1880. ] The Critics of Evolution. 415 
the production of beneficent contrivances,” and that it “is a deep- 
built scheme working towards goodness and happiness.” “ Spen- 
cer calls upon us to admit the inventing machine of evolution, a 
‘machine’ which is the most comprehensive of all machines, be- 
cause it is ever engaged in inventing beneficial inventions ad infini- 
tum.’ “ We must accept the philosophy,” says Jevons, “if it be 
true, and for my part I do so without reluctance.” “ According 
to Spencer,” continues this admirable critic, “we are the latest 
manifestation of an all-prevailing tendency towards the good, the 
happy, and that we are no lump of protoplasm but the creature 
of a Creator.” — Contemporary Review, Nov., 1879. Let it be 
remembered that as the sagacious Dr. McCosh expresses it, 
‘ “Herbert Spencer is to a large extent the author and is certainly 
the organizer and the embodiment, personification and expression 
of development.” —Princeton Review. “Theologians have ever been 
free in the application of damnatory expletives to scientific ideas 
which do not conform to their standard,” but it is very pleasant 
to turn from denunciation and anathema to the language of Tke 
Nonconformist of November 5th, a journal of the English ortho- 
dox dissenters, and there read the following opinion of Spencer’s 
“Data of Ethics,” his last production, and the culmination of his 
system of philosophy. Speaking of the glimpses it affords 
into the future which its author anticipates, Ze Nonconformist 
remarks, “No loftier view, we venture to say, was ever enter- 
tained.” “ The optimism of Mr. Herbert Spencer is as pure as 
that of the most spiritual seers of the past, and it involves as 
radical a change in human nature as that demanded by the New 
Testament. It is, in his own words, ‘a rationalized version of its 
ethical principles. The fact that they are Christian in their 
€ssence is rather a hindrance to their acceptance, since conven- 
tional Christianity practically repudiates the ideal morality of its 
founder.” 
We never expected to live to see the name of Herbert Spencer, 
the embodiment, personification and expression of development | 
“received with applause in a great religious convention of ortho- 
dox people, but if the report of the London Times of October 
loth can be trusted, this extraordinary phenomenon has actually 
occurred! In that convention the Rev. Prof. Pritchard gave an 
eloquent and powerful address on “The Religious Benefits from 
Recent Scientific Research,” in which the doctrine of evolution 
