THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



f erent from the fire — they both acted ; and they both 

 obeyed law*? One might as well blame a river because, 

 in part of its course, it flowed through a dingy and 

 dirty morass instead of on the high ground lying near 

 its channel as to curse the mediaeval ages because they 

 turned to the contemplation of a future life instead 

 of investigating the laws of matter. Somehow one 

 cannot feel that the task of St. Augustine while de- 

 liberating on the De Civitate Dei or St. Francis when 

 meditating on the holy life was altogether inferior to 

 the delicate task of the biologist in dissecting a grass- 

 hopper even if his results might add to the Theory of 

 Descent. It is a curious example of the wilfulness of 

 the human mind, thus to rage against the doctrine of 

 free-will of man, to endeavour to make of him merely 

 a cog in a machine, and at the same time to curse him 

 for not doing otherwise than he does. 



Sociology was designed to be the science of sciences. 

 Supported on one side by the physical sciences and on 

 the other by biology, it would reach backwards to tell 

 us the entire past history of men and looking forwards 

 it would unerringly point out the future path of so- 

 ciety until we reached that perfect state so exuber- 

 antly described by Fiske. From the legends and myths 

 of our early ancestors we should find those primitive 

 ideas from which have developed our religion and our 

 social customs; and from the customs of existing 

 backward peoples we would interpolate all the inter- 

 mediate steps of development. Sociology, however, 



C 340 3 



