284 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. [Jan. 



modern sciences we are compelled to exhaust all material means 

 before we can have recourse to the supernatural. When, however, 

 that has been done, and men have tried patiently and laboriously, 

 but in vain, to refer all natural phenomena to material causes, 

 then, having proved a negative, they will be compelled to accept 

 the existence of truth not reached by their touchstone, and faith 

 be recognized as the highest and best knowledge. 



That such will be the result is the confident expectation of 

 many of the wisest of the scientific men whose influence is looked 

 upon with such alarm by those who, in their anxiety for their 

 faith, demonstrate its weakness. 



Already, as it seems to me, scientists have reached the wall of 

 adamant — the inscrutable — that surrounds them on every side, 

 and, ere long, we may expect to see them return to that heap of 

 chaff from which the germs of modern science were winnowed, 

 with the conviction that there were there left buried other germs 

 of other and higher truths than those they gleaned ; truths 

 without which human knowledge must be a dwarfed and deformed 

 thing. 



A few illustrations from the many that might be cited will 

 suffice to show the materialistic tendency of modern science. In 

 " Pure Philosophy," — as the students of Psychology are fond of 

 styling their science, — the names alone of Compte, Buckle, 

 Herbert Spencer, Mill, and Draper, will suggest the more promi- 

 nent characters of the school they may be said to represent. The 

 most conspicuous feature in the " Positive Philosophy " of Compte 

 is the effort it exhibits to co-ordinate the laws of mind with those 

 of matter. Spencer is a thorough-going mental Darwinist, who 

 considers the highest attributes of the human mind, the loftiest 

 aspirations of the soul, as only developed instincts, as these were 

 but developed sensations. Mill, more guarded, more fully inspired 

 with the spirit of the age, — which believes nothing, and is a foe 

 to speculation, — leaves the history of our faculties to be written, 

 if at all, by others ; takes them as they are, but reasons of con- 

 science and free-will with an independence of popular belief that 

 savors more of the material than the spiritual school. Buckle 

 wore himself out in a vain chase after an ignis fatmts, an inherent, 

 inflexible law of human progress, and hence of human history. 

 Draper is a developmentist, but not a Darwinian. With him 

 civilization is a definite stage in the growth of mind ; a degree of 

 development to which it is impelled by a vis a tergo, not unlike. 



