348 The Philosophy of Evolution. 



maintain the supremacy of their industry or its claim to be 

 most worthy of human attention. Their ghosts and hob- 

 goblins began to scatter and fade in the growing light of 

 the new dawn. The emptiness and muddiness of their 

 writings began to be visible to their most devoted adherents. 

 The Darwinian fact made the Hegelian fancy look pale and 

 thin as the formless air. 



And this was further elucidated by the wonderful books 

 of Mr. Herbert Spencer, who carried the evolutionary doc- 

 trine and its method of investigation through all the old 

 haunts of the metaphysicians, and showed what mines of 

 knowledge the new method could disclose, full of the silver 

 and gold of truth, where before men had perished in bottom- 

 less quicksands or quagmires of speculation. For under 

 his masterly handling the physical or physiological basis of 

 many an ancient doctrine was exposed for the first time, 

 and the material truth of which the metaphysical dogma had 

 been the confused and disconnected statement was brought 

 to light and set in its due place in an evolutionary universe. 

 Then both the adherents and the opponents of various 

 dogmas were angered and dismayed, to find that their con- 

 tention was a chaffering about husks and shells, while the 

 kernel of the matter had been claimed or known by neither. 

 What the Philosophy of Evolution required of the meta- 

 physicians was real proof for any of their assertions, and 

 this demand it was which brought their windy quarrels to 

 quietude. They had no real proof, and soon it became clear 

 that they never could furnish any. They had been furnish- 

 ing verbal proof, on both sides of interminable questions, 

 for centuries, but real proof in the actual working of the 

 universe there was none, and they could therefore bring 

 none forth. And when Evolution came forward, offering to 

 demonstrate by bare facts a multitude of propositions all 

 going to verify its own main principle, no wonder it arrested 

 the attention of all and drew disciples in crowds from the 

 schools of the old teachers. For it at least furnished a 

 standard of truth, which the former had failed to do after 

 ages of painful industry. 



And the main difference between Evolution and all preced- 

 ing systems is perhaps most of all in this, that its adherents 

 can verify their assertions by a standard of proof, whereas, 

 the metaphysicians are still unable to do so, as they have 

 no standard, and therefore every man says that which is 



