LUDE.] Extreme Evolution Theory untenable 113 a philosophy which claims to unify all knowledge, and take the place of Religion as an ethical regulative system. The Evolution theory as such is rejected by many of the most eminent men of science, such as Von Baer, Agassiz, Barrande, Virchow, and others. It is propounded with certain limitations even by Wallace, one of its authors. Theistic Evolution, or the theory that Evolution is the plan according to which the Creator brought things into being, and guides the physical world, is accepted by an immense number of thoughtful men, theologians as well as scientists. But the number of eminent scientists is very small, who accept Spencer's view of an evolution of eternal matter and force out of nebular mist into worlds and suns, into rocks, plants, animals, men, thought, mind, affections, death, dissolution, annihilation, back into the inconceivable absolute again, to be re-evolved out again in some future æon. With Mr. Spencer everything in his whole system depends absolutely on the truth of this evolution of matter and force, in which there is no God, no soul, no immortality. The aim of a philosophy, Mr. Spencer tells us, is the unification of knowledge. Now if in his system we find unbridged chasms, breaks in the continuity over which Evolution can give us no satisfactory guidance, his vaunted unity is broken and his system falls to pieces. But there are at least two such unbridged chasms, the attempt to cover over which are enough to make logic blush. The first is that between solar heat and life, or the transformation of energy in inorganic substances into vital energy. The statement and argument he gives in his chapter "On the Transformation and Equivalence of Forces," (pp. 208, etc.) passing by the fact that Mr. Spencer maintains a continual confusion between force and motion,-light, heat, etc., being modes of motion and not forces, a confusion indeed of cause and effect,-we find the gist of his meaning to be this: without sunshine there can be no plant 114 Defective definitions vitiate or animal life, hence sunshine and life are one. [INTER Without heat the chicken cannot be hatched, therefore heat and vitality are identical. Is the argument conclusive? He has proved nothing more than that heat is a necessary condition of vital action, and has not touched the vital power at all. The railway iron track is a necessary condition of activity for the locomotive, but the rails do not usually constitute the locomotive or generate the steam. Then going on to the next chasm between nerve-vesicles and consciousness, we find solar heat translated into mental energy, by some slight of hand which scorns all use of logic. Time would fail me to expose these fallacies in detail. I would simply refer you to Bowne's Review of Herbert Spencer, to the criticisms of Ground, MeCosh and others, where the argument is carried out in detail. The fact, however, is this: Mr. Spencer produces an amazing amount of facts with which scientists. have furnished him; he attempts an explanation on the line of evolution and fails in producing a unification of knowledge. His philosophy, judged thus by his own standard, is seen to be an abortion. We may accept every fact which he produces, and thousands more shown by science, but which he ignores, and with the central unit of an intelligent creative mind produce a system which satisfies all the requirements of logical philosophy without such prodigious assumptions, or patent fallacies. 3. The next point is his defectiveness of definitions. Unless our definitions are correct, our reasoning will be a beating of the air; unless opponents can agree in definitions, all argument is wasted breath. We have seen that Mr. Spencer's definition of Religion would never be accepted by any man who had a religion to define. And the same is true of many other places, but one only I will cite,-one emphasized by Mr. Douglas, in The American Church Review for March, 1883. In his statement of the Theistic argument, he nowhere describes God as an orthodox Christian LUDE.] apparently logical reasoning. 115 would, and hence his statement is unfair. Take one statement, "the eternity we ascribe to God is time multiplied to infinity; but we cannot conceive time multiplied to infinity: therefore we cannot conceive a God who has existed from all eternity." Any one could tell Mr. Spencer that to describe God as existing through infinite time or infinite space, is to do just what Theists strenuously repudiate. The definition of theists is quoted in the Review mentioned above. "God exists altogether apart from what we call time. God does not exist in time. The eternity of God is no more time raised to infinity than the love of God is human love raised to infinity. Time implies change, and God cannot change. Time implies succession, and in God there is no succession of months or days or years. Time implies movement, and God, while His existence is one of the most intense activity, is at the same time one of the most perfect repose. In time there is past, present and future; and for God there is no past, no present, no future. Time is the measure of the existence of created things: it varies with their nature: even in ourselves it is affected not a little by the circumstances and the condition of our body and mind, To the sick man it passes slowly; to the joyous how quickly! Active employment lends it wings, and the dull monotony of enforced idleness makes it creep along more slowly than the snail. The measure of angelic existence, as S. Thomas tells us, differs altogether from the measure of human existence. The measure of our life in heaven will be very unlike the measure of our life on earth. Time therefore is something relative, not absolute; and as in God all is absolute, time has no meaning in respect of His existence. God does not exist in time-no, not in infinite time. He is above all time, and before all time, and beyond all time." This is the orthodox description of God. Mr. Spencer may not accept it, but at least he cannot ignore it, nor dismiss it in 116 A selfish use of Logic [INTER silence. If Mr. Spencer pretends to criticize the Christian creed, he must at least represent it correctly. But this he has failed to do, and my point is established. 4. The fourth point is one of great logical importance, and would require for its full description rather a volume than a paragraph or two. There are essential fallacies in Mr. Spencer's syllogisms. Take one : What we cannot imagine, we cannot think. We cannot imagine the eternal self-existence of God. Therefore the eternal self-existence of God is unthinkable. That is, the ability to picture to the mind is taken as the criterion of the knowable and the unknowable. But what picture can we paint on our imagination of love, mathematics, or power? Are these things unthinkable? But it is by means of such arguments as this that he annihilates all religion; if consistent, the very same arguments must also make all science impossible. "The ideas involved in religion are, in the last analysis, no less conceivable than those involved in science. If, then, the inconceivability of these ideas is a sufficient reason for discarding religion, it is also warrant enough for discarding science. But if the fundamental reality can so manifest itself as to make a true science possible, there is no reason why it should not so manifest itself as to make a true religion possible-no reason in the argument I mean; the needs of Mr. Spencer's system are reason enough for him. The claim that the limited and conditioned nature of our faculties renders religious knowledge impossible, tells with equal force against all knowledge. The limited nature of our faculties does, indeed, confine us to a limited knowledge-but a limited knowledge may be true as far as it goes. If so, we 1See also Bowne's Review of H. Spencer, from whose work I draw some of these sentences. LUDE.] becomes patent Sophism. 117 may trust the knowledge we have; if not, all truth disappears. To condense, just contrast the following productions of Mr. Spencer's logic : Religion is impossible, because it involves unthinkable ideas. God must be conceived as selfexistent, and is, therefore, an untenable hypothesis. God must be conceived as eternal, and is, hence, an untenable hypothesis. To affirm the eternity of God would land us in insoluble contradictions. Science is possible, though it involves the same unthinkable ideas. The fundamental reality must be conceived as self-existent, and is not an untenable hypothesis. The fundamental reality must be conceived as eternal, and is not an untenable hypothesis. To affirm the eternity of matter and force, is the highest necessity of our thought. These examples are sufficient to show the trend and value of a philosophy which teaches us that our highest wisdom is to recognize the mystery of the absolute, and to abandon the "Carpenter theory" of creation for the higher view, that all things came about by an "Evolution, which is a change from an indefinite, incoherent homogeneity to a definite, coherent heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations." This is what is offered us in place of a consistent philosophy linked to the "King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God" Whose love is as great as his power, And neither knows measure nor end. Mr. Spencer's Evolution, even if accepted as true, explains nothing; it only shows how the complicated machine with blind force within grinds on; and he tells us himself: "I will only further say, freedom of the will, did it exist, would be at variance with the beneficence recently displayed in the evolution of the correspondence between the |