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these laws explain, and never care to inquire whether spirit is 
not as truly an agent in nature as matter, and whether, both 
as created and creator, it may not determine phenomena 
without violating law and order in the universe. We know 
that theologians and metaphysicians are foolishly sensitive 
and intermeddling, and that they are alarmed by uncommon 
phrases, but we see no reason why, because a man is a 
scientist, he should have so many negative protests for theistic 
theologians, and so few for atheistic materialists, who in their 
way are equally blind and romantic in their fondness for 
high-sounding phraseology. 
But what surprises us most of all, is that the logic of the 
system itself has not oftener been scrutinized and more 
decidedly rejected by scientists. Surely there is a difference 
between vague and distant affinities and significant likenesses, 
between analogies that compel and so-called analogies that 
exclude conviction. It would seem that science ought to be 
as sensitive to unlikeness in phenomena as to likeness, and 
more than all should be foremost to declare that a metaphysics 
which destroys itself by its own logic, and every science 
which it ought to sustain and account for, ought by common 
consent to be relegated at once to the limbo of the many 
speculations which have died by their own hands. 
P.S. — The preceding meditation, if it has served no other 
purpose, may have made conspicuous the difficulty of treating 
in a popular manner a subject, the fundamental conceptions 
of which are liable to vagueness of use and diversity of inter- 
pretation. In view of this liability, the writer subjoins a 
brief sketch of the history of the terms evolution and de- 
velopment in modern science, which, since writing the above, 
he finds in R. Euckens^ Geschiclite und Kritik der Grundbe- 
griffe der Gegenwart, Leipzig, 1878. 
Exjplicatio first appears interchangeably with evolutio in 
Nicolas of Cusa, but used in a real and not simply a logical 
application. Kepler applies it to the production of thoughts 
as well as things. Development — Germ., Entwickelung , in 
the modern application or proximately — is used occasionally 
by Kant in his early writings. Through Herder, with whom 
it took the modern definite meaning, and was a favourite 
word, and Tetius, it was adopted into general use, and has 
now become almost trite. The term development, strictly 
construed, did not at first correspond to the modern accepta- 
tion. Originally it supposed an outfit of properties and 
powers, which are unfolded in process of time. The modern 
use supposes the fitting out or providing the subject with 
