720 KANSAS CITY REVIEW OF SCIENCE. 



No scientific man questions the reign of law in organic nature any more than 

 in mathematics or physics, hence the two questions for teachers and students of 

 science to consider are what reahy is law, and whence the law. These being 

 definitely settled, the field is clear and the goal within certain reach. 



Now, again admitting what has not been distinctly proven, that the laws gov- 

 erning development of species have been discovered, let us ask what will be the 

 result upon young investigators when they are taught by their -trusted instructors 

 that these laws are self-evolved, self-existent and self-operative ? That they be- 

 gan just after chaos, have been operating inflexibly ever since, and will continue 

 to rule irresistibly, unchangeably and relentlessly until the end of time ? What 

 must be the necessary, effect of the knowledge or the credulous belief in the ex- 

 istence and enforcement of such unbending, rigorous, cast-iron laws ? As Schmid 

 puts it, he (the investigator) sees " all the rich treasures of human life and history 

 become a result of blindly acting forces; the history of the world, ethics and all 

 spiritual sciences are, in the progress of perception, dissolved into physiology, 

 and physiology into chemistry, physics and mechanism." Can a student see any- 

 thing to hope for such, under rigid, cramped and inelastic conditions? Will it 

 not appear to him useless to investigate, to try to get at the causes and effects of 

 the phenomena he perceives around him ? 



If these assumed laws of the atheistic evolutionist actually are laws, with no 

 elasticity and with no superior to control or modify them, then all thought neces- 

 sarily turns back upon itself, and the fatalism of Buddha is the result. All things, 

 past, present and future, are immovably and unchangeably fixed. Law rules; 

 human effort and skill and energy avail nothing. Development goes steadily, ir- 

 resistibly, ruthlessly onward. Active and powerful, but lifeless and soulless, it 

 tends neither upward nor downward, neither to the right nor to the left. On- 

 ward it goes, without ultimate object or aim; ponderously crushing out senti- 

 ment, reverence, love, faith, hope. It seems to me that this is the irresistible 

 logic of atheistic evolution, and that the young man who accepts it as his guide 

 in physical or philosophic investigation leaves hope behind. He sees everything 

 in nature's processes blocked out for him in advance. He has no worthy object 

 in view for which to strive; he mounts the machine, gets into the ruts of " the 

 survival of the fittest" and "natural selection;" he rides between walls of ada- 

 mant, too dense for penetration and too high to allow any light to fall upon from 

 above. Even those by-paths which open dimly along his course he is forbidden 

 to explore. Law rules; its narrow limitations allow of no divergences or digres- 

 sions. The machine carries him on, he knows not where, overpowering him with 

 its noise and force, until he becomes part and parcel of it; a mere machine him- 

 self, plodding in his methods, cramped in his ideas and routine in his practice. 

 The machine is self evolved, self-regulated, inexorable law, having neither intelli- 

 gent beginning, intelligent aim nor intelligent conclusion, evolved by chance 

 from chaos, developed without object or design and closing in the obscurity in 

 which it began. It is the stultification of intellect to separate this atheistic con- 



