226 The University of California Magazine. 



of biology; that, as a man, he was bound to take sides im- 

 plying a definite attitude toward all reality. He knew that 

 one's "way of life" is in itself an implicit philosphy, true or 

 false; and, believing thus philosophy to be inevitable, he held, 

 with Socrates, that "an unexamined life is not worthy to be 

 lived by a ma7iy 



The master generalization of science of his day is contained 

 in the the theory of evolution, — a theory which certainly at 

 first sight seems to make of man a mere thing among things, 

 a mere creature of cosmic causes, and therefore neither free, 

 nor yet immortal; a theory which seems to substitute for the 

 personal God of religion a blind, immanent force. Professor 

 Le Conte was but gradually won over to full acceptance of 

 this theory, of which he was to become such a famous ex- 

 pounder, and this fact was due, I think, to religious misgiv- 

 ings quite as much as to scientific caution. "Our faith in the 

 Infinite Righteousness," he used to say, "is founded on just 

 the same ground as cur indestructible faith in the Reign of 

 L,aw in the natural world, and is just as reasonable."* And 

 so he must first assure himself that the theory of evolution 

 did no violence to the moral needs of man, for he felt that if 

 it did, it must in the end do violence to his intellectual needs 

 as well. 



However that may be, Professor Le Conte's contributions to 

 philosophy are found in his discussions of these cardinal ques- 

 tions: the existence of God, the freedom and immortality of 

 man, and the closely allied question as to the meaning of 

 evil. 



From one point of view his work here seems mainly 

 to consist in the attempt to quash the negative answer, 

 which some over-confident evolutionists would forthworth 

 make to these questions, and to do this by emphasizing 

 the fact that the theory of evolution, being simply a reading 

 of the zvay in which phenomena occur, can tell us nothing 

 with regard to the groiind of phenomena, and therefore as lit- 



*"The Conception of God," p. 71. 



