2i6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



wliicli mean suffering* and pain for all, without even a compen- 

 sating " survival of tlie fittest " or improvement of the race ! 



To sum up thus far. One who believes, in the God of Chris- 

 tianity is bound to believe that creation is his work from end to 

 end, that it is a rational work and the work of a being who is 

 wholly good. He is bound to believe that " God's mercy is over 

 all his works," that " not a sparrow falls to the ground " without 

 his knowledge, that there are design and purpose everywhere. 

 But he is not bound to know or to say that he knows what that 

 purpose is, or to show that marks of beneficence are everywhere 

 apparent. Still less is he bound to assert, as the old teleology 

 did, that he can demonstrate the wisdom and goodness of God 

 from Nature alone. Evolution starts with an " act of faith," a 

 postulate of our rational nature — viz., that everything is rational 

 and has a meaning, even that which is at present irreducible to 

 law. In this belief much which was once meaningless becomes 

 intelligible, and a scientific man's faith is not staggered by the 

 fact that much as yet remains outside, which science has not ex- 

 plained. On the moral side also we start with an " act of faith," 

 a postulate of our moral nature, that God is good and can not be 

 the cause of meaningless and unnecessary pain. And our faith 

 is not staggered by much which seems, as yet, like useless suffer- 

 ing. Even if Darwin's mature judgment that on the whole 

 "happiness decidedly j)revails" were not true, we should still 

 believe in the goodness of God, in spite of all that seems to con- 

 tradict it, and look forward to the time when our children, or 

 our children's children, will see clearly what to us is dim or dark. 

 — The Guardian. 



♦»»■ 



THE GEOLOGICAL TOURIST IN EUROPE. 



By ALFRED C. LANE. 



""VTINETY thousand Americans go abroad every summer. 

 -^^ Among this army there must be many readers of this 

 magazine, who are interested not only in art but in science ; who 

 find time to wonder, as they toil up to the top of Cologne Cathe- 

 dral, what the stone is that sustains so mighty a mass, and 

 whence come the crystals that now and again flash from the 

 walls ; who, as their eye roams over the vast expanse seen from 

 above, let their imagination roam into the past when the Rhine 

 had not yet won from the sea the provinces over which it now 

 meanders. The artist finds guide-books crammed with cata- 

 logues of museums containing works of man and critical notices 

 of the same, and man's battle-fields and burial-places are noted. 

 Yet the collections of natural wonders are so curtly mentioned 



