proclaimed that man could know nothing of causes, could know only antecedence and sequence, and he urged men to cease from inquiry after the primal cause. But his ignorance was used, however illogically, to exclude spirit from man and nature, and to make the observed the synonyme of the known. This negation of spirit was to Comte highest affirmation. He explained human history as the growth of man out of the lowest stage-that of Fetishism and Polytheism-through Monotheism into Positivism, where man gave up belief in the spiritual and was satisfied with what his senses recorded. And out of his philosophy he developed a religion, the religion of Humanity, which has rallied to it an enthusiastic band of disciples both here and in France, though it does seem strange how a faith-for faith it is-which denies spirit and affirms that the sensuously perceived is alone real, should be able to create enthusiasm in any human breast.

This philosophic movement was greatly strengthened by the scientific. Science has in this century, and especially in the present generation, advanced with immense strides. Perhaps it has been more distinguished for the number and brilliance of its scientific doctrines than even for the greatness of its scientific discoveries. There have been times, perhaps, marked by grander discoveries, but there has been no time so rich in hypotheses, guesses as to how what is came to be. Science, in repudiating metaphysics, has become metaphysical, and we have often now physical terms used to express the notions and to solve the problems that of old troubled the metaphysician. Many things favoured this development of scientific speculation.

EVOLUTION AND PHILOSOPHY.

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Geology revealed how long and slow the creative process had been, how it had risen by slow gradation from lower to higher types. Charles Darwin, combining a wonderful knowledge of nature with a wonderful eye for the similarities and differences of natural objects, struck out his theory of the origin of species by natural selection. It fell like a living spark upon dry tinder, and while the naturalist used it to explain the genesis of species, it suggested to the physicist a still more comprehensive theory of evolution explanatory of the genesis of things. Men like Haeckel, far more daring than Darwin, have striven to show how, by mechanical or physical law, the primordial material or mass had become a well-ordered and rational world. The development hypotheses of Kant and Lamarck have been made to descend from the philosophical dreamland which had been thought to be their proper and congenial home, and changed into wonderful prophecies of scientific truth, foregleams of the dawn that had come to the men on the mountain top, while as yet the men in the valley walked in darkness. And so science ceased to be simply the interpretation of nature, and became a great inquiry after the being and working of its Cause.

But evolution needed a philosopher to elaborate it into a complete and consistent theory of things. In Mr. Darwin's hands it is a modal as distinguished from a causal theory of creation, shows how the creative force works, not what the creative cause is. Within its proper limits as a scientific theory it can never do more, and hence could but leave the Theistic question where it found it. Yet the idea was too fruitful to remain simply in its scientific form. It was

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capable of being worked by philosophy into a causal theory of creation. This was rather more than the dominant empiricism could consistently accomplish. That empiricism had declared that only phenomena could be known, that causes were radically inaccessible to the human intellect. And in saying so it was perfectly consistent with itself. A sensuous must be either an agnostic or a sceptical philosophy, must affirm either the reality of ignorance or the impossibility of knowledge. It can but know sensation, can never know its cause. But Mr. Herbert Spencer conceived the heroic and brilliant project of building on a philosophy of nescience a science of nature, man, and society. "Evolution" was the mystic word that was to accomplish the hitherto impossible, make a constructive theory of the universe spring from so unpromising a root as a sensuous, and therefore agnostic philosophy. Mr. Spencer's first Cause was the Unknown and Unknowable, which, as we can neither describe, nor define, nor conceive it, is to the intellect as good as the non-existent. But the unknown was boldly translated into what was believed to be the known, the terms of matter, motion, and force. On the principles of Mr. Spencer's philosophy our knowledge is here delusive, and persistence of force and the forces are terms that denote an unknown, not a known entity. Where all knowledge is knowledge of symbols, the realities they symbolize must continue inaccessible to us, objects of which nothing can be predicated because nothing can be known. Mr. Spencer's system is more wonderful than the Indian legend which rested the earth on an elephant and the elephant on a tortoise, for the elephant and tortoise were at least

CHARACTERISTICS OF MODERN THOUGHT.

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realities, which is a great deal more than either "the Unknown" or the "matter, motion, and force," of our English philosopher can claim to be.

III.

We are now in a position to indicate those characteristic qualities and tendencies in Modern Thought that have most significance for Faith. Its most comprehensive and distinctive quality may be termed Pan-Physicism, or the attempt to explain nature through nature, without any appeal to any Power or Person above it. Here it stands in radical antithesis to Theism. Theism may conceive God as immanent in nature, may refuse to regard His action as either "supernatural," or an "interference" with natural order or law, but it can never identify Him. with nature or nature with Him. The antitheses are here most direct, could not be sharper or more vital. In the first half of last century Christianity and Deism were in their fundamental conceptions alike. There was superficial difference but essential agreement. Their notions of God, nature, and man were alike, though they did not think alike as to their inter-relations and what these involved. It was this agreement in fundamentals which enabled Butler to construct in his Analogy an apology which the Deists could not answer-could not, simply because with their premisses his conclusions were inevitable. His work presented the dilemma, well illustrated in cases like that of James Mill-embrace Christianity or abandon Theism. But in these days Butler has lost his standing-point. The assumptions that gave force to

his argument are no longer possible, common beliefs have ceased to exist, and are replaced by radical contradictions. Modern Thought conceives the system within which we live, and which we help to constitute, as the result or product of physical forces, material in nature, mechanical in action, though ultimately conditioned and qualified by the behaviour of the organisms they have produced. Such a theory can only be regarded as the antithesis of Theism, of every truth essential to an ethical and religious faith.

But, again, Modern Thought is in its essential character positive, and in its general aims and endeavours constructive. Its negative attitude to Faith is, in a sense, an accident, not the result of intention, dislike to belief or love of denial, but simply the consequence of loyalty alike to its own principles and ends. The older sensuous philosophy was critical and sceptical, but the modern is dogmatic and affirmative. The older was more consistent, acted with a more thorough knowledge of its own position, principles, and possibilities; but the latter is the more courageous; as we have seen builds up its theory of being in disdainful defiance of its theory of knowing. Its constructive aims are of the most comprehensive sort, and its endeavours have been the same. It has attempted to determine the nature and character of the primal cause, to describe the becoming of the inorganic world, the origin and evolution of life, the formation and behaviour of mind, the rise and growth of religion, society, and the state, with all they represent and imply. Modern Thought aims at producing an exhaustive science of the universe and a complete philosophy of man; and the science and the philoso