318 THE STORY OF THE EARTH AND MAN. 



forms, and witli most serious effects on tlie wliolo 

 structure of society. With, one class of minds they 

 constitute a sort of religion, which so far satisfies the 

 craving for truths higher than those which relate to 

 immediate wants and pleasures. With another and 

 perhaps larger class, they are accepted as affording a 

 welcome deliverance from all scruples of conscience 

 and fears of a hereafter. In the domain of science 

 evolutionism has like tendencies. It reduces the posi- 

 tion of man, who becomes a descendant of inferior 

 animals, and a mere term in a series whose end is 

 unknown. It removes from the study of nature the 

 ideas of final cause and purpose ; and the evolutionist, 

 instead of regarding the world as a work of consum- 

 mate plan, skill, and adjustment, approaches nature as 

 he would a chaos of fallen rocks, which may present 

 forms of castles and grotesque profiles of men and 

 animals, but they are all fortuitous and without 

 .- significance. It obliterates the fine perception of 

 differences from the mind of the naturalist, and 

 V i resolves all the complicated relations of living things 

 ' into some simple idea of descent with modification. 

 It thus destroys the possibility of a philosophical 

 classification, reducing all things to a mere series, 

 and leads to a rapid decay in systematic zoology and 

 botany, which is already very manifest among the 

 disciples of Spencer and Darwin in England. The 

 effect of this will be, if it proceeds further, in a great 

 degree to destroy the educational value and popular 

 interest attaching to these sciences, and to thro iv them 



