EVOLUTION AND THE DESTINY OF MAN. 465 



creative activity which is manifested in the physical universe." But 

 really from the scientific stand-point we are not much concerned with 

 what things can be made to seem ; we are concerned with what they 

 can be proved to be. Opinion can not take the place of knowledge, 

 nor yet of belief ; and, in regard to all such questions, only knowledge 

 and belief are of any avail. Prove to us that such and such things 

 are so : well and good — our minds yield to evidence. Persuade us 

 that they have been supernaturally revealed : well and good also — 

 our minds take the desired set. But give us only probable opinions, 

 the product of a kind of pseudo-scientific casuistry, and you do noth- 

 ing for us at all, except perhaps diminish in some degree our sense 

 for truth and reality. 



The word "seem," above emphasized, may be said to furnish the 

 key-note of the whole of what may be called the apologetic element in 

 the work before us. The first Mr. Fiske tells us what things are, and 

 how they have come to be what they are. The second tells us what 

 they seem like to those who wish to think that the foundations of 

 Christian theology have not been disturbed either by the Coiiernican 

 astronomy or the Darwinian theory of the origin of species. The 

 weakness of this kind of thing is that it may be worked in any direc- 

 tion and in any interest. Say what you want things to seem like, and 

 they can easily be made to assume the desired complexion. Take an 

 example. After animals have been devouring one another and starving 

 one another out of existence for long ages, there appears an animal 

 who assumes a predominance which he never afterward loses, and who 

 goes on increasing his power and improving his position from century 

 to centuiy. "Well, if one wishes to believe that the object toward 

 which all this inter-mastication and inter-starvation of the myriad 

 tribes of earth and air and sky was tending was the production of 

 man, himself for long ages one of the most hideous of animals, there 

 is no obstacle in the way except the complete lack of evidence in a 

 positive sense plus the fact that the inter-mastication and inter-starva- 

 tion are still going on now that man has come. If any one chooses to 

 describe natural selection as a " simple and wasteful process," and then 

 to sav that it is " a slow and subtile " one, there is no obstacle in the 

 way except the contrast which common sense establishes between sim- 

 plicity and subtilty. If any one chooses to say that "the whole crea- 

 tion has been groaning and travailing together in order to bring forth 

 that last consummate specimen of God's handiwork, the human soul," 

 let him ; for the phrase, if not scientific, is at least apostolic. Under 

 the regime of " seems," a great deal can be done that is quite impossi- 

 ble under the unaccommodating rule of " is." 



Take, for a moment, this expression of the creation " groaning and 

 travailing together." What idea does it convey to which science gives 

 the faintest confirmation ? So far as we have any acquaintance with 

 the facts, they are better expressed by the Lucretian idea of endless 



TOL. XXTI. — 30 



