Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 1.djvu/172

162 interpretations, is, the remarkable title of the chapter containing this passage—"The Strategy of Providence."

In common with some others, I have often wondered how the universe looks to those who use such names for its cause as "The Master Builder," or "The Great Artificer;" and who seem to think that the cause of the Universe is made more marvellous by comparing its operations to those of a skilled mechanic. But really the expression, "Strategy of Providence," reveals a conception of this cause which is in some respects more puzzling. Such a title as "The Great Artificer," while suggesting simply the process of shaping a preëxisting material, and leaving the question whence this material came untouched, may at any rate be said not to negative the assumption that the material is also created by the Great Artificer who shapes it. The phrase, "Strategy of Providence," however, necessarily implies difficulties to be overcome. The Divine Strategist must have a skilful antagonist to make strategy possible. So that we are inevitably introduced to the conception of a cause of the universe continually impeded by some independent cause which has to be outgeneralled. [sic] It is not every one who would thank God for a belief, the implication of which is that God is obliged to overcome opposition by subtle devices.

The disguises which piety puts on are, indeed, not unfrequently [sic] suggestive of that which some would describe by a quite opposite name. To study the Universe as it is manifested to us; to ascertain by patient observation the order of the manifestations; to discover that the manifestations are connected with one another after a regular way in time and space; and, after repeated failures, to give up as futile the attempt to understand the power manifested; is condemned as irreligious. And meanwhile the character of religious is claimed by those who figure to themselves a Creator moved by motives like their own; conceive themselves as discovering his designs; and even speak of him as though he laid plans to outwit the devil.

This, however, by the way. The foregoing extracts and comments are intended to indicate the mental attitude of those for whom there, can be no such thing as Sociology, properly so called. That mode of conceiving human affairs which is implied alike by the "D. V." of a missionary-meeting placard and by the phrases of Emperor William's late dispatches, where thanks to God come next to enumerations of the thousands slain, is one to which the idea of a social science is entirely alien, and indeed repugnant.

An allied class, equally unprepared to interpret sociological phenomena scientifically, is the class which sees in the course of civilization little else than a record of remarkable persons and their doings. One who is conspicuous as the exponent of this view writes: "As I take it, universal history, the history of what man has accomplished in this world is at bottom the history of the great men who have worked