INTRODUCTION. XXXV 



exclusion of Reason, Morality, and Purpose, are announced 

 by Haeckel and Huxley, if not by Darwin himself, as the 

 fundamental principles of the universe and of its process 

 of development, we have the strongest philosophical 

 grounds for objecting to the Darwinian doctrine so 

 understood. 



It is our right and our duty to challenge the con- 

 clusions of Science, or rather of the current philosophies 

 which profess to speak in her name and with her credit, 

 when they affect to be authoritative and final deliver- 

 ances on philosophic or religious questions of supreme 

 import. On the question of a future life, and of the 

 existence and nature of God, we cannot allow the decisions 

 of scientific specialists or even of scientific philosophers 

 to contain the whole truth and the final word. On these 

 two questions, that have been discussed since the days of 

 Plato by the supremest intellects of our species, it cannot 

 be allowed that the greatest of these were wholly away 

 from the truth which has been only revealed at last in 

 our own day by the latest great scientific hypothesis in 

 conjunction with the law of the Conservation of Energy. 

 Our new scientific philosophies must be content to have 

 their pretensions tried by the same tests as all previous 

 philosophies, namely, by criticism. They must be con- 

 tent to be valued by their powers of recommending 

 themselves to the most developed human reason, in- 

 cluding the universal human instincts ; and when they 

 have been thus tried and valued, I venture to predict 

 that none of our new interpretations of the universe, 

 neither the revised Materialism of Democritus resting on 

 the doctrine of atoms and energy, nor the Evolution- 

 Materialism of Haeckel which mingles the germs of life 

 with the atoms, nor the still higher Evolution Philosophy 

 of Herbert Spencer, will give full and final satisfaction. 



