330 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



all arranged for human benefit the Sun to rule the day, the Moon 

 to rule the night, animals and plants provided for food, and the 

 seasons beneficently adjusted to men's welfare. It is the anthro- 

 pocentric view. But the anthropocentric view does not appear 

 acceptable to one who contemplates things without foregone con- 

 clusions. When he learns that millions upon millions of years 

 passed during which the Earth was peopled only by inferior 

 brutes, and that even now three-fifths of its surface are occupied 

 by an ocean-basin carpeted with low creatures which live in dark- 

 ness, utterly useless to man and only lately known to him ; and 

 when he learns that of the remaining two-fifths, vast Arctic and 

 Antarctic regions, and vast desert areas, are practically uninhab- 

 itable, while immense portions of the remainder, fever-breeding 

 and swarming with insect pests, are unfit for comfortable exist- 

 ence ; he does not recognize much adjustment to the wants of 

 mankind. When he discovers that the human body is the habi- 

 tat of thirty different species of parasites, which inflict in many 

 cases great tortures ; or, still worse, when he thinks of the numer- 

 ous kinds of microbes, some producing ever-present diseases and 

 consequent mortality, and others producing frightful epidemics, 

 like the plague and the black death, carrying off hundreds of 

 thousands or millions, he sees little ground for assuming that 

 the order of Nature is devised to suit our needs and satisfactions. 

 The truth which the facts force upon him is not that the sur- 

 rounding world has been arranged to fit the physical nature of 

 man, but that, conversely, the physical nature of man has been 

 molded to fit the surrounding world ; and that, by implication, 

 the Theory of Things, justified by the evidence, may not be one 

 which satisfies men's moral needs and yields them emotional sat- 

 isfactions, but, conversely, is most likely one to which they have 

 to mold their mental wants as well as they can. The opposite as- 

 sumption, tacitly made by Mr. Balfour, obviously tends to vitiate 

 his general argument. 



I have sometimes contended, half in jest, half in earnest, that, 

 having but a given endowment of any mental faculty, its pos- 

 sessor can not use it largely for one purpose without partially dis- 

 abling it for other purposes ; and that, conversely, great economy 

 in one direction of expenditure makes possible an excess in some 

 other direction. It seems to me that, in his manifestations of 

 doubt and faith, Mr. Balfour affords some support to this hypoth- 

 esis. Of his extreme economy of belief here is an illustration. 



After first quoting from me the sentence : " To ask whether 

 science is substantially true is much like asking whether the sun 

 gives light " ; he goes on : " It is, I admit, very much like it. But 

 then, on Mr. Spencer's principles, does the sun give light ? After 



