10 PROCEEDINGS OF WASHINGTON MEETING. 



and does have a rational foundation and sanction in human reason ; and 

 lie ascribed the conflicts between science and religion which have been 

 insisted on both by Christian theologians and by atheists to wrong ideas 

 of the relations that subsist between them and to dogmatic interpreta- 

 tions and traditions — or else to the weakness of the light which reason 

 has been able to derive from the flickering flame of science, or from 

 the glare of profane history. His position among the scientists of 

 America in this respect was sometimes bold and often unique. His 

 earliest scientific thinking and his first public addresses were cast in a 

 mold of theistic faith. Although the mold was compelled to grow through 

 various enlargements and modifications, it was never thrown aside. 

 Thus, in 1857, he addressed a bible class at Ann Arbor on " Theologico- 

 geology, or the teachings of scripture illustrated by the conformation of 

 the earth's crust; " and in 1858 his final lecture of a course before the 

 Young Men's Literary Association of Ann Arbor, was entitled " Creation, 

 the work of one intelligence and not the product of physical forces." 

 His hesitancy in the adoption of evolution as the method of organic de- 

 velopment of species continued only so long as he was unable to give it 

 sufficient examination to define its bearings on his conception of divine 

 agency in creation. His small work, " The Doctrine of Evolution ; its 

 Data, its Principles, its Speculations, and its Theistic Bearings " (1874), 

 was the result of that preliminary examination. He sat down to the 

 task with an expectation to reach an adverse conclusion. He rose from 

 it satisfied of its theistic basis — the panurgic energy of evolution is the di- 

 vine intelligent will, the single synthetic force of which all other forces of 

 matter are but specialized forms. This central conception once estab- 

 lished, it was his delight, as evinced in hundreds of lectures and in all 

 his later publications, to group the phenomena of physical and organic 

 nature about it, and to reenfore it by all the eloquence and philosophy 

 and learning which he could command. It was the central conception 

 and the designed finale of that last course of lectures from which death 

 snatched him away. * 



In scientific education he bore a conspicuous and burdensome part. 

 Going to the university of Michigan in 1854, he found a young state 

 institution in a crude state of organization and without anv definite 

 recognition of the natural sciences as factors of culture and as necessary 

 elements in a college curriculum. He went energetically to work to 



* He was advised by many during the past two years to issue a revised edition of his " Doctrine 

 of Evolution," but he steadily declined, for he had in mind the publication of a thorough treatise 

 on evolution as a sequel to that work. He considered his "Doctrine of Evolution" as a sort of 

 court trial of the cause of evolution by a judicial and impartial mind. That trial concluding with a 

 verdict favorable to evolution, he wished to himself take the position of an advocate and to prepare 

 its strongest affirmative argument. 



