interest than Aristotle's comment on the statements of the early philosophers in their search for a principle.

'Surely it is not likely that fire or earth or any such element should be the reason why things manifest goodness and beauty both in their being and in their coming to be, or that those thinkers should have supposed it was, nor again could it be right to ascribe so great a matter to spontaneity and luck.''

Whatever view we take as to the religious meaning of the early Greek philosophers, it is obvious that the daring Monism which at one bound was launched upon philosophy by Greek thought was an excellent discipline for the Greek religious imagination in its progress towards that Monotheism which the Hebrew could better understand through the conception of moral law. It is to the 'Logos' of Heraclitus that most interest has been given by theology, on account of the special place the Greek idea is thought to have held in the development of Christian doctrine. Dr. Adam takes the view according to which the conception in Heraclitus is the first stage in the evolution of thought which culminates in the opening of St. John's Gospel. Some recent theological criticism is, however, at variance with this interpretation.

Dr. Purves, in the article on 'Logos' in Dr. Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible, assigns to the expression as used in St. John's Gospel the special meaning of word' as manifestation, rather than the Greek use of it as 'reason.' Both Dr. Strong (s.v. John the Apostle) and Dr. Reynolds (s.v. St. John's Gospel), in the same Dictionary, also find a difficulty in connecting the Logos of St. John with the Logos of Greek thought. With the Greeks 'the word Logos took on more and more the associations of universality, and lost more and more those of the individual thing or person. . . . With the Hebrews the Word was the emissary and representative of God.'2

From the point of view of the present article the main

› Metaphysics, A. III. (trans. J. A. Smith and W. D. Ross).

2 Dictionary of the Bible, note to Article on John the Apostle,' by T. B. Strong.

question is whether the Logos of Heraclitus is to be conceived as divine for Greek reflexion. There is a great temptation to regard Heraclitus as having conceived his ruling principle spiritually; for he more than any other of his predecessors seems to have had an individuality of thought which remains of an independent and abiding interest not absorbed into the academic philosophy. Nor need the fact that his Logos is embodied as or transmuted into Fire be a stumbling-block. The difficulty here in understanding Greek thought in its gradual advance towards a clear conception of the spiritual may arise out of its very simplicity. It is not wise, however, to dogmatize on this point, and the obscurity in which the Ephesian shrouded his utterances may have had its profoundest cause neither merely in scorn of men nor only in belief in his own prophetic mission, but also in the failure to satisfy himself upon the greatest question.

ness.

When we come to Plato's idea of Good the problem is not, as in the case of the earlier thinkers, that we know too little, but that we know too much; for it is Plato's statements about the idea which make it difficult to conceive of it steadily as the object of the religious consciousThe idea of Good is that which everyone really pursues, erringly called by some pleasure, by others knowledge; it is an object of thought which can only be apprehended by the keenest minds after a severe study of all the sciences, or again the most universal idea through sharing in which all things ultimately have such reality as they possess. To modern thought barriers hard to break down may seem to separate such a conception from that of Deity, the God and Father of all. But, as earlier suggested, it would be unhistorical to assume that such barriers certainly existed for Greek speculation.

In favour of the view, to which Jowett, Caird, and other modern thinkers incline, and which is accepted by Dr. Adam,' is that Platonic enthusiasm for the aim and method of reason which seems so closely akin to the loftiest religious enthusiasm of the saint. And finally it might be argued 1 See especially Lecture XXII. p. 446 sq.

410 Greek Contribution to Spiritual Progress.

July

that, granted the possibility of an intuition of the Good as conceived by Plato, this intuition must be identical with the consciousness of God. Whatever the ladders up which thought has had to climb as a preliminary, the apprehension ultimately reached, with all its dazzling effects made endurable by previous discipline, with its power to illuminate and irradiate all that was previously dark, and 'there plant eyes,' its result in perfecting the moral character, cannot be less than that of the Divine Being in the mind of the philosopher who conceives it.

