72 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



are used in physical investigation. Yet as regards at least tlie 

 tone of dogma and authority, and also as regards the method of 

 reasoning, we have from Mr. Spencer in this paper the following 

 wonderful specimen of scholastic teaching on the profoundest 

 questions of organic structure : " At first protoplasm could have 

 no proclivities to one or other arrangement of parts ; unless in- 

 deed a purely mechanical proclivity toward a spherical form 

 when suspended in a liquid. At the outset it must have been pas- 

 sive. In respect of its passivity, primitive organic matter Ttiust 

 have been like inorganic matter. No such thing as spontaneous 

 variation could have occurred in it ; for variation implies some 

 habitual course of change from which it is a divergence, and is 

 therefore excluded where there is no habitual course of change." 

 What possible knowledge can Mr. Spencer possess of " primitive 

 organic matter " ? What possible grounds can he have for as- 

 sertions as to what it Tuust have been, and what it must have 

 done ? Surely this is scholasticism with a vengeance ; its words, 

 its assumptions, and its claims of logical necessity being all 

 equally hazy, inconclusive, and absolutely antagonistic to the 

 spirit of true physical science. 



There is a passing sentence in one of Darwin's works * which 

 will often recur to the memory of those who have observed it. 

 Speaking of the teleological or theological methods of describing 

 nature, he says that these can be made to explain anything. At 

 first sight this may seem a strange objection to any intelligible 

 method — that it is too widely applicable. But Darwin's mean- 

 ing is in its own sphere as true as it is important. An explana- 

 tion which is good for everything in general, is good for nothing 

 in particular. Explanations which are indiscriminate can hard- 

 ly be also special and distinguishing. In their very generality 

 they may be true, but the truth must be as general as the terms 

 in which it is expressed. Thus the common phrase which we 

 are in the habit of applying to the wonderful adaptations of or- 

 ganic life when we call them " provisions of nature," is a phrase 

 of this kind. It satisfies certain faculties of the mind, and these 

 the highest, but it affords no satisfaction at all to those other 

 faculties which ask not why, but how, these adaptations are ef- 

 fected. It is an explanation applicable to all adaptations equal- 

 ly, and to no one of them specially. It takes no notice whatever 

 of the question. How ? It does not concern itself at all with 

 physical causes. 



Darwin saw this clearly of such methods of explanation. But 

 he did not See that precisely the same objection lies against his 

 own. The great group of ideas metaphorically involved in his 

 phrase of natural selection, and not successfully eliminated in 



* I have mislaid the reference, and quote from memory. 



