PRESIDENT NEWCOMB. 27 



circumstances which determined its action were too obscure or too 

 'complex to be fully comprehended. 



4. Final causes having thus, one by one, disappeared from every 

 thicket which has been fully explored, the question arises whether 

 they now have or ever had any existence at all. On the one hand, 

 it may be claimed that it is unphilosophical to believe in them 

 when they have been sought in vain in every^ corner into which 

 light can penetrate ; on the -other hand, we have the difficulty of 

 accounting for these very laws by which we find the course of 

 nature to be determined. Take, as a single example, the law of 

 hereditary descent. How 'did such a law or, rather, how did 

 such a process, for it is a process first commence? If "this is 

 not as legitimate a subject for inquiry as the question how came 

 the hand and the eye into existence, it is only because it seems 

 more difficult to investigate. If, as the most advanced scientific 

 philosophy teaches, creation is itself but a growth, how did that 

 growth originate ? We here reach the limits of the scientific field, 

 on ground where they are less well defined than in some other 

 directions, but I shall take the liberty of concluding my remarks 

 with a single suggestion respecting a matter which lies outside of 

 them. When the doctrine of the universality of natural law is 

 carried so far as to include the genesis of living beings, and 

 the adaptations to external circumstances which we see in their 

 structure, it is often pronounced to be atheistic. Whether this 

 judgment is or is not correct, I cannot say, but it is very easy to 

 propound the test "question by which its correctness is to be deter- 

 mined. Is the general doctrine, of causes acting in apparently 

 blind obedience to invariable law in itself atheistic? If it is, then 

 the whole progress of our knowledge of nature has been in this 

 direction, for it has consisted in reducing the operations of nature 

 to such blind obedience. Of course, when I say blind you under- 

 stand that I mean blind so far as a scrutable regard to consequence 

 is concerned blind like justice, in fact. If the doctrine is not 

 atheistic, then there is nothing atheistic in any phase of the theory 

 of evolution, for this consists solely in accounting for certain 

 processes by natural laws. I do not pretend to answer the question 

 here involved, because it belongs entirely to the domain of the- 

 ology. All we can ask is that each individual shall hold consistent 

 views on the subject, and not maintain the affirmative of the 



