846 



POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



and eternal matter an adequate ex- 

 planation of all the problems of the 

 existing universe." The man who 

 finds in any scientific conception or 

 hypothesis an adequate explanation 

 of all the phenomena of the uni- 

 verse must be a somewhat fatuous 

 being. Certainly this is net the 

 usual attitude of the scientific mind. 

 Mr. Spencer in particular, referred 

 to by our contributor as " the great 

 coryphaeus of agnosticism," takes 

 much pains to show that no ade- 

 quate explanation of the phenomena 

 of the universe is obtainable. What 

 he has labored to do, for his own 

 part, is to formulate the most gen- 

 eral laws of world action which it 

 is in his power to discover, and to 

 show how more special methods of 

 action are deducible therefrom. At 

 the very basis of his system lies an 

 unknowable power which does not 

 admit of formulation. If we take 

 the late Professor Huxley as one of 

 the representative miuds of the mod- 

 ern scientific world, we shall cer- 

 tainly not find him talking of having 

 discovered an adequate explanation 

 of all existing phenomena. It is one 

 thing to decline the ready-made ex- 

 planations of others, and quite an- 

 other to claim to be in possession of 

 a satisfactory explanation of your 

 own. The mission of the man of 

 science is not to explain the world in 



its totality, but to give those partial 

 explanations of phenomena and 

 their sequence which are needed to 

 safeguard human life and fructify 

 human effort. The man of science 

 watches over the integrity of his own 

 intellect, and refuses to allow it to be 

 entangled in any yoke of bondage, 

 knowing that he holds his faculty for 

 truth in trust for the world. When 

 he is asked to acknowledge " design " 

 in this or that organism, he says: "I 

 recognize the relations which this 

 thing sustains to its environing con- 

 ditions, and I have some limited 

 knowledge of its previous course of 

 development ; but T do not know that 

 it has become what it is through the 

 application to it, or to the conditions 

 under which it was produced, of any 

 stress or influence proceeding from a 

 conscious will such as alone furnish- 

 es to my mind the type of purposive 

 action. A conscious will may well 

 underlie this universal frame of 

 things, but I can not, upon grounds 

 of scientific observation, profess to be 

 able to discern the presence or ab- 

 sence of its action at any particular 

 point." This we conceive to be in 

 substance the answer of Science to 

 the question at issue; and it is one 

 with which Theology would do well 

 to be content, for Science will never 

 knowingly make an affirmation 

 which there are not facts to sustain. 



M> jctjetxtifijc %i%tXK%uxt. 



SPECIAL BOOKS. 



In no way can one appreciate more clearly the remarkable advance in 

 ethnographic studies than by comparing the great work of Professor Iiat- 

 zel * on The History of Mankind with the early works of Pritchard and 

 Wood. The illustrated work of the Rev. J. G. Wood on the Natural His- 

 tory of Man represented the state of our knowledge on the subject at the 

 time it was compiled, in a popular way to be sure, but nevertheless the 



* The History of Mankind. By Prof. Friedrich Ratzel. Translated by A. J. Butler, M. A. New 

 York: The Macmillau Company. 18C7. Two volumes, pp. 483 and pp. 502. Price, £8. 



