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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



men upon such a matter. Yale College 

 has been endowed by the gifts of Chris- 

 tian men almost exclusively. To use 

 the foundation they have established 

 for the propagation of skepticism is a 

 breach of trust and is no better than 

 burglary or forgery." 



The " Christian at "Work " remarks : 

 "It might be of little moment if his 

 text-book were a treatise on pure mathe- 

 matics or chemistry. But it is oth- 

 erwise upon such a subject as soci- 

 ology. That concerns the relation of 

 man to the state, and vice versa; it 

 treats of the moralities, and of laws 

 designed to conserve the Sabbath and 

 enforce morality, and of the claims of 

 religion. To all such laws Mr. Spencer 

 is avowedly hostile. . . . Put the youth 

 under the dominion of Spencer's social 

 system, and they will deny the right of 

 the state to enforce a day of rest, or 

 make laws for any other purpose than 

 the bare protection of life and proper- 

 ty. Under Spencer's system all other 

 laws would be done away with, and we 

 should have a condition of affairs in 

 which one right alone would be recog- 

 nized the right of every one to do as 

 one pleased. . . . We trust the accom- 

 plished Professor will himself see the 

 wisdom of deferring to a very proper 

 feeling which we believe unmistakably 

 exists on the part of the Christian pub- 

 lic, that nothing should be allowed, 

 however otherwise excellent in itself, 

 which will in the slightest degree un- 

 settle the minds of the young by giving 

 them a bias toward a pernicious, dan- 

 gerous sociology, which seeks to elimi- 

 nate public education from the state, 

 and rejects the moral element in legis- 

 lation save as required for the protec- 

 tion of life and property." 



The "Independent" says of the 

 " Study of Sociology " : " Theologically 

 it is probably the most objectionable 

 book Spencer has written, making no 

 secret of its contempt for believers in 

 the Christian religion, who are told 

 that they must lay aside their faith if 



they wish to study sociology. There is 

 enough of this intolerance to make the 

 book decidedly offensive. We are not 

 surprised that complaint was made 

 against the book, although we believe 

 that no pupil of Professor Sumner will 

 accuse him of any lack of faithfulness 

 in pointing out the weak or misleading 

 passages in any author whose text- 

 book he uses. We presume that, be- 

 fore another class has occasion to pur- 

 sue the study, the works to which this 

 was an introduction, or some better 

 book, will be ready for use, and will re- 

 place, with its collections of facts, the 

 offensive philosophizings of the ' Study 

 of Sociology.' " 



These extracts are fairly representa- 

 tive of the ideas and the spirit of the 

 religious press of this country. Pass- 

 ing by the various misrepresentations 

 with which they bristle, what is their 

 common upshot? That in its treat- 

 ment of social science Yale College is 

 bound to take into account, first of all, 

 its theological character as a Christian 

 institution. We say, on the contrary, 

 that the first duty of Yale College, as a 

 seat of liberal learning, is to truth, which 

 is to be cordially welcomed from all 

 sources. It is bound to recognize, first 

 of all, that knowledge is progressive, 

 and to teach it in its most developed 

 and perfected forms. It is not at lib- 

 erty to disregard the lessons of experi- 

 ence. There was a time when the great 

 universities of Europe were called upon 

 to resist the progress of astronomy, in the 

 name of Christianity. Later, they were 

 again called upon to resist the progress 

 of geology, in the name of Christianity. 

 And now our colleges are called upon to 

 resist the progress of sociology, in the 

 name of Christianity. The demand, fu- 

 tile in the former cases, is now ridicu- 

 lous. It is an anachronism, and serves 

 only as a register of the survival of big- 

 otry. The mortifying fact is, that we in 

 this country are behind the age in liber- 

 ty of thought as a guiding principle in 

 higher education. The Reverend Chan- 



