268 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



esses, and hence it does away with all virtue or 

 guilt, all responsibility, and logically leaves man 

 to live according to his unbridled passions without 

 regard to the rights of his fellow men. Material- 

 istic evolution means the denial of all authority, 

 since without God there is no authority that can 

 exact obedience from men, who by nature are 

 equal. Force only can then constrain them to do 

 the bidding of another. "N<> God, No Master," 

 the motto of the anarchist, is the logical watch- 

 word of every atheist, though he may in practice 

 rise superior to the conclusions which his creed 

 necessitates. "We shall take all we can get," 

 is the cry of the radical Socialist as of the godless 

 profiteer. There is no vice so low, no crime so 

 abhorrent, that it must not be defended if ma- 

 terialistic evolution is to be the accepted creed. 

 A creed we call it by courtesy, but since the faith 

 it demands of its adherents is without any of those 

 invincible evidences that make the acceptance of 

 Christianity imperative to right reason, we can 

 properly rank it only as a superstition. Scientific 

 foundation it has none at all. These are hard 

 words, hard and inexorable as truth itself, but 

 they are not bitter words. Would that they 

 might convince men of the greatest of all social 

 truths, that without the Church there is no hope 

 for society. At the age of seventy-three Spencer 

 himself had been forced to confess: 



