1 88 Spiritual Evolution of Society 



our churches ; many may have professed no religious 

 belief whatever, but consciously or unconsciously the 

 influence of the teachings of the New Testament had 

 permeated their minds. This is a striking demonstra- 

 tion of the spiritual evolution at present in process, and 

 of its method of amelioration of society, and of promo- 

 tion of humanity step by step to a higher and noble 

 standard of being. 



Before leaving this subject, it is essential that we 

 should deal with the mechanist philosophers, repre- 

 sented by Haeckel in Germany and Lankester in 

 England. Matter and energy, according to them, 

 fulfil the entire requirements of the Universe, and 

 physics and chemistry explain the working of the 

 whole machine, and this applies to the organic as 

 well as the inorganic world. A volume has just ap- 

 peared by Mr. Hugh S. R. Elliot, entitled " Modern 

 Science and the Illusions of Professor Bergson," and is 

 prefaced by Sir Ray Lankester. As this book con- 

 tains a very categorical and emphatic statement of 

 the position of this school of thought, it may not be 

 unprofitable to examine its contents for a little. 

 Lankester writes : " As to what, if anything, is out- 

 side or behind this mechanism of Nature, as to whence 

 or how it came about, or whither it is going, as to what 

 it and what our consciousness of it really are, and why 

 it is, and why we are here, modern science has no 

 answer. . . . One may regard the utmost possibilities 

 of the result of human knowledge as a bracket, and 

 place outside that bracket the factor x to represent 

 those unknown and unknowable possibilities which the 

 imagination of man is never wearied of suggesting. 

 The factor is the plaything of the metaphysician. Its 

 existence is vehemently denied by the strict materialist, 

 and as vehemently asserted by the founders of theologi- 

 cal creeds and so-called metaphysical systems. The 



