THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



of religion by the practice of the masses instead of 

 by the lives of the better few. It is not the criticism 

 of a philosopher who should consider principles and 

 not practice. And it is not honest criticism, because he 

 estimates the practice of principles of all sorts by the 

 people in the following cynical fashion: "While 

 character remains unchanged, institutions cannot be 

 fundamentally changed. . . . The masses can ap- 

 preciate nothing but immediate and material boons. 

 . . . They fall under one kind of dominance after 

 another."^ 



When the Evolutionists discuss the qualities of 

 science and its cultivation, they do so con amore. It is 

 easy to prove this by passages from any of their writ- 

 ings. They define science as an organized body of 

 facts and of laws and ignore the vast body of hypo- 

 thesis and speculation which, as any student knows, 

 fills the major portion of any treatise on science; they 

 discuss religion as if it were only hypothetical and 

 speculative and overlook the equally great accumula- 

 tion of facts and laws about the spiritual life or, 

 rather, they class these as science and leave to religion 

 only the attributes of emotionalism. Thus Spencer 

 writes that men of science are impatient of the pre- 

 tension of religion because they are "occupied with 

 established truths, and accustomed to regard things 

 not already known as things to be hereafter discov- 

 ered."* And Fiske constantly condemns the doctrines 



3 Autobiography, vol. II, p. 434. 

 * First Principles, p. 16. 



C 350 3 



