26 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



legitimate philosophical inference of a Conscious Power 

 in Nature is ignored as being outside the province of 

 science ; which Rationalists claim as the sole source of 

 knowledge. 



Thus Prof. Karl Pearson says : " An explanation is 

 never given by science. The whole of science is descrip- 

 tion, mechanism explains nothing." 



" The Grammar of Science confines the sphere of 

 knowledge to the world of perceptions and the concep- 

 tions drawn from it." 



" The mind is absolutely confined within its nerve- 

 exchange ; beyond the walls of sense-impression it can 

 logically infer nothing.^ . . . Briefly, Chaos is all that 

 science can logically assert of the supersensuous — the 

 sphere outside knowledge, outside classification by 

 mental concepts.'"- 



" No human concept, such as order, reason or con- 

 sciousness can be logically projected into it."^ 



But it is not merely an academical question whether 

 Haeckel and other biologists are right or wrong. His 

 books, especially the Riddle of the Universe, are eagerly 

 read by young men of the lower orders, who boldly pro- 

 claim atheism in the London Parks, etc., on the supposi- 

 tion that Haeckel is an infallible authority! Haeckel's 

 theories may seem wild enough, it is true, to all who 

 know ; but it is not so to those who only take their 

 " science " second-hand from him. 



I feel, too, that it is unfortunate that I have to con- 

 test a purely scientific deduction from " Darwinism" in a 

 work, the purport of which is to contravene such abstract 

 conclusions as atheism, disbelief in man's free will and 

 immortality ; but the burden must rest on the shoulders 



' The Chances of Death and other Studies in Evolution, ii., pp. 381, 382. 

 '^Thc a ramwor of Science, p. 108. ^ Ihid., p. 112, 



