3 2o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



self driven to suppose God unconscious, to escape supposing him 

 wicked. "This 'consideration," he says, "is decisive against the ad- 

 mission of consciousness in God." But stay ! if God has not the 

 consciousness of what there is evil in the world, Hartmann argues, on 

 the other hand, that he has the idea of it (the Vorstellung). Does 

 not this idea suffice, as well as consciousness could (in our view they 

 are exactly the same thing), to pledge the Divine responsibility? 



EVOLUTION AND THE SPECTEOSCOPE. 



By F. "W. CLAEKE. 



MEN of science may be divided into two great classes thinkers 

 and observers. And, although both classes are often represented 

 in one individual, the distinction between them is practically valid. 

 For, in classifying mankind, no sharp boundaries can be drawn. The 

 observer, on the one hand, contents himself with merely ascertaining 

 facts, and rarely deduces more than the simplest and most obvious 

 conclusions from them. He is in some measure an intellectual miser, 

 who accumulates, but never uses. It is the thinker, however, who 

 gives shape to science. His generalizations make true science possible. 

 To him, a discovery amounts to something more than its mere self, 

 and is valuable, like a choice seed, largely for what it may become. 

 He ranges facts into series, gives each series its proper place in a 

 science, clusters the sciences into groups, and, studying these groups 

 with reference to each other, and to the grand problems with which 

 thought is always busied, seeks to arrive at higher conceptions of the 

 universe, and of the essential unity of all material things. At the 

 present day this method of comparison has led to the announcement 

 of the philosophy of evolution ; a philosophy Avhich places the physical 

 world in a clearer light, and classifies a greater number of facts, than 

 any other scheme that human earnestness and ingenuity ever devised. 

 Surely it is worth while for us to study all great discoveries with ref- 

 erence to their bearings upon this philosophy. 



Probably none of the many remarkable discoveries of the nine- 

 teenth century are more important or more striking than those 

 achieved by means of the spectroscope. It is now less than fifteen 

 years since this famous instrument was devised, and already it ranks 

 in importance side by side with the telescope and the microscope. 

 New fields of research have been opened, which, widening ever since, 

 show as yet no signs of approaching limits. Chemical analysis has 

 been simplified, many optical researches facilitated, and four new 

 metals discovered. Our knowledge of the sun and stars has in some 



