REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION. 403 



Science, we were told but a few decades ago, would 

 suppress the supernatural, remove mysteries and 

 explain miracles. It would tell us all about the 

 origin of things ; the world, life, sensation, rational 

 thought. It would inform us about the origin of 

 society, language, morality, religion. It would throw 

 light not only on the origin of man's body and soul, 

 but also on his ultimate destiny. It would, in a word, 

 frame for us a complete cosmology, a complete code 

 of ethics, and introduce a new religion, which would 

 be as superior to Christianity as science is superior 

 to superstition. It promised that we should one 

 day be able to " express consciousness in foot- 

 pounds ;" that we should be able to trace the con- 

 nection between "the sentiment of love and the 

 play of molecules ;" that we should be in a position 

 to discern " human genius and moral aspiration in a 

 ring of cosmical vapor." Thanks to science and to 

 its grand generalization, Evolution, old systems of 

 thought were to be wiped out of existence, and we 

 were to be ushered into an era of general enlighten- 

 ment and universal progress. 



But has science, as represented by Renan, Haeckel 

 and others of their way of thinking, made good its 

 promises? Has it been able to dispense with a per- 

 sonal God, and to relegate the supernatural to the 

 limbo "where entities and quiddities, the ghosts of un- 

 known bodies lie"? Has it, in the words of Virchow, 

 succeeded in referring the origin of life to " a 

 special system of mechanics," or in proving Renan's 

 view that "the harmony of nature is but a resultant," 

 and that " the existence of things is but an affair of 