The line of thought which has been indicated might to some extent be applied to Plato's treatment of the other greatest question of religious thought. Mr. Archer Hind, who conceives of Plato as a metaphysician first and foremost, holds that, although Plato himself, at the period of the composition of the Phaedo, believed in the continued individual existence of the soul, the arguments in the Phaedo only prove the eternity of soul as such, not of the individual soul. According to the view which has been put forward here, Plato's metaphysical standpoint cannot be fully understood if we forget for a moment what must be called his religious spirit. On this account he seems to be first among philosophers, not excepting Spinoza, in his interest for the student of religions. What we should venture to add to Mr. Archer Hind's interpretation of the Phaedo is, that considerations of the different conception of the Universal in ancient philosophy, conditioning the real meaning of Plato's ideal theory, make it possible for us to think that for Plato at least individual immortality is metaphysically proved in the Phaedo. The scope of this article does not, however, permit of further development of this point. But it may be added that amongst the examples set by ancient thinkers the effort to follow which might be salutary at the present time is courage in metaphysical inquiry, absence of doubt as to its value for the highest interests.

HILDA D. OAKELEY.

ART. VII. DARWIN AND MODERN THOUGHT.

1. The Foundations of the Origin of Species. A sketch written in 1842. By CHARLES DARWIN. Edited by

his son, FRANCIS DARWIN, F.R.S. (Cambridge: at the University Press. 1909.)

2. The Psychological Review. 'Darwin Number.' (Baltimore Review Publishing Co. 1909.)

3. Development and Evolution. By JAMES MARK BALDWIN. (London: Macmillan & Co. 1902.)

4. Religion and Science. By P. N. WAGGETT, M.A., of the Society of St. John the Evangelist. (London: Longmans, Green, & Co.

And many other Works.

1904.)

ON July 1, 1908, the Linnean Society of London celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the meeting at which the doctrine of natural selection was first laid before the scientific world by the two epoch-making papers of Wallace and Darwin. In February last the centenary of Darwin's birth was commemorated at Oxford by a gathering at which many members of his family were present; and finally, in June of the present year, Darwin's own University of Cambridge has signalized the hundredth anniversary of the birth of her great alumnus, and the fiftieth anniversary of the publication of his most famous work, by a series of academic and social functions which will long live in the memory of those who were privileged to take part in them. From all regions of the civilized world, from the United Kingdom, its Colonies and Dependencies, from every European country, from the United States and from Japan, men of science assembled to do honour to the memory of Charles Darwin, and to acknowledge the debt owed to his inspiration and example by every department of intellectual activity. The spectacle was a striking one; not the less so that of all the representatives of science present, each distinguished in his own line, there was probably not one whose attitude with regard to the question of evolution would be precisely the same as Darwin's. Nevertheless, all were agreed that to Darwin is

due the great revolution which, beginning in the sphere of biology, has carried its influence into almost every region of thought, and has introduced such changes into our conceptions of natural phenomena that the science of the present day seems to be divided by a well-nigh impassable gap from the science of half a century ago.

In view of the great interest which these anniversaries have been the means of awakening, it may be not unprofitable to inquire into the reasons for this outburst of enthusiasm in favour of a man whose work is admitted to be shewing already some signs of age and imperfection. Justified we fully believe the feeling to be, and in the following pages we shall endeavour to shew that there is sufficient cause for the honour with which the name of Darwin has lately been received by the representatives of science from all parts of the world.

1

Be it remarked at the outset that Darwin is not correctly described as the founder or originator of the doctrine of evolution. In a former number of this REVIEW the steps were traced by which the idea of organic evolution, not unfamiliar to the philosophers of Greece and accepted almost as a matter of course by Christian philosophers of the Middle Ages, became overshadowed by the conception of specific immutability under the influence of such naturalists as Ray and Willughby; this latter conception finally taking rank as a scientific dogma in the works of Linnaeus and Cuvier. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, with others, maintained, more or less consciously, an earlier tradition. In advocating, as they did, the mutability of species, they ran counter to the bulk of opinion then generally current; the theologians mostly, perhaps universally, ranging themselves on the side of the popular scientific doctrine of the day. But the views of the transformists, though temporarily obscured, never entirely died out, and when Charles Darwin, in the year 1837, opened his first note-book for facts in relation to the origin of species, he was not so much laying the foundations of a new structure