SCIENCE. 



39 



selves — that is, the Supernatural in Nature. " Their 

 theories," the Professor goes on to say, " accordingly took 

 an anthropomorphic form." Further on, in the same 

 address, the same antithesis is still more distinctly ex- 

 pressed thus : " If Mr. Darwin rejects the notion of crea- 

 tive power acting after human fashion, it certainly is not 

 because he is unacquainted with the numberless exquisite 

 adaptations on which the notions of a supernatural ar- 

 tificer is founded." Here we see that the idea of " act- 

 ing after human fashion," is treated as synonymous with 

 the idea of a supernatural artificer ; and the same identi- 

 fication may be observed running throughout the lan- 

 guage which is commonly employed to condemn Anthro- 

 pomorphism and the Supernatural. 



The two propositions, therefore, which are really in- 

 volved in the thorough-going demal of Anthropomorphism 

 and the Supernatural are the following : ist, that there is 

 nothing above or outside of Nature as we see and know 

 it ; 2nd, that in the system of Nature, as thus seen and 

 known, there is no mind having analogies with our own. 



Surely these propositions have been refuted the mo- 

 ment the definition of them has been attained. We 

 have only to observe, in the first place, the strange and 

 anomalous position in which it places Man. As regards 

 at least the higher faculties of his mind, he is allowed no 

 place in Nature, and no fellowship with any other thing 

 or any other Being outside of Nature. He is absolutely 

 alone — out of all relation with the Universe around him, 

 and under a complete delusion when he sees in any part 

 of it any mental homologies with his own intelligence, or 

 with his own will, or with his own affections. Does this 

 absolute solitariness of position as regards the higher at- 

 tributes of Man — does it sound reasonable, or possible, 

 or consistent with some of the most fundamental concep- 

 tions of science ? How, for example, does it accord with 

 that great conception whose truth and sweep become 

 every day more apparent — the Unity of Nature? 



How can it be true that Man is so outside of that 

 unity that the very notion of seeing anything like himselt 

 in it is the greatest of all philosophical heresies ? Does 

 not the very possibility of science consist in the possibil- 

 ity of reducing all natural phenomena to purely mental 

 conceptions, which must be related to the intellect of 

 Man when they are worked out and apprehended by it ? 

 And if, according to the latest theories, Man is himself a 

 Product of Evolution; and is therefore, in every atom ot 

 his body and in every function of his mind, a part and a 

 child of Nature, is it not in the highest degree illogical so 

 to sepaiate him from it as to condemn him for seeing in 

 it some image of himself? If he is its product and its 

 child, is it not ceitain that he is right when he sees and 

 feels the indissoluble bonds of unity which unite him to 

 the great system of things in which he lives? 



This fundamental inconsistency in the Agnostic phil- 

 osophy becomes all the more remarkable when we find 

 that the very men who tell us we are not one with any- 

 thing above us, are the same who insist that we are one 

 with everything beneath us. Whatever there is in us or 

 about us which is purely animal we may see everywhere ; 

 but whatever there is in us purely intellectual and moral, 

 we delude ourselves if we think we see it anywhere. 

 There are abundant homologies between our bodies and 

 the bodies of the beasts, but there are no homologies 

 between our minds and any Mind which lives or mani- 

 fests itself in Nature. Our livers and our lungs, our 

 vertebras and our nervous systems, are identical in origin 

 and in function with those of the living creatures round 

 us ; but there is nothing in Nature or above it which cor- 

 responds to our forethought, or design, or purpose — to 

 our love of the good or our admiration of the beautiful 

 — to our indignatton with the wicked, or to our pity for 

 the suffering and the fallen. I venture to think that no 

 system of philosophy that has ever been taught on earth 

 lies under such a weight of antecedent improbability ; 

 and this improbability increases in direct propoition to 



the success of science in tracing the Unity of Nature, 

 and in[showing step by step how its laws and their results 

 can be brought more and more into direct relation with 

 the Mind and intellect of Man. 



Let us test this philosophy from another point of view, 

 and see how far it is consistent with our advancing knowl- 

 edge of those combinations of natural force by which 

 I the system cf the physical Universe appears to be sus- 

 tained. 



We may often see in the writings of our great physical 

 teachers ot the present day reference made to a cele- 

 brated phrase of the old and abandoned school of Aris- 

 totelian physics — a phrase invented by that old school to 

 express a familiar fact — that it is extremely difficult, if 

 not absolutely impossible, to produce a perfect vacuum — 

 that is to say, a space which shall be absolutely empty. 

 The phase was this : "Nature abhors a vacuum." It is 

 now continually held up as a perfect example and type of 

 the habit of thought which vitiates all true physical rea- 

 soning. Now let us observe what this error is. As a 

 forcible and picturesque way of expressing a physical 

 truth — that the difficulty of producing a vacuum is ex- 

 treme, that Nature sets, as it were, her face against her 

 doing it — the phrafe is a good one, and conveys an ex- 

 cellent idea of the general fact. Sir W. Grove says of it, 

 that it is an " aphorism, which, though caviled at and 

 ridiculed by the self-sufficiency of some modern philoso- 

 phers, contains in a terse though somewhat metaphorical 

 form the expression of a comprehensive truth." But 

 there is this error in the phrase (if indeed it was or ever 

 could be literally understood) — that it gives for the gene- 

 ral fact a wrong cause, inasmuch as it ascribes to the 

 material and inanimate forces of Nature, whose simple 

 pressures are concerned in the result, certain dispositions 

 that are known to us as affections of Mind alone. In 

 short, it ascribes to the mere elementary forces of Matter 

 — not to a living agency using these as tools, but to mere 

 material force — the attributes of Mind. 



Now it is well worthy of remark, that, so far as this 

 error is concerned, the language of physical science is 

 full of it — steeped in it ; and that in this sense it is 

 chargeable with a kind of anthropomorphism which is 

 really open to the gravest objection. To see Mind in 

 Nature, or, according as Nature may be defined, to see 

 Mind outside of Nature, acknowledging it to be Mind, 

 and treating it as such — this is one thing — and this is 

 the true and legitimate anthropomorphism which some 

 physicists denounce. But to see Mind in material forces 

 alone, and to ascribe its attributes to them — this is equally 

 anthropomorphism, but a form of it which is indeed open 

 to all the objections they express. This, nevertheless, is 

 the anthropomorphism which gives habitually its color- 

 ing to their thoughts and its spirit to their language. 



Let me explain what I mean by some examples. I 

 will take, first, the theory of development, or the deriva- 

 tive hypothesis, which, as applied to the history of ani- 

 mal life, is now accepted by a large number of scientific 

 men, if not as certainly true, at least as an hypoth- 

 esis which comes nearer than any other to the 

 truth. Whether that theory be true or not, it is a 

 theory saturated throughout with the ideas of 

 utility and fitness, and of adaptation, as the governing 

 principles and causes of the harmony of Nature. Its 

 central conception is, that in the history of organic life 

 changes have somehow always come about exactly in 

 proportion as the need of them arose. But how is it that 

 the laws of growth are so correlated with utility tl.^t 

 they should in this manner work together ? Why should 

 varied and increasing utility operate in the requisite di- 

 rection of varied and increasing developments? The 

 connection is not one of logical necessity. Not only can we 

 conceive it otherwise, but we know it is otherwise beyond 

 certain bounds and limits. It is not an universal law 

 that organic growths arise in proportion to all needs, or 

 are strengthened by all exertion. It is a law prevailing 



