59 o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



tyranny in government, uncertainty in science, with a denial of im- 

 mortality and a disbelief in the personality of man and of God." 

 Here we distinctly join issue. Evolution, as taught by Herbert Spen- 

 cer, does nothing to weaken the fundamental distinction between sub- 

 ject and object, between mind and matter. If Spencer teaches that 

 both these aspects of existence may, or rather must, find their union 

 and identification in the Unknowable Cause, he does no more and no 

 less than the Christian, who believes that God is the author both of 

 the visible world and of the human spirit. Evolution gives material 

 laws for human thought, only in so far as it shows the dependence 

 of each higher plane of life on those below it ; but, inasmuch as it 

 also shows the reaction of the higher on the lower, it does as much for 

 the establishment of liberty as for the demonstration of necessity. As 

 to involving caprice in morality, that is precisely what it does not do, 

 but what theological systems, referring the criterion of right and 

 wrong to a personal will, always have done and always will do. The 

 proof is simple and conclusive. "Wherever morality has disengaged 

 itself from theology, there it has shown a tendency to develop along 

 the same lines. Wherever it has been complicated with theology, 

 there it has always been more or less incalculable and capricious ; we 

 may add, more or less perverted and debased. As to tyranny in 

 government the thing is almost too preposterous to discuss every 

 child knows that the days when evolution would have been treated 

 as a damnable heresy, to be extirpated by fire and sword, and when a 

 spiritual philosophy was supreme, were precisely the days of the most 

 odious political tyranny ; and that to-day, step by step with the ad- 

 vance of the philosophy Dr. Porter so much detests, political ad- 

 ministration is becoming milder and more equitable. " Uncertainty 

 in science" what are the proofs of it? Was there ever a time 

 when science was surer in its methods, or more fruitful in its re- 

 sults, than it is to-day ? What did the spiritualistic philosophies of 

 the past ever do for science except to embarrass it with arbitrary hy- 

 potheses, and to stand in the way of the recognition of the natural 

 causes of phenomena ? Did it help the understanding of disease to 

 explain it as a chastisement for sin ? Was the old doctrine of demoniac 

 possession so strongly countenanced, unfortunately, in the New Tes- 

 tament an aid toward the scientific treatment of insanity? Did the 

 general belief in ghosts and devils help to rationalize men's thoughts ? 

 We think that answers should be given these questions before we are 

 asked to accept the statement that the doctrine of evolution will lead 

 to " uncertainty in science." The fact is, that the hold which evolu- 

 tion has to-day upon the scientific world is due principally, as Dr. 

 Dallinger observes, to its proved utility in a great many different fields 

 of scientific investigation. The man of science, we may be sure, will 

 not be slow to discard it, when he finds it beginning to lead him astray 

 and vitiate his scientific labors. 



