350 The Philosophy of Evolution. 



men to leave the pathless woods of metajmysics and myth- 

 ology for the cleared land of science it of course deserves 

 the laudation of philosophers ; but it came far short of dis- 

 covering the fundamental postulates of evolution. It was 

 itself metaphysical and fragmentary. It was so little 

 familiar with the true method of philosophizing that it at 

 last landed its believers in the paltry and time-wasting cult 

 of its founder's mistress, and in a Keligion of Humanity 

 which is good enough for an ideal but has no roots in the 

 nature of things. It elevates a sentiment to that throne of 

 authority which fact alone can satisfactorily fill. Posi- 

 tivism played an excellent part in its insistency that a 

 philosophy should deal with the universe itself rather than 

 with various notions about the universe. It deserves a 

 magnum cum laude for pointing out the unsatisfactory 

 service rendered by metaphysics. But it was only a door 

 to the method of nature, and not that method itself. 



Leaving now the other systems to their own intrepid 

 adherents, let me say that the Evolutionary Philosophy 

 seems to me to be essentially materialistic. It is true that 

 its greatest apostles, Spencer and Huxley, and Mr. John 

 Fiske as well, allege that of the two world-old dilemmas 

 between mind and matter, every analysis leads rather 

 to the conclusion that we know the universe far more as all 

 mind than we do as all matter. They do indeed deny that 

 we can claim to know its real nature at all, and so sustain 

 themselves in the airy spaces of agnosticism, declaring the 

 existence of " an Unknowable Eeality " beyond our ken. 

 Mr. Spencer labors the point frequently, asserting that 

 consciousness and reason alike fail to carry us beyond a 

 knowledge of relations, which never disclose the absolute 

 reality. The permanent substratum of mental being, which 

 abides behind all the changes of thought, and the permanent 

 substance in which all the qualities of matter inhere, must 

 forever remain hid from us. But if we were to decide any- 

 thing as to the nature of the ultimate substance, he says we 

 should decide it to be mental rather than material, for con- 

 sciousness itself is nearer to mind than it is to matter, so 

 far at least as we see it internally. All our knowledge is 

 declared to be given in units of feeling at last, and these 

 units of feeling are mental. We seem thus to be crowded 

 back to the old metaphysical basis for all philosophizing — 

 the primitive testimony of consciousness. While one may 



