Last Years. 389 



By this time so much interest had been aroused in 

 the controversy as to make it morally certain that the 

 articles would be collected and issued in book form in 

 America. Such a thing might be done by any of the 

 horde of pirates permitted by the absence of an inter- 

 national copyright law to infest this (quoad hoc) bar- 

 barous land ; or it might be done by an honourable 

 house like the Appletons, paying to both writers the 

 customary royalty. Under these circumstances You- 

 mans collected the articles and published them in a 

 small volume entitled The Nature and Reality of Re- 

 ligion. To Mr. Harrison's Pall Mall article footnotes 

 were added, pointing out its misrepresentations. Mr. 

 Spencer was consulted as to the republication, and 

 Mr. Harrison, for reasons duly set forth by Youmans, 

 in his article hereto appended, was not. It was natural 

 enough that Mr. Harrison, already somewhat touchy 

 at having the worst of the argument, should have 

 been irritated at this. But the case admitted of ex- 

 Mr. Spencer's theories, or that they did not tabulate such facts as they 

 judged would be most useful to him. One would as easily believe that 

 when Mr. Gladstone's secretary is directed to tabulate electoral facts he 

 has not the least idea whether the Premier is about to use them in favour 

 of reform or against it." Mr. Harrison seems to think that the mental atti- 

 tude of a scientific investigator is like that of an ex parte advocate trying 

 to make a point ! Naturally enough, for, like the savage, the primitive 

 man, and most of us, he judges the unknown by the known. His remarks 

 recall to me what happened one evening about twenty years ago, when I 

 was dining at 37 Queen's Gardens with Spencer and his assistant, Dr. 

 Richard Scheppig, a pleasant and accomplished German scholar, who com- 

 piled some parts of the Descriptive Sociology (among others the Mexican 

 part, in which, by the way, are some grave errors). I happened to ask Dr. 

 Scheppig for his opinion on some point involved in the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion, and I shall never forget his delicious reply, or think of it without 

 laughing : "I do not know anything whatever about evolution ; I am a 

 historian ! " 



