EVOLUTION AND RELIGIOUS THOUGHT. 311 



declined 35"8 per cent in quantity ; of beef products 17*7 per cent, 

 and of pork products 35 per cent. The exports of butter and cheese 

 have also participated in the general decrease of exports. 



The Economic Disturbances since 1873 contingent on Wak 

 Expenditures are not different in kind from those of former periods, 

 but much greater in degree. This subject has been so thoroughly in- 

 vestigated and is so well understood, that nothing more need be said 

 in this discussion, than to point out that the men in actual service at 

 the present time in the armies and navies of Europe is in excess of 

 4,000,000, and that it undoubtedly requires the product of one opera- 

 tive or peasant labor, to sustain one soldier. The present aggregate 

 annual direct war expenditure of the world is probably in excess of 

 a thousand million dollars. We express this expenditure in terms 

 of money, but it really means work performed ; not that abundance 

 of useful and desirable things may be increased, but decreased ; not 

 that human toil and suffering may be lightened, but augmented. 



eyolutio:n' akd eeligious thought.* 



By Peofessor JOSEPH LE CONTE. 



FROM what has preceded, the reader will perceive that we regard 

 the law of evolution as thoroughly established. In its most 

 general sense, i. e., as a law of continuity, it is a necessary condition of 

 rational thought. In this sense it is naught else than the universal law 

 of necessary causation applied to forms instead of phenomena. It is 

 not only as certain as — it is far more certain than — the law of gravita- 

 tion, for it is not a contingent, but a necessary truth like the axioms of 

 geometry. It is only necessary to conceive it clearly, to accept it 

 unhesitatingly. The consensus of scientific and philosophical opinion 

 is already well-nigh if not wholly complete. If there are still linger- 

 ing cases for dissent among thinking men, it is only because such do 

 not yet conceive it already — they confound it with some special form 

 of explanation of evolution which they, perhaps justly, think not yet 

 fully established. We have sometimes in the preceding pages used 

 the words evolutionist or derivationist ; they ought not to be used any 

 longer. The day is past when evolution might be regarded as a 

 school of thought. We might as well talk of gravitationist as of evo- 

 lutionist. 



If, then, evolution as a law be certain ; if, moreover, it is a law 

 affecting not only one part of Xature — the organic kingdom — and one 

 department of science — biology — but the whole realm of Nature and 

 every department of science, yea, every department of thought, chang- 



*rrom advance sheets of Professor Le Conte's work on " Evolution and its Relation to 

 Religious Thought," in preparation by D. Appleton & Co. 



