Scientific Evolution. 149 



to make Christian ministers assume a jealous if not hostile 

 attitude towards physical science, and also to alienate a 

 certain number of their disciples from them. Surely there 



divine superintendence," and as overlooking " the fact that the doctrine 

 of gravitation, with the entire science of physical astronomy, is open to 

 the same charge " as the doctrine of evolution. Mr. Spencer is one of 

 the last men to make an ill-considered charge, least of all against a 

 thinker of a school opposed to his own, and it is therefore interesting 

 to find that he does not appear to contemplate even the possibility of 

 right being on Mr. Gladstone's side. That gentleman has written to 

 vindicate himself from the charge of hostility to science, and to say 

 (Contemporary Review, December, 1873, p. 163) that his complaint 

 is that the functions of the Almighty as Creator and Governor of the 

 world are denied upon grounds, which . . . "appear to" him 

 " utterly and manifestly insufficient to warrant such denial." But in 

 fact what Mr. Gladstone said was most true and just not in opposition 

 to Mr. Spencer (who is open to criticism of another kind), but in oppo- 

 sition to the general tendency and effects on men's minds of the teach- 

 ing in vogue an effect boastingly announced by outspoken adherents. 

 Caro (" L'Idde de Dieu," p. 47) observes : " Science conducts God 

 with honour to its frontiers, thanking Him for His provisional services." 

 Mr. Gladstone said no more than this ! But there is a further misun- 

 derstanding. To explain the conditions of the solar system, considered 

 with reference to physical science alone, the laws of astronomy are of 

 course sufficient ; but to adequately explain such conditions as parts of 

 a great whole of which our own intellectual faculties form a portion, 

 astronomical laws are not sufficient, according to the teaching of a 

 definite school of philosophy which claims Aristotle for its founder. 

 Therefore, according to that philosophy, to say that a full recognition 

 of the " doctrine of evolution " dispenses with " immediate divine 

 superintendence," whether in the moon's motion or in the fall of a pro- 

 jectile, would be absurd. But this is the very error into which the 

 unlearned are apt to fall, and this is the absurdity against which Mr. 

 Gladstone meant, no doubt, to protest the absurdity, that is, of sup- 



