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literature accepted this physiological philosophy as alone 
rational and certain that it is assumed by those who know little 
of physiology that this science of life, as misunderstood and 
misapplied, is the foundation for and introduction to ethical and 
political philosophy. That the science of man in his actual 
nature and in all his capacities is the proper introduction to 
ethics and politics is true, but this is quite another thing than 
that the sense of duty and the recognition of right are the 
products of social interactions; and are resolved into the con- 
ceptions of interest which have been developed by a brutal 
struggle for supremacy, and wrought into the brain by the 
manifold repetitions of force, prompted by the selfish and 
sensual desires which were the only impulses by which man 
was originally moved. 
We must own that it is somewhat surprising that any pro- 
test against such a system which is founded on its practical 
tendencies should be resented so sensitively by a certain and 
a large class of critics as necessarily proceeding from theo- 
logical traditions or prejudices. 
We are more surprised that the learned presidents of 
academies of science are sometimes more anxious to avow 
their adhesion to the doctrine of evolution than to state in 
which of its many senses they understand and accept it. Or 
is it possible that they do not understand that there is a 
theory of development which not only consists with the 
belief in thought and a plan in the history of the universe, 
but requires for its beginnings an intelligent and interpreting 
spirit in man as truly as it does an originating and sustaining 
spirit in God ? Is it possible that they can be so ignorant as 
not to know that evolution does not necessarily mean a blind 
force acting by mathematical laws, which of themselves are 
the products of highly sublimated star-dust, according to a 
law of progression which is itself prescribed and assented to 
by other phenomena somewhat more persistent than the rest, 
and whose attenuated skeleton of materialism is made to seem 
plethoric and buoyant by fine feathers like heredity, develop- 
ment, differentiation, and integration, some of which are not 
yet legitimized by definition or verification, and others of 
which are confessedly borrowed from a philosophy that is as 
mathematical and analytic on the one hand as it is poetic and 
devout on the other? We would also express our surprise 
that these leaders of scientific opinion who happen to have 
the reputation of believing in such spiritual agencies in the 
universe as man and God, should deem it necessary so care- 
fully on scientific occasions to affirm that science concerns 
itself only with the laws of nature and the phenomena which 
