CORRESP ONDENCE. 



107 



ism of Biichner, who derives all the phe- 

 nomena of life from simple combinations of 

 matter and force ; second, the atheism of 

 Comte, whose scientific pretensions Mr. 

 Huxley ridicules, and whose results Mr. 

 Spencer impugns ; third, the identification 

 of mind and motion by Mr. Taine, which 

 Tyndall, in one of his most eloquent pas- 

 sages, says explains nothing, and is, more- 

 over, utterly " unthinkable ; " and, fourthly, 

 Mr. Spencer's evolutionism, which, in spite 

 of the marvellous ingenuity and information 

 with which it is wrought out, seems to me, 

 after no little study, as it does to others 

 more capable than I am of forming a judg- 

 ment, after greater study, to be full of un- 

 supported assumptions, logical inconsisten- 

 cies, and explanations that explain nothing, 

 while in its general character it tends to the 

 sheerest naturalism. Now, was I right or 

 wrong in regarding these systems as specu- 

 lative merely, and not scientific ? Am I to 

 infer, from your objections to my remarks, 

 that The Popular Science Monthly holds 

 materialism, atheism, and naturalism to be 

 the legitimate outcome of science ? Else 

 why am I arraigned for designating them 

 as unworthy of science, and as having no 

 rightful claims to the name, under which 

 their deplorable conclusions are commended 

 to the public ? 



My object in these allusions was to indi- 

 cate two capital distinctions, which it is al- 

 ways important to keep in view when esti- 

 mating the scientific validity of a doctrine. 

 The first is, that many questions determin- 

 able by science are not yet determined by 

 it ; and, until they are so determined, are 

 to be regarded only as conjectural opinions, 

 more or less pertinent or impertinent. Of 

 this sort I hold the Nebular, the Darwinian, 

 and the Spencerian views to be, i. e., hypoth- 

 eses entirely within the domain of scien- 

 tific theory, and capable, to a certain ex- 

 tent, of explaining the phenomena to which 

 they refer ; highly plausible and probable 

 even at the first glance; but disputed by 

 good authority, and not at all so verified as 

 to be admissible into the rank of accredit- 

 ed science. They are suppositions to which 

 the mind resorts to help it in the reduction 

 of certain appearances of Nature to a gen- 

 eral law ; and, as such, they may be simple, 

 ingenious, and even beautiful ; but thus far 



they are no more than suppositions not 

 proved, and therefore not entitled to the 

 authority of scientific truth. You are prob- 

 ably too familiar with the history of scien- 

 tific effort which, like the history of many 

 other kinds of intellectual effort, is a history 

 of human error not to know that, while 

 hypothesis is an indispensable part of good 

 method, it is also the part most liable 

 to error. The records of astronomical, of 

 geological, of physical, of chemical, and of 

 biological research, are strewn with the de- 

 bris of abandoned systems, all of which once 

 had their vogue, but none of which now sur- 

 vive and many of which are hardly remem- 

 bered. Recall for a moment the Ptolemaic 

 cycles and epicycles ; recall Kepler's nine- 

 teen different hypotheses, invented and dis- 

 carded, before he found the true orbital mo- 

 tion of Mars ; recall in geology Werner and 

 Hutton, and the Plutonians and the Neptuni- 

 ans, superseded by the uniformitarians and 

 the catastrophists, and now giving place 

 to the evolutionists ; recall in physics the 

 many imponderable fluids, including La- 

 mark's resonant fluid, that were held to be 

 as real as the rocks only a few years ago ; 

 recall in chemistry, not to mention the al- 

 chemists and phlogistion, a dozen different 

 modes of accounting for molecular action ; 

 recall in biology the animists and the vital- 

 ists, the devotees of plastic forces, of archei, 

 of organizing ideas, and of central monads, 

 all of them now deemed purely gratuitous 

 assumptions that explained nothing, though 

 put forth as science. 



Even in regard to the question, so 

 much discussed at present, of the gradual 

 progression and harmony of being, the old 

 monadology of Leibnitz, which endowed 

 the ultimate units with varying doses of 

 passion, consciousness, and spontaneity, and 

 which built up the more complex structures 

 and functions of organisms, from the combi- 

 nation of these this theory, I say, some- 

 what modified and stripped of its mere 

 metaphysical phases, could be made quite 

 as rational and satisfactory as the more 

 modern doctrines of development. Indeed, 

 some eminent French philosophs Renou- 

 vier, a first-class thinker, among the rest 

 have gone back to this notion ; Darwin's 

 suggestion of pangenesis, and Mr. Spencer'a 

 physiological units, look toward it ; and 



