SCIENCE AND MORALITY. 755 



He must be a scientific optimist, indeed, who refuses to admit that 

 society has come to a critical juncture. That the rule of human life 

 may ultimately be placed on grounds wholly independent of religion is 

 a possibility which, once more, is not here disputed, though it is reason- 

 able to wait for the demonstration of experience. But the interval 

 may be one of serious disturbance. To use an undignified comparison, 

 the crustacean may bo sure to get another shell, but he will be soft in 

 the mean time. It seems impossible to question the fact that the mo- 

 rality of the mass of the people, at all events, has hitherto been greatly 

 bound up with their religious belief. Ecclesiastical dogma may have 

 had no effect on them ; perhaps it has had worse than none, inasmuch 

 as it has put forms in place of moral realities an evil equally great 



ger to popular morality. To say this, and to illustrate it historically, as I did in the 

 " Atlantic," is a very different thing from saying that science is immoral. The inroads 

 made, not more by science than by the other agencies and influences enumerated, on the 

 evidences of religion have been recognized by me in the article on " The Prospect of a 

 Moral Interregnum " with a freedom which must, I should think, have shown anybody 

 not blinded by philosophical antipathy that it would be absurdly unjust to identify me with 

 reactionary and obscurantist orthodoxy. My position, frankly avowed in all the articles, 

 is that of doubt. I think I may venture to say that no one who is acquainted with me, 

 and knows what my course has been on university questions, and questions of education 

 generally, will deny my loyalty to genuine science. Instead of disparaging the morality 

 of scientific men I have expressly recognized their moral superiority as a class, only point- 

 ing out that we can not reason from their case to that of the multitude. To those of the 

 number who served on the Jamaica Committee I have paid the best tribute in my power 

 by saying that they were " among the foremost champions of humanity on that occasion," 

 as Miss Bevington finds herself compelled with very manifest reluctance to admit. There 

 can be no harm in saying that the passage was inserted in the second " Macmillan " arti- 

 cle to satisfy Mr. Herbert Spencer, who, as I learned in a conversation with him, had mis- 

 construed, strangely as it appeared to me, a passage in the first. I assured him that I 

 felt, and had always expressed in public and private, the greatest admiration and grati- 

 tude for the noble conduct of Mr. Huxley and others of that school in the Jamaica busi- 

 ness, and that, if there was any possibility of misapprehension on the subject, I would 

 take the first opportunity of removing it. In what respect I failed to fulfill my promise 

 I am at a loss to see. I could not say that science was the main support of the move- 

 ment in the country ; the main support of this, as of the anti-slavery movement, Miss 

 Bevington would have found, if she had carried her statistical researches a little further, 

 was the Christianity of the Free Churches. What a political clergy might do from polit- 

 ical motives could in no way affect religion. That in the case even of the men of science, 

 a philanthropy, the offspring of the Christianity in which we have all been nurtured, was 

 likely to be the impelling influence rather than anthropology, was an opinion for which I 

 had my reasons, and which at all events was not offensive. In the interest of scientific 

 truth Miss Bevington does not shrink from affecting to believe that I am assailing sci- 

 ence when I deprecate the invasion of Afghanistan in quest of " a scientific frontier." 

 Nor does she shrink from making up a quotation out of two passages, one of which is 

 taken from an article in " Macmillan," the other from an article in the " Atlantic Month- 

 ly," and which, if they relate to the same controversy, do not relate to the same persons. 

 The tone of the article in the " Fortnightly " was such as could hardly fail to act as a 

 warning against too ready an acceptance of its statements. But anything published in 

 so eminent a journal goes forth with some authority, and the idea that p. large circle of 

 readers might be led utterly to misconceive my feelings toward science and men of sci- 

 ence gave me, I confess, some pain. 



