sincerity which are the first qualities required in its pursuit,' can never be woven. We will now pro ceed further to consider the true and vital issues' of Haeckel's monism in the main matters named. 'This is a sample of the favourite type of sentence in Mr. McCabe's brochure (p. 21): 'No one who believes that truth is a sacred possession and the first condition of lasting progress, no one who feels that dignity and sincerity are the first qualities required in its pursuit, will allow himself to be turned from the true and vital issues by a petty and frivolous criticism of irrelevant details.' It is unfortunately a fair specimen, in its manifest and intended insinuations, of the 'modesty' which this literary fulmination-for it cannot honestly be called anything else-thrusts upon us. At all events the matters dealt with above are not 'irrelevant details,' for by them Monism stands or falls. Whether the pages that follow are turned from the true and vital issues,' the impartial reader must decide for himself. One note should perhaps be added. In covering so vast a field as is necessitated, with so many important details, it is inevitable that there should be some degree of repetition. The above chapter merely presents a bird's-eye view of what must be examined in greater detail. Should some serious points or weighty quotations occur more than once, the ceaseless demands of an engrossing public life, amidst which this unwelcome task is undertaken, must constitute sufficient apology. 'As biology is expected to accept as final the mechanical interpretation of the world-although there is so far not the remotest prospect of a physical theory of life-so psychology in turn is expected to concur in the deliverances of physiology, although all attempts to deal with mind in terms of brain have so far been futile. But if the real is always concrete, the more abstract view of things is, after all, not the more fundamental, and to treat it as such cannot be an ultimately valid procedure.' PROF. JAMES WARD, Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1905, p. 91. 'The very use of such a term as "physical basis of life" implies a radical difference between the two things, conjoined in the descriptive phrase. But what do we mean when we speak of a basis? Is it a foundation on which something is to be reared, or built up? The mere statement of what is sought for in this fashion shows that the search is vain. What is built up on a physical basis will be a physical structure; but such a building would explain nothing as to its own contents. In other words, the origin of life is not explained by the origin of its physical envelope.' KNIGHT'S Aspects of Theism, p. 91. 'The true nature of the antecedents is only learned by reference to the consequents which follow, or, as I put it before, the true nature of the cause becomes apparent only in the effect. All ultimate or philosophical explanation must look to the end. Hence the futility of all attempts to explain human life in terms of the merely animal, to explain life in terms of the inorganic, and ultimately to find a sufficient formula for the cosmic process in terms of the redistribution of matter and motion.' DR. ANDREW SETH, Theism, p. 43. 'But to conceive atoms tumbling for ever through infinite space, meeting, and by impact causing heat and changing direction or form, yet ever acting according to their mechanical properties, is not to come one whit nearer the understanding of how this inorganic mass became the parent of all organic being. It is significant that neither modern physics, perhaps the most audacious in speculation of all the sciences, nor chemistry, possibly the most skilled in the secrets of nature, has advanced us here a single step beyond Democritus; instead of his ȧvay men may use the terms "chance" or "unknown," but they all mean the same thing; to matter, as science must conceive it, causation of life, not to speak of mind, is a sheer impossibility.' FAIRBAIRN, Philosophy of the Christian Religion, p. 53. III MYTHICAL SCIENCE AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE PROFESSOR HAECKEL seeks regard for his writings not only as representing philosophy, but science. We have seen how poor is their claim to the former title; we have now to investigate their right to the latter. The web of the 'philosophy' is so largely woven out of elements which, in such a case, should be conspicuous by their absence, that we may set it aside without any intellectual compunction. Is the scientific side of his contention any more free from these dogmatisms, assumptions, contemptuous references, misrepresentations, &c.? A little careful scrutiny soon supplies proof to the contrary. Apart from the 'modesty' of the assertion that 'a good deal of the infinite confusion that characterizes the conflicts of philosophers over their system, is due to the obscurity and ambiguity of many of their fundamental ideas,' by what right does he beg the whole question under discussion by avowing that his 'hylozoism' expresses the fact Wonders, p. 84. เ that all substance has two fundamental attributes: it occupies space, and is endowed with sensation.' Elsewhere he himself here counts three instead of two, but waiving that for the moment, such an assumption of actual fact where there is only pure hypothesis is a common characteristic of his 'monistic system.' It is well matched by a similar assertion in The Riddle, that natural selection 'gave us the solution of the great philosophic problem, How can purposive contrivances be produced by purely mechanical processes without design?' so that 'thus we have got rid of the transcendental design of the teleological schools.' 1 For the very next paragraph contains the acknowledgement of the avowal of a 'distinguished botanist' (J. Reinke), who thinks exactly the opposite. But his views, we are modestly told, 'do not call for serious scientific refutation to-day.' เ 91 2 Doubtless this writer would say the same when Professor Henslow asserts-with sixty pages of scientific reasons-that there are no facts known to occur in Nature in support of Darwinism.' Be this as it may, at least the remark of Haeckel's champion has quite as legitimate an application here as elsewhere when he says: The authority of Dr. Haeckel himself on this point is paramount. He has made a lifelong study of it.' 3 So has Professor Henslow, as his books in The International Scientific Series testify.' |