SEPTEMBER 1, 1899. ] 
If one of the lessons of history is that dogma- 
tism is the greatest foe of scientific progress, 
another lesson is that nothing has done more 
than reflection upon the meaning of nature to 
make natural knowledge definite and distinct, 
to strip it of all side-issues and irrelevant com- 
plications, and to put it into the form that com- 
mands assent; but the student must remember 
that the search for purpose in nature has been 
good for science only so far as it has been 
earnest and fearless, and, above all, single- 
minded; for very slight acquaintance with 
literature is enough to show that, among the 
motives of many writers upon natural theology, 
we often find evidence of a desire, conscious or 
unconscious, to find in nature support for some 
system of dogmatic theology rather than a 
basis for natural theology. 
That the growth of natural knowledge has 
been uninterrupted and irresistible is due, in 
no small measure, to the desire which most of 
us feel to find out, if possible, what natural 
knowledge means. There are some, no doubt, 
who find in this the teleological argument, and 
see no reason for further search. If effort to 
find meaning in nature has clarified our concrete 
knowledge the advantage we have already 
found in natural knowledge may be its meaning. 
Ward, as I understand him, does not share 
this opinion; for unless the meaning of knowl- 
edge is the advantage we are yet to find in it, 
as distinct from that which we have already 
found, he assumes that there canbe no evidence 
of intention in nature, for he is one of those 
who hold, with Satan in the Book of Job, that 
no one can be expected to serve God for naught. 
He tells us—II., 251— that, unless natural law 
is ‘necessary,’ the outlook is gloomy ; for while 
the ‘conception of Nature asa system of laws 
is hypothetical’ the hypothesis is ‘necessary’ 
to our welfare, because ‘knowledge of these 
laws is an indispensable means to that subjuga- 
tion and control of nature upon which human 
welfare and advance in large measure depend.’ 
The conception of nature as an ordered whole 
is therefore ‘necessary,’ since without it there 
could be no experience, and therefore no life, 
since ‘ experience is life.’—II., 231. 
If I understand the naturalist and may be 
permitted to speak for him, he also holds the 
SCIENCE. 289 
necessity of natural law to be necessary for our 
welfare as rational beings, although he is dis- 
posed to ask whether expediency may not be a 
better word than necessity. Food and drink . 
are necessary to our welfare in this sense of the 
word, although it by no means follows that we 
are to have food and drink, for men have died 
of starvation, and we fail to find in nature any 
assurance that we may not all so die, for the 
fact that food and drink are necessary—that is, 
to be desired—is no evidence that we are to 
have them. 
The naturalist agrees with Ward that our 
conception of the order of nature is not abso- 
lute, but contingent or relative, but he is not 
prepared to assert that it isa hypothesis ; for a 
hypothesis is a mental product, and he does not 
know whether the contingency is mental or 
organic ; whether—to use the language of the 
idealist—it is a sign, or the significance of a sign ; 
whether it is a part of our actual experience 
or a part of that ‘possible experience,’ which, 
we are told, is necessary in order that there 
may be actual experience. 
At any rate the naturalist is quite ready to 
admit that our conception of nature as rational 
order isa part of our constitution as rational 
beings. Using the language of his own little 
shop, he holds that it isa part of us, ‘‘as Nature 
has made us,’’ although he admits that nature 
cannot ‘make’ anything, since nature is neither 
-more nor less than that which is. 
Ward tells us that the conception of natural 
law as necessary to our welfare is teleological, 
because our rational nature is due to the effi- 
ciency of a ‘teleological factor,’ or Lamarckian 
principle in the origin of species—Lecture X : 
that it is teleological because man has made 
himself, or, at the least, has had an efficient and 
intelligent part in making himself. 
The naturalist, like the idealist, admits hu- 
man agency, and tries to find out in what 
sense he is an agent, just as the idealist, 
while admitting a world of things, tries to find 
out in what its reality consists. To assert that 
man has made, or helped to make, himself is 
not to discover, but to assume, evidence of pur- 
pose in human nature. If such language is 
permissible it is hard to see why is is not also 
permissible to assert that nature has made men, 
