THEISM AND EVOLUTION. 311 



iarity occur every day. You can hardly persuade 

 some men to talk about anything but their own pur- 

 suits ; they refer the whole world to their own cen- 

 ter, and measure all matters by their own rule, like 

 the fisherman in the drama, whose eulogy on his 

 deceased lord was, 'he was so fond of fish.' " ' 



But the observations of the learned cardinal are 

 not more applicable to Darwin than to a host of 

 contemporary scientists, who fancy there is an irrec- 

 oncilable conflict between science on the one hand, 

 and religion on the other. They fail to see that the 

 conflict, so far as it exists, is due either to bias or 

 ignorance, or to the fact that the very nature of 

 their studies has imposed limitations on them, which 

 utterly unfit them for pronouncing an opinion on 

 the subjects which they are often in such haste to 

 discuss. 



In one of his thoughtful essays," the Rev. James 

 Martineau alludes to the injury which is done to 

 sound philosophy by the undue cultivation of any 

 one branch of knowledge. " Nothing is more com- 

 mon," he avers, " than to see maxims, which are 

 unexceptionable as the assumptions of particular 



1 " Lectures on University Subjects," p. 322. Nearly fortj 

 years ago, in a lecture before the Royal Institution of Great 

 Britain, the noted English writer, H. T. Buckle, adverting to this 

 topic, declared that " an exclusive employment of the inductive 

 philosophy was contracting the minds of physical inquirers, and 

 gradually shutting out speculations respecting causes and en- 

 tities ; limiting the student to questions of distribution, and for- 

 bidding him questions of origin ; making everything hang on 

 two sets of laws, namely, those of coexistence and of sequence; 

 and declaring beforehand how far future knowledge can lead 

 us." See vol. I, of " Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works." 



2 "A Plea for Philosophical Studies." 



