748 SCIENCE PROGRESS 



object of creation. ' The heavens declare the glory of God and 

 the firmament showeth His handiwork,' said the Psalmist ; ' the 

 heavens declare no glory but that of Newton and Kepler' 

 seemed to be the conclusion of modern science ; and Laplace, in 

 his great treatise Mecanique Celeste, admitted that in his system 

 he could find no place for a God." The situation has been aptly 

 summed up by Haeckel when he said, "We have learnt to look 

 upon the sun shining out of a godless heaven upon a soulless 

 earth." It is quite evident that our apprehension of man's 

 littleness and the greatness of the Universe has a disquieting 

 effect upon the human mind and tends to point out the futility 

 of moral effort and the absurdity of mental speculation. 



All these questions and problems were raised and suggested 

 by this one scientific idea. The answers, if answers there are, 

 must be sought in philosophy and in the works of the poets ; 

 this is neither the place nor the time for such philosophical 

 disquisitions — the object of this article is to point out that such 

 questions were raised by science ; we must go to the poets for 

 an answer. 



The next idea which has been introduced by science is the 

 conception of law and order in the Universe. This question 

 has already been touched upon, so we may pass it over here, 

 and proceed at once to a consideration of its greatest offspring — 

 that master thought of the nineteenth century the idea of 

 Evolution. This idea, more perhaps than any other scientific 

 conception, has had most influence on modern thought ; it, more 

 than anything else, has altered man's outlook on life. The 

 reason is obvious — it revolutionised men's conception of life, 

 and their chief interest, whether scientist, poet, or philosopher, 

 must necessarily be life. It meant the substitution of a dynamic 

 for a static conception of the Universe ; it meant the replace- 

 ment of the idea of a product by the idea of a process. The 

 idea itself is by no means the exclusive property of science ; 

 on the contrary, the earliest, widest, and most satisfactory 

 expression of it was given in philosophy. Nevertheless, the 

 idea would not have had a tithe of the influence it now possesses 

 if it had not been put on a firm scientific foundation by Darwin 

 and his successors. 



It is really very difficult for us to realise fully the whole 

 effect of Evolution on modern thought ; we are so used to the 

 idea, having grown up, as it were, in its shadow, that it has 



