mie 
Jan. 5, 1872.] [Price. 
SOME PHASES OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY. 
By Exi K. PRICE. 
(Read before the American Philosophie Society, January 5th, 1872.) 
“‘T am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.’”’ So Job was 
constrained to say in the hour of his great afflictions : so others now say 
induced only by speculative philosophy. 
The tendency of much of the modern natural and physical philosophy 
is to degrade our humanity, and to dispense with the belief of a Creator. 
Delvers in a special field are not content to exhibit what they find for the 
use of those who are farther advanced and prepared to take a broader 
survey from a more elevated height; but they theorize and make their 
inductions from facts too few and inadequate for the conclusions drawn. 
The result cannot be truth, but error. Theories so built are raised to be 
quickly thrown down. They are the least fit to survive in the struggles 
of science. 
All carefully observed and true facts philosophy must receive and 
register for her legitimate uses. But if philosophers be not certain of the 
truth of facts, and have not all that are requisite for truthful conclusions, 
they violate the fundamental canon of philosophizing : they necessarily 
land in error, and bring reproach and ridicule upon philosophers and 
philosophy. Much labor and expense of printing are wasted, while stu- 
dents are misled, science is obstructed, and it is made necessary for the 
lovers of truth in the next to correct the errors of this generation. 
I. The first subject to which I would now ask your attention is that of 
Spontaneous Generation. Dr. Erasmus Darwin had, at the close of the 
last century, ascribed to Nature the power of spontaneous generation ; 
and thus concludes : 
‘“‘ Hence, without parent, by spontaneous birth, 
Rise the first specs of animated earth ; 
From Nature’s womb the plant or insect swims, 
And buds or breathes, with microscopic limbs.” 
[The Temple of Nature}. 
‘Organic life beneath the shoreless waves 
Was born, and nurs’d in Ocean’s pearly caves.” —[ Ibid]. 
But he had the imagination of the poet; and his imagination some- 
times assumed his facts. 
There is a present effort to go a step further, and prove that life can 
be produced by man from matter, without propagation from other life ; 
and if you add to this the theory of evolution, by which all complicated 
life is derived from first simple forms, we have two theories, which, taken 
together, will account for all life, without a Creator. There are, however, 
certain things, like perpetual motion, so contrary to nature, as not to be 
credible, The fact of spontaneous generation has not yet been satisfac- 
A. P. S.—VOL. XII—2K. 
