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that the Scientific Spirit in its pure form is influencing many 
minds in this direction. As the result, we may reasonably expect 
that, while some superstitions will perish, some old ideas be greatly 
modified, and some new notions be exploded, there will issue in 
due course a fairer form of truth; and also, if men will but 
control their passions, and the more blessed influences of religion 
should find a true welcome in heart and home, more stable and 
beautiful social order. But what we have to deprecate, and what, 
I think, the friends of true Science may well set their face 
against, is the tendency in some quarters so to popularize in 
glowing terms the independence proper to scientific research as 
to virtually feed a temper in many uneducated restless men, and 
also in a few educated restless men, whose motive of action is not 
Science, not Truth, but, according to the tenor of their own words, 
the getting rid of restraints because they are restraints — the 
suicidal attempt to establish Liberty by the destruction of Liberty. 
I am not referring to party politics, but to that tendency, more 
prevalent on the Continent than in England, to create what all 
history and philosophy shows to be an impossible order of things. 
In our own land the bastard spirit of independence, sheltering 
itself under the name of Science, is, as we know, too apt to mar 
the excellence of individual, and the amenities of social life, by 
giving rise to a cynical temper, and a disparaging treatment of 
men and things. The true Scientific Spirit will ever be on the 
side of the oppressed, inasmuch as it goes in for truth alone, and 
will, by its silent action on leaders of men, further the readjust- 
ment of social and political relations ; but it is too sacred a thing 
to be identified with recklessness of thought, and speech, and 
action. 
And here I would interject a remark on an incidental effect 
which may unconsciously be produced on an important class of 
human feelings and agencies by combining scientific doctrines 
with maxims of conduct. It is well known that, according to the 
doctrine of Natural Selection, the law of Nature is, that the 
weakest go to the wall. The tendency of the whole course of 
things is to force out of existence the inferior forms of life, and 
so in the long succession of ages secure stronger and more stable 
types of life. Nature seems to be working up to an ideal per- 
fection, and to realize this the inferior races cannot but succumb. 
I do not refer to this as a disputed view. I here, simply for 
