unfolded his wings, sailed beyond the clouds, and gazed into the Light unapproachable and Glory ineffable.

We need to understand the difference between the eternal truths of God and the temporal forms in which they are enshrined. "We have this treasure in earthen vessels." The forms may partake of the limitations and the imperfections of time and space. They may even be inadequate vessels of the infinite and the eternal truth. They are the veils through which the celestial light breaks forth into the soul of man. These forms may perish; heaven and earth may pass away; but my word shall not pass away.

He

Who, then, may hear the voice of God in the sacred Scriptures? Not the critic, not the archæologist, not the linguist, not the theologian. These have their mission. The child of God who cries, in the spirit of adoption, "Abba, Father," will receive from the page of Holy Writ the answer: "Behold, My Son!" The Christ who walked with the disciples to Emmaus and opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, must walk with us and open our minds. Their hearts burned within their bosoms as He talked with them on the way. expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. No one can expound the Christ in Scriptures for us but the Christ in us. He may not now walk with us, but He abides in us. As His life takes possession of the mind and heart, will the eye see and the ear hear the wondrous glory of His law. In thy light alone shall we see light. The Old and New Testaments can be no more than a dreary, barren waste for the Christless soul; but they are a luxurious Eden, fragrant with the blossom of the tree of life for the Christ-like soul. The depth of God's Word can only be reached when we are like God. Then shall we see Him as He is. As the Christ-life fills and transforms humanity in the progress of the ages, the Scriptures will yield their hidden mysteries until they are none other than the voice of God and the gate of Heaven. This we believe to be the end of history-consummation of time-to know God. "And this is life eternal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and Him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ."

V.

THE INFLUENCE OF THE NATURAL SCIENCES ON
THE INTELLECTUAL LIFE OF THE AGE.

(THIRD PAPER.)

BY RICHARD C. SCHIEDT, PH.D.

The preceding papers will show to the careful reader that hitherto I have strenuously avoided even a reference to mere speculative assumptions, with which the scientific market is at present overcrowded. Their influence is decidedly detrimental to intellectual progress. They are peculiar to those investigators who do not possess the capacity for waiting, who shake the tree of knowledge and, with childlike curiosity, pull down the branches before the fruit is ripe. This is especially the case in reference to the highest problems of life, because they touch the deepest interest of man and are universally discussed. But the aim of the exact sciences is the study of the mechanism of things and not that of their transcendental causes, of the how and what and not of the wherefore; the unknowable belongs to metaphysics and to religion, the unknown to science. The sciences of law or nature are based upon the relation of cause and effect, their deductions are mechanical, but occurring with constant regularity they lead to reflection upon such regularity, so that the logical thinking within us must have its origin in the never-changing order of events without us; thus the necessity of natural phenomena becomes our very first and real schoolmaster in the art of thinking. The sciences of events or history on the other hand, are based upon the causal relation of end and means. Nature is the realm of law; history the realm of purpose. The causality of the latter sciences is therefore neither purely mechanical nor strictly logical, but to a high degree teleological. The history of humanity represents the highest degree of teleology; the science dealing

with it shows us the end and aim of the human race and offers the means, teleologically tested, which may lead us to this highest degree under the most perfect guidance. True it is that the freedom of human action upon the highest plane is likewise corditioned by a certain necessity, but it is by no means the neces sity of natural law in the commonly accepted sense of the term: the latter is only the means to obtain certain ends. The tendency of modern times to identify natural law with moral law has led to that tragic conflict between science and religion which has wrought so much havoc in human society. Its first manifestations are found in Laplace's introduction to his “Théorie analytique des probabilités," in which the author maintains that all events, even the most trivial ones, are subject to the great laws of nature and are just as necessary as the movements of the planetary system. There is neither chance nor free will, according to him, and if we, nevertheless, speak of a chance we do so because we do not know the conditions which necessitated that which we call chance. This view is in our day represented by the monists, chief among whom stands Professor Haeckel. Chances, of course, may occur, subject to a law of necessity, the conditions of which we do not know, as is sufficiently illustrated by the throwing of dice. It is likewise justifiable to apply the rules of probability to the statistics of all human relations and conditions, although we deal here with phenomena which are by no means the result of external necessity, but when Laplace finds the proba. bility of even the best authenticated historical events as extremely small, he makes himself guilty of a violation of the historic law to which the mathematical concept of probability cannot be applied.

