748 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



field of scientific inquiry by relegating 

 it to the supernatural, and assuming it 

 to be settled by an infallible preternat- 

 ural inspiration, which is above the 

 sphere of science that deals only with 

 the natural. Orthodoxy plants itself 

 upon the divine, infallible record, which 

 by its nature and source is claimed to 

 be above the reach of science. But 

 Dr. Martineau is heterodox and cannot 

 take this ground. His position is, that 

 the Bible is sacred, but not infallible 

 sacred like the sacred books of other 

 religions. He says: "I am asked how, 

 after giving up the Old Testament cos- 

 mogony, I can any longer speak of ' sa- 

 cred books,' without informing my 

 readers where to find them .... Can 

 a literature, then, have nothing sacred 

 unless it be infallible ? Has the religion 

 of the present no roots in the soil of 

 the past, so that nothing is gained for 

 our spiritual culture by exploring its 

 history and reproducing its poetry, and 

 ascending to the tributary waters of its 

 life ? The real modern discovery, far 

 from saying there is no sacred litera- 

 ture, because none oracular, assures us 

 that there are several; and, notwith- 

 standing a deepened, because purified 

 attachment to our own ' origenes ' in 

 the Jewish and Christian Scriptures, 

 persuades us to look with an open rev- 

 erence into all writings that have em- 

 bodied and sustained the greater pieties 

 of the world." 



By this position the absorption of 

 theology into science is complete. For 

 if Christianity has no other or different 

 claims for the validity of what it oflfers 

 than half a dozen other religions have 

 and impliedly a hundred other relig- 

 ions what remains but to accept the 

 phenomena of religions as a part of the 

 phenomena of Nature open to scientific 

 exploration ? And, if thrown upon Na- 

 ture, we encounter unity and evolution, 

 and must study the genesis of religious 

 beliefs, the development of supersti- 

 tions, and the derivation of theological 

 systems, as we study the unfolding of 



life, or the origin and progress of human 

 institutions. The underlying principle 

 of evolution is continuity, the lowest 

 being connected with the highest by 

 unbroken lines of unity and causation. 

 But though committed, as we think, to 

 this view by the position he has taken. 

 Dr. Martineau affirms a break in the 

 upward movement, so abrupt and total 

 that science cannot cross it. He says, 

 " Nature, m respect of its higlier affec- 

 tions, compassion, self-forgetfulness, 

 moral obligation, is constructed in har- 

 mony with a world divinely ruled," and 

 this is the sphere of intuition and the^ 

 ology where science does not belong. 

 But does the divine rule necessarily 

 rule out science ? and are not intuitions 

 in this higher realm as open to be in- 

 quired of scientifically as instincts in the 

 lowest sphere? The writer's declara- 

 tions that it is the office of theology to 

 explore the " whence " of things, and 

 that it pertains to the " upper zone " of 

 human nature, do not quite clear up 

 the confusion of its boundary relations 

 to science. 



Dr. Martineau labors to point out, 

 in his present essay, the difficulties that 

 the "materialist" must encounter in 

 explaining things by the atomic hy- 

 pothesis; and in his next article he 

 promises to show the deficiencies of the 

 dynamic hypothesis for the same pur- 

 pose. It is unnecessary to say that, as 

 a writer, Dr. Martineau is an accom- 

 plished master of rhetorical effect. 



A LIBEL UPON THE INDIANS. 



It is an interesting question how the 

 diflferent races of mankind rank as liars. 

 Is the capacity to falsify a constant quan- 

 tity in all the varieties of men, or does 

 it vary like other qualities ; and, if vari- 

 able, is it subject to development, and 

 how do the various tribes of men stand 

 upon the scale? 



A United States Senator has given 

 us his decisive dictum upon the subject, 

 and there ought to be wisdom in a sens- 



