EDITOR'S TABLE. 



125 



classic prayer, "Save us from our 

 friends ! " 



There is one feature in the case, 

 however, which is not to be over- 

 looked, and that is that the represent- 

 atives of science have been in the 

 past, and still are to some extent, re- 

 quired to put up with a kind of oppo- 

 sition that is very annoying to men 

 who have worked their way by pa- 

 tient labor, in appropriate fields of 

 observation, to certain well-demon- 

 strated conclusions. We refer to the 

 opposition of those who have not 

 labored at all in those fields, but 

 who, on the ' strength of the most 

 extraneous considerations, insist that 

 certain scientific conclusions must 

 be all wrong. Such was the oppo- 

 sition made by the Catholic Church 

 to the modern system of astronomy, 

 and such the opposition made by 

 all Christian churches, more or 

 less, to modern geological science. 

 What is the use of inquiring into 

 the origin of language and the 

 affinities of different families of 

 speech if the stories of the Garden 

 of Eden and the Tower of Babel are 

 to dominate all speculation on these 

 subjects ? The indignation used to 

 be all on the side of the theologians, 

 when their opinions were traversed 

 by considerations drawn from the 

 study of Nature. Nowadays scien- 

 tific men allow themselves occasion- 

 ally a little indignation, or at least 

 impatience, when theories, which 

 they have carefully founded on facts, 

 are traversed on the strength of 

 other men's interpretations of a 

 book. Time brings about these 

 changes, and it w r ould be harsh to 

 find much fault with the champions 

 of science for not being wholly above 

 the infirmities of human nature. 



It should, of course, be clearly 

 understood that dogmatism, in so 

 far as it exists, does no good to sci- 

 ence. True theories will vindicate 

 themselves in the end; and, even 



when the grounds for certainty 

 seem ample, it is well not to be too 

 confident or too absolute. Then if 

 people who simply adopt other peo- 

 ple's opinions would only learn not 

 to be more dead-sure than the au- 

 thors and sponsors of those opin- 

 ions, a great point would be gained 

 and much trouble avoided. Science 

 wants all the friends it can get, see- 

 ing that is a friend to all; but its 

 path would be smoothed if ardent 

 converts would temper their zeal 

 with discretion. 



SPENCER ON PROFESSIONAL 

 INSTITUTIONS. 



When we wrote, in March, con- 

 cerning the series of articles by Mr. 

 Spencer with which this magazine 

 began its career we had no thought 

 that we should be so fortunate as to 

 have the first of another series by the 

 same master hand for the opening 

 number of our twenty-fourth year. 

 Nor had Mr. Spencer ; for that edi- 

 torial itself suggested to him the 

 advisability of issuing serially the 

 chapters on Professional Institutions 

 which he had nearly completed. 

 There will be eleven or twelve papers 

 in the present series. These papers 

 will show how the several profes- 

 sions have been differentiated from 

 the functions of the priest or medi- 

 cine-man, who is the only profession- 

 al man of primitive society. They 

 will demonstrate that in these affairs 

 although subject to human will 

 and caprice the grand principle of 

 evolution operates just as surely and 

 completely as in the derivation of an 

 animal species from its ancestral 

 form. 



A peculiar element of value in 

 the evolutionary philosophy, of 

 which Mr. Spencer is the original 

 and most eminent expositor, is the 

 power of understanding the present 

 and predicting the future which is 

 afforded by its explanation of the 



