a capacity of the human mind, and to vindicate its claims 
 to authority, lie sets before himself at the outset the task of convicting 
 sceptical philosophy out of its own mouth. The work is thoroughly logical, 
 and displays a familiarity with the most recent German thought which is 
 rarely to be found. 
 
 CRITICAL NOTICES. 
 
 "The argument in its clearness, force an 1 illustrations, has never, to our knowledge, 
 been better stated. Mr. Smyth has brought to his work a clear, analytical mind, an 
 extensive knowledge of German philosophical thought, and an intellectual familiarity 
 with the later English schools. He does his own thinking, and wntes with perspicuity 
 and vigor." — The Advance. 
 
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 THE 
 
 Orthodox Theology of To-Day. 
 
 By Rev. NEWMAN SMYTH, D.D. 
 
 One Volume, 12mo, $125. 
 
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 "That pleasing vigor of thought and that frequent rare beauty cf language . . . 
 are conspicious excellencies of these sermons, with most of whose utterances we can have 
 Strong sympathy." — The Congregationalist. 
 
 "His latest book, The Orthodox Theology of To Day, has all the good qualities so 
 abundantly manifested in his volumes The Religious Feeling and Old Faiths in New 
 Light. But it is a stronger and broader book than either." — N. V. Christian 
 Advocate. 
 
 " He puts things differently from the professed conservators of Orthodoxy, and he has 
 much sympathy with honest doubters' but he keeps his reader under the powerful in- 
 fluenre of Kvan&elical conceptions of God, Christ, redemption and retribution. No man 
 can learn from his pages to think lightly of sin, or to make little of religious truth." — 
 Phila, Sunday School Times. 
 
 *** For sale by all booksellers, or sent, post-paid, upon receipt o} 
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 The ATHENIAN EMPIRE from the FLIGHT of XERXES to the FALL of 
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 The ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES. By the Very Rev. Charles Merivalb, D. D., 
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