THE ATTITUDE OF PHILOSOPHY 



discovery since the time of Galileo and Bacon 

 has but gradually, and as its newest result, es- 

 tablished the Doctrine of Evolution ; yet it has, 

 from the very outset, assumed a hostile atti- 

 tude toward the body of mythical conceptions 

 of which the current Christian theologies have 

 been largely made up. The consequence of 

 this has been the rise of a purely negative icon- 

 oclastic style of criticism, both in religion and 

 in politics, which, in spite of its deadly hostility 

 to the prevailing orthodoxy, has nevertheless 

 been equally characterized by theories and aims 

 which are the products of the old statical habits 

 of thought. While orthodoxy and its compan- 

 ion legitimism have regarded the existing reli- 

 gious and social order, not as a product of evo- 

 lution, but as a divinely appointed and there- 

 fore eternally sacred order of things — on the 

 other hand iconoclasm, whether manifested in 

 religion or in politics, has regarded the existing 

 order of things, not as a product of evolution, 

 but as the work of artful priests and legislators 

 of antiquity, which may accordingly be destroyed 

 as summarily as it was created. Even while 

 justly inveighing, therefore, against patent ab- 

 surdities or flagrant wrongs in the established 

 order of things, the iconoclast proceeds from a 

 point of view as untenable as that occupied by 

 his orthodox antagonist. Rejecting the myth- 

 ical conception of the established order as in 

 3^5 



