SCIENCE AND ITS ACCUSERS. 373 



poor, and that it will continue to be so until a new element is in- 

 troduced into it from the scientific study of nature, the element 

 of intellectual honesty. It is easy to make such statements as 

 that, "if all religious feeling were to melt away, a return to 

 primitive barbarism would be inevitable," but to prove them 

 might not be so easy. It may be remarked that primitive bar- 

 barism has always been marked by strong religious feeling as 

 well as by comprehensive ignorance ; and, therefore, if we suc- 

 ceeded in getting back to primitive barbarism, we should have 

 reached a fine starting-point for another religious evolution. M. 

 de Laveleye, however, does not expect that things will get to 

 this pass ; his idea is that our future civilization will be presided 

 over by a purified form of Christianity based upon the most ele- 

 vated teachings of its Founder. What the future of Darwinism 

 will be he does not tell us — whether it will vanish from the earth 

 like an exhalation, or mingle with and perchance support the new 

 creed. If the former is to be its destiny, we should have some 

 hint as to the probable manner of its going ; if the latter, it 

 is hard to see why it should have been made an object of 

 attack. 



Miss Cobbe, who discusses " The Scientific Spirit of the Age," 

 admits that she does it " from an adverse point of view." The 

 " epoch-making biography of Mr. Darwin," containing his " ad- 

 mirably candid avowal of the gradual extinction in his mind of 

 the aesthetic and religious elements," has, she thinks, " arrested not 

 a few science-worshipers with the query. What shall it profit a 

 man if he find the origin of species and know exactly how earth- 

 worms and sun-dews conduct themselves, if all the while he grow 

 blind to the loveliness of nature, deaf to music, insensible to 

 l^oetry, and as unable to lift his soul to the divine and eternal as 

 were the jDrimeval apes from whom he has descended ? " Miss 

 Cobbe hastens to show that, for her own part, she has not sacri- 

 ficed everything to science, by making a few remarks in a very 

 unscientific sj^irit on the effects of scientific study. It promotes, 

 she tells us, iDractical materialism. The student of science will — 

 we quote the actual words of this once highly rational and thor- 

 oughly liberal-minded writer — "view his mother's tears not as 

 expressions of her sorrow, but as solutions of muriates and car- 

 bonates of soda, and of phosphates of lime ; and he will reflect that 

 they were caused, not by his heartlessness, but by cerebral press- 

 ure on her lachrymal glands. When she dies, he will ' peep and 

 botanize ' on her grave, not with the poet's sense of the sacrile- 

 giousness of such ill-placed curiosity, but with the serene convic- 

 tion of the meritoriousness of accurate observation of the flora of 

 a cemetery." What are we to say of this if not that it is unmiti- 

 gated trash ? Is it known that home affections are less powerful 



