150 Contemporary Evolution. 



is not merely much excuse for, but merit in such hos- 

 tility, when the nature, in their eyes, of two conflicting 

 interests is considered. For any one who accepts not a 

 revelation, but only natural religion, must regard reli- 

 gious and physical truth as possessing no common measure, 

 just as the grandeur and beauty of Saturn's rings and the 

 grandeur and beauty of an heroic act of generous self- 

 denial cannot be compared together. To such acceptors 

 of revelation, questions as to " the age of the world " or 

 the " law of new specific origins " must appear trivial 

 details when weighed in the balance with such questions 

 as, " Is the human will really free ? " " Are our efforts 

 after virtue lovingly responded to by an Infinite Being, 

 who knows every secret of our hearts so intimately, that 

 the closest human scrutiny is but an utterly inadequate 



posing that " gravitation " or " evolution " if accepted are not " utterly 

 and manifestly insufficient " to account for the phenomena, apart from 

 Divine action, when such phenomena are considered as part of a uni- 

 verse made up of spiritual as well as of material existences. It seems 

 then, evident, that Mr. Gladstone, in the passage first cited, speaks 

 as the adherent of one school of philosophy, while Mr. Spencer speaks 

 as the adherent of another. The claims of these rival philosophies 

 cannot be stated in this note, but whether the peripatetic be true or 

 false, all who hold it have a perfect right to speak as Mr. Gladstone 

 spoke, without on that account having one fraction the less of love for 

 physical science or of desire for knowledge of the laws of the pheno- 

 menal universe, from " gravitation" to the sociological value of the art 

 of music and the true teleological relations of the " locomotive " and 

 the " fiddle " respectively. 



