326 Evolution and Social Reform : 



sphere and diminisliing the functions of government, 

 reducing both as fast and as far as is consistent witli 

 security. The other is to foster in every jjracticable way 

 the formation and maintenance of the altruistic character 

 in individuals. 



From what I have said it will sufficiently appear that the 

 Scientific method is opposed to the Theological, so far as 

 the latter makes obedience to authority the means of 

 reaching the social millennium. It makes no difference if 

 the authority be divine. Divinity always has human 

 interpreters and vicegerents. Divine authority is but 

 another form of autocracy or aristocracy, moie objectiona- 

 ble than the others, because it is less elastic, assuming that 

 being divine it must be unchangeable. It is hence serioiisly 

 obstructive of that process of evolution, in the preservation 

 of which life subsists, and in the absence of which is 

 decay and death to the social organism. Theology, however, 

 is not religion. Happily, in the course of religious devel- 

 opment, particularly in Christianity, the Scientific principle 

 has been readied, has become prominent, and its value 

 demonstrated. The most strenuous efforts have been made 

 in the history of tliis religion to sustain the principle of 

 authority, but the vitality and power of the Scientific 

 doctrine has been so great as repeatedly and I think at last 

 permanently to triumph, while the blessed effects of its 

 practical use have given to Christianity all its success and 



The Scientific method is also opposed to the Anarchistic, 

 because it recognizes that society is a growth, and knows 

 that if at a given stage existing institutions are radically 

 destroyed it is only by a process of growth that new ones 

 can arise ; that this process will be just as complicated as 

 the })receding one, and will have to go through its various 

 stages of imperfection before any perfection can be reached. 

 First the stem, then the flower, then the fruit after its 

 kind. Nothing can exist excejjt as suited to its surround- 

 ing conditions. Cataclysms in society are sometimes 

 inevitable, because there seems to be no hope for improve- 

 ment. All the avenues are closed up. But the virtue of 

 the Scientific method is that it takes care to keep open the 

 avenues for the moveiiuMit of evolutionary forces, and to 

 render anarchic disturbiuices unnecessary and even im- 

 possible. 



