GOD AND NATURE. 31 



to the conclusion that this ' purposiveness ' no more exists than the 

 much-talked-of ' beneficence ' of the Creator. These optimistic views 

 have, unfortunately, as little real foundation as the favorite phrase, 

 ' moral order of the universe,' which is illustrated in an ironical way 

 by the history of all nations. The dominion of ' moral ' popes, and 

 their pious Inquisition, in the mediaeval times, is not less significant of 

 this than the present prevailing militarism, with its 'moral' apparatus 

 of needle-guns and other refined instruments of murder." * 



This passage, as will be seen, takes us into the region of morals. 

 There is no question here of permitting the hypothesis of an origi- 

 nating force outside of matter, if we feel such an hypothesis intellectu- 

 ally necessary ; but we have instead a denial ex cathedra of the exist- 

 ence of such a thing as a moral order or of such a person as a beneficent 

 Creator. This is not merely atheous ; it is atheistic. An investigator 

 of nature has a right to say that the question of the existence of a 

 beneficent Creator or the non-existence of such a Being does not affect 

 his investigations ; but he has no right, upon the strength of investi- 

 gations purely physical, to deny the existence of beneficence as an 

 attribute of the Creator, if a Creator there be. 



But I am not surprised to find utterance given to some expression 

 of opinion as to the moral character of the Creator, when once the le- 

 gitimate boundary of physical science has been transgressed. If a man 

 can be satisfied with examining nature as he finds it, whether as an 

 observer or as a mathematician, the question of a Creator need no 

 more trouble him than it troubles the man who is busied with inte- 

 grating equations or devising a new calculus ; but if he is not satisfied 

 with this, then he can scarcely stop short of a complete investigation 

 of the whole question of theism ; and the elements necessary to this 

 complete investigation are certainly not to be found in physics, any 

 more than you can find in physics the material for a complete treatise 

 on poetry or music or painting. 



For, in truth, physical science does not afford the basis even for a 

 complete investigation of ourselves. When anthropology is classed 

 among the physical sciences, it is necessary to confine the investiga- 

 tions comprehended under the title to the consideration of man as a 

 creature having certain material attributes and leaving certain material 

 marks of his existence in past ages : a study of the highest interest, 

 and one which students have a right to call anthropology, if they 

 please : but manifestly anthropology can not be translated by the 

 words " the science of man," for the science of necessity leaves out of 

 consideration all that is most interesting to man or which makes man 

 most interesting. 



To say that physical science does not include the study of man is 

 perhaps nearly the same thing as saying that man is not a part of 

 nature ; and though such an assertion may seem paradoxical, there is 



* Vol. i., p. 19. 



