6 The Scojte and Prlnciiyles 



thougli of tliis we are not convinced ; Lut wliy is it neces- 

 sary to announce the fact ? Any one who traces his ances- 

 try back far enough, will probably discover relationships of 

 which he will not be particularly proud — but he does not 

 therefore find it necessary to bruit the matter abroad, so to 

 speak, — to publish it upon the housetops. Truth is a 

 good thing, indeed, but there are times when silence is 

 golden and speech is leaden — when discretion in speech is 

 the better part of intellectual valor. What moral or relig- 

 ious end can possibly be attained by the public proclama- 

 tion of a belief in Evolution ? Such are the comments, no 

 doubt, of some of the self-constituted critics of the work 

 of this Association. Another sort of criticism of certain 

 phases of evolutionary thought is often heard from those 

 who are quite ready to declare themselves converts to the 

 doctrine in its purely physical and biological aspects : Evo- 

 lution is only a method, these critics declare ; it is not a 

 philosophy, it is not a religion ; — the great problems of 

 ethics, of metaphysics, of life, what have these to do with 

 the nebular hypothesis, the origin of species by natural se- 

 lection, or the descent of man from lower forms of life ? 



It should be sufficient, perhaps, to remind intelligent 

 people that if evolution is <•' only a method," it is, so far as 

 we are able to discover, a universul method, penetrating 

 into all the phenomenal activities of nature ; explaining 

 not only the processes whereby suns aud workls have come 

 into being, and the varied and bountiful forms of life have 

 successively appeared lipon the earth, but also how the sev- 

 eral faculties of the mind have grown out of the simplest 

 form of conscious a})prehension, how the special senses 

 have been developed, how individuals have been impelled 

 to combine, forming the complex organizations into which 

 our civilized societies are divided, how governmental forms 

 have evolved and the institutions of ndigion have come into 

 being — how religion itself, indeed, an(l that sense of ob- 

 ligation which constitutes the foundation of man's moral 

 nature, Iiave arisen by processes entirely orderly and nat- 

 ural, out of the interaction between (lertain ])riniitive 

 instincts and tendencies of the human mind, and the (Uivi- 

 roning conditions under which they have found exi)ression. 



If we are right in assuming, with Spencer :ni(l iMske and 

 other great leaders in tliis new movement of thought, 

 that evolution is tlnis practically illimitable in its range 



