1881] Editors’ Table. 725 
selection of condition, he finds himself a spiritual being with an 
immortal soul.” This statement of the evolution theory, which, 
for intelligence, matches the above quoted definition of the soul, 
was, so far as we are told to the contrary, received with ap- . 
plause (clapping and stamping is frowned down at the school 
as materialistic) of the silent sort, as befits a band of Hegel- 
ians and Super-platonists. It is currently reported, though the 
newspapers don’t even whisper the idea, that after adjournment 
each evening the soul of each member of the school “retires into 
the occiput,” where it lies in a trance for the night, contemplating 
the “ Zhingness of the Here.’ Compare these dark orphic sayings 
and these aspirations of the souls of the Concord Philosophers 
with the materialistic methods of research of the anatomist or 
biologist or physicist, and who wouldn’t be a Hegelian and 
Super-platonist ! 
Dr. Jones, full of anti-“ materialistic” ardor, says in another 
place, “ There are no natural forces; matter is inert; the poten- 
cies of nature are in spirit, not in matter.’ Another speaker 
remarked that “ materialists are studying the lower forms of men, 
and avoid the higher civilization.” The venerable Mr. Alcott, 
is brought face to face with inscrutable problems. Few o them 
are thoroughgoing materialists as such. The great lesson of sci- 
€nce is to teach us to suspend our judgment and to wait for more 
light, even if the solution of many problems has to be deferred 
for generations. Least of all can ultimate questions be solved by 
refrains from groundless generalizations on ultimate problems, 
which he may justly claim that the human mind is no better fitted 
for solving now than in the days of Plato and Aristotle. Is not 
