THEISM AND SCIENTIFIC

SPECULATION.

THE scientific and religious conceptions of the world seem to stand at this moment in the sharpest possible antagonism. Their conflict has, indeed, of late been too much of a mere platform and pulpit controversy to be a brave and fair facing of the questions and issues. Certain leaders in science, with a turn for metaphysics, certain leaders in theology, with a turn for science, have become almost intellectual knights-errant, always prancing about the country bellicose and armed, great in challenge and counterchallenge, retort, invective, and innuendo. These passages of arms may easily be overrated. The world's decisive battles have not been fought by careering and trumpeting errant knights. Thinking done in public and embodied in speech now scornful, now pitiful, now minatory, may, while very pat to the times, be deficient in every quality that can command conviction and win respect. But there is one fact we

cannot well overrate, the state of conflict or mental schism in which every devout man, who is also a man of culture, feels himself compelled more or less consciously to live. His mind is an arena in which two conceptions struggle for the mastery, and the struggle seems so deadly as to demand the death of the one for the life of the other, faith sacrificed to knowledge or knowledge to faith.

Our age is, perhaps, morbidly alive to the collisions and antitheses of Science and Religion. On the one side, science conceives a universe self-evolved, ruled by necessary laws, made up of forces inexhaustible, indestructible, convertible into infinitely varied modes of being and action. On the other side, religion conceives the world as a creation, the work of a voluntary Creator, regards Nature as the arena of a now ordinary, now extraordinary, but never still or ineffective divine operation. Science charges theology with setting up unverified and unverifiable notions, arbitrary will, supernatural interference, the fickle and irregular action upon Nature of a power without it. Theology reproaches science with seeking either to evolve an uncaused universe, or to reduce the divine connexion with it to the smallest possible point, making God as good as no-god, with hardly any part in the creation of the world, without active relation to it, or living concern in it, ever since. Conciliation by the division of their respective provinces is impossible, for the point contested belongs by equal right to both. The

highest truth of religion is the ultimate problem of science; the one lives by faith in a Creator, the other lives to seek and discover a cause. Nor will peace be secured by conquest. Man cannot live either by religion or by science alone. Both are necessary to the perfection alike of the individual and society. The realities of science are as sacred as those of religion, ought to be as diligently sought by the intellect, as loyally served by conscience and heart. The truth that shall reconcile the two is to be found, not by silence or concealed convictions on either side, but by the frank criticism and co-operation of physicist and metaphysician. The discussion to be here attempted is meant simply as a humble contribution towards this most desirable end.

Our present controversies on this subject ought not to be deprecated. They are healthy and bracing, mark a clearer and more wholesome state of the mental atmosphere than existed twenty years since. Mind has proved too strong for the feeble and pretentious philosophy that then claimed to have defined the objects and limits of knowledge. Theism was ruled out of court on the plea of mental incompetence. M. Comte had banned the inquiry into causes, the very word cause. Phenomena and their laws were the only subjects of rational investigation. Mr. G. H. Lewes wrote his brilliant but inaccurate "Biographical History of Philosophy" to prove that philosophy, aspiring to the knowledge of causes, had endeavoured to

compass the impossible, but positive science, recognizing the limits of human faculties, contented itself with the possible. And so, while the reign of the one had ceased, the empire of the other was established. Mr. J. S. Mill, in his most elaborate and influential work, pronounced "ultimate or efficient causes radically inaccessible to the human faculties," and based his judgment on what were thought irrefragable philosophic grounds. But now all is changed. The search after causes, both efficient and ultimate, is being conducted with the most daring and unwearied enthusiasm. Science has become as speculative, as prolific of physico-metaphysical theories as the most bewitched metaphysician could desire. On more than one occasion distinguished physicists have been seen to stray into a perfect wilderness of metaphysics, where, getting enchanted, they have become as enamoured of their physically named metaphysical entities as Titania of the illustrious weaver, only, unhappily, their disenchantment has not always been as complete as hers. The two men chiefly responsible for the change are Mr. Darwin and Mr. Herbert Spencer. Evolution, as a new creational theory, inevitably raised the old questions as to causes. While Mr. Darwin concerned himself with its scientific statement and relations, Mr. Spencer attempted to find it a basis in a metaphysical system compounded of certainly not too homogeneous philosophical and psychological principles. * Logic, vol. i. p. 422, 1st ed.