EX-PRESIDENT PORTER ON EVOLUTION. 589 



He probably would not then have written the following awkward and 

 pointless sentence : " The altruistic experiences which somehow find 

 themselves within the arena of man's private experience naturally se- 

 cure to themselves the response of man's interested gratitude ; selfish- 

 ness awakens a natural antipathy." Surely the word " experiences " 

 here should be replaced by " sentiments." Imagine " experiences " 

 securing a " response of interested gratitude " ! Then, what is meant 

 by qualifying gratitude as " interested " ? We imagine that it is of 

 the nature of gratitude to be interested. The main point is, however, 

 that the evolution philosophy does explain, if not to Dr. Porter's satis- 

 faction, to the satisfaction of many, the origin and growth of altruistic 

 sentiments, and that it is not correct, therefore, to speak as if that 

 philosophy wholly failed to grapple with the question. 



It is remarkable how free the ex-President of Yale seems to feel 

 himself to treat de haut en has the leaders of modern evolutionary 

 thought. He twitted them, it will be remembered, with not knowing 

 how to state their own case to the best advantage. He now talks of 

 " the dreary and meaningless theories " of Spencer and Lewes, and 

 smiles at the "naivete " of Spencer in acknowledging that he had found 

 the germ of his system in the philosophy of Wolff. Then of Spen- 

 cer's application of Wolff's idea he says, " There never was a pro- 

 found spiritual truth more ignominiously misinterpreted and more 

 basely perverted to earthly uses." We should like much to see the 

 evidence that Spencer had misinterpreted Wolff. According to Dr. 

 Porter, to misinterpret a writer is apparently to accept some thought 

 contained in his writings, but to develop and apply it differently from 

 what he had done ; and to confess the obligation is " naivete " ! 

 Really, the ex-president is teaching us some strange lessons. 



Perhaps he (Spencer) "was incapable," our critic haughtily re- 

 marks, " of discerning the difference between a homogeneity in matter, 

 necessarily and blindly tending toward a heterogeneity, and such a 

 law of organism [sic], progress, and growth as requires a spiritual in- 

 telligence to originate and maintain it." Perhaps he was, poor man ! 

 or perhaps he thought he had better discern and formulate progress 

 where he could do it to the best advantage, and leave the postulating 

 of spiritual intelligences to those who had a greater talent than he for 

 building in the region of the unverifiable. It would have been "far 

 more creditable " to Spencer, Dr. Porter remarks, if he had taken the 

 pantheistic theory for better or for worse, in lieu of his own conclusion 

 in favor of an Unknowable Cause of all things. It will occur to some, 

 we think, that Herbert Spencer's " credit " is quite as safe in his own 

 keeping as it would be in his critic's. 



Let us, hasten, however, to the conclusion of the whole matter. 

 Dr. Porter's final position is that " evolution, as a consistent theory, in 

 its logical outcome will be found to give a material substratum and 

 material laws for the human spirit ; to involve caprice in morality, 



