The Philosophy of Evolution. 349 



right in his own eyes. The evolutionist appeals to fact, 

 the metaphysician to thought, with the advantage to the 

 first that the fact remains while the thought perpetually 

 changes. 



A special illustration of the superiority of this Evolution- 

 ary appeal is seen in its application to those fanatics of 

 wilfulness and hap-hazard, the Intuitionalists. These 

 thinkers, of whom Ralph Waldo Emerson is the anointed 

 high-priest and oracle, were disporting themselves like dol- 

 phins in the high seas, amid what they claimed to be high 

 themes, showing an originality and brilliancy of expression 

 unrivaled. So long as they were not called upon to estab- 

 lish any of their assertions, they were very successful, and 

 astonished the empyrean with the splendors of their rhet- 

 oric and the lustre of their paradoxes. Who could surpass 

 Mr. Emerson in the courage and kindling fire of his dis- 

 course ? Who could seem nearer to nature and the true 

 order of nature than he ? He held his audiences and read- 

 ers enthralled, as he seemed to open to them the loftiest 

 heaven of thought and to disclose all the secrets of spirit 

 and spiritual worlds. But the arrow of evolution, alas ! 

 takes him also in its winged flight, — him the beautiful 

 Achilles, — and glancing strikes the vulnerable tendon of 

 his heel with fatal effect. For what the Philosophy of Evo- 

 lution undertook to do was, as I said, to prove its positions 

 with the amplest evidence. It would listen to everything, 

 but accept nothing without demonstration. It had no ears 

 for glittering generalities. It would have chapter and verse 

 from the Bible of fact for any proposition which the arrested 

 Intuitionalist might be inspired on his tripod to deliver. 

 This threw a coolness over the industry of those venture- 

 some and guileless thinkers, which we fear will deepen as 

 time goes on. For surely the grasshopper-like flight of 

 their thoughts is calculated to bring them nowhither. They 

 spring into the air and come clown wherever God wills. But 

 Evolution, as a doctrine, builds a solid causeway of proved 

 truth through the trembling swamp of human conjecture 

 wherein they wander, — a causeway over which the nations 

 of the future may march to ever-increasing power, wisdom, 

 and happiness, as long as the world may last. 



The Positive Philosophy, so-called, of August Comte, 

 has something to say to Evolution, and claims many of its 

 doctrines and benefits for its own. In so far as it induced 