Thus we find at the beginning of the twentieth century a similar condition in the world of thought as existed at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Then the metaphysicians attempted to construct the laws of being on the basis of a bundle of assumptions, to-day some of the leading scientists boast of having established the moral laws on the basis of the omnipotent natural law. Both then and now the term evolution or development furnishes the keynote of the proof and covers a multitude

of sins, for there is no word more misunderstood and abused than the word evolution. A hundred years ago the idea of development had a purely theological significance. Herder's book on the philosophy of history furnishes sufficient proof for it. A careful examination of his reasoning shows that there is only similarity in the external forms of his terminology but not in their meaning. A few examples will illustrate my point: "I see the form of the organization rise-the manifold beings follow one another-nature passes on from larger forms to the more complex, more artistic, more exquisite, which is briefly called progression of creation-nature advanced higher and higher, found new proportions or a more poetic conception; the similarity of two species appears like a reflex of light rays, higher forms with many properties appear as a compendium of the features of many lower genera, and man is formed through the compression of all forms," etc. All these expressions, reminding us vividly of the theory of recapitulation, include with Herder the thought of the creator. For he calls the whole world a supply house of divine invention, a chief image of his art and wisdom, and in the introduction he speaks of the way of God in nature, of the thoughts which the Eternal one has embodied in action in the whole series of His works. The assumption of a direct blood relationship never occurred to Herder. The same is true of the philosopher Schelling; to him the gradation of organisms was not the result of a real evolution: "the hope of several naturalists to prove the origin of all organizations as successive, as a gradual development of one and the same original organization must vanish through our explanation. The claim that the different organizations have arisen through gradual evolution from one another is due to the misunderstanding of an idea." But he still thought of a simple series: "One is tempted to believe that in all the different forms of creative nature a common ideal which the product gradually approached was the guiding principal. The different forms into which it changes most probably appear only as the different steps in the evolution of one and the same organization." And since in the eighteenth century the interest in physiological investiga

tions was far more predominant than that in comparative anatomy both naturalists and philosophers chiefly dwelt on the functions of life. They laid much stress upon the fact that all living be ings possessed the same manifestations of nutrition, motion, irritability and reproduction, and applied to it the term unity of nature or briefly organization. Schelling distinctly says: “The continuity of organic nature is not to be sought in the transitions of form and organic structure but in the transitions of function. Instead of unity of product we have here the unity of force of production throughout the whole organic nature. It is not one product but one force which impeded at certain stages results in producing so many variations of form. It is therefore time to show this gradation in organic nature and to prove that sensibility, irritability, growth are only branches of one force."

Schelling distinctly speaks here of a continuity of all natural causes, not of an actual process of transformation; continuity, however, is to him a mere thought, an ideal relation, an expression which is to indicate that all animal species may be arranged in an ascending series. Hegel represents the same view, when he says: "Nature is to be looked upon as a system of gradations, one necessarily arising from another which it most nearly verifies; but not so that the one was produced by a natural process from the other, but only in its underlying idea, which is the basis of nature. Metamorphosis only belongs to the idea as such, for only the variation of the idea or concept is development. Such nebulous imaginations as, e. g., the so-called origination (Hervor gehen) of plants and animals from the water, or the origination (Hervorgehen) of the more highly developed animal species from the lower forms lie beyond the ken of thoughtful reflection."

I think it is clearly shown by the above quotation that the idea which originated with Herder and is therefore best designated by the German word Entwicklung (although we find it already in Aristotle's deὶ ἐν τῷ ἐφεξῆ δυνάμει τὸ πρότερον ὑπάρχει) conveys an entirely different truth than that which was first desig nated by Herbert Spencer as evolution, of which he says in "First Principles," § 115, "Evolution under its primary aspect