Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/137

Rh general science and ethics has hitherto been systematically traced out.

The most far-reaching and radical revolution in thought of which we have yet had experience consists in the extensive acceptance of the doctrine of evolution. That this doctrine has fundamental relations with morality is undeniable. Those theological teachers who hold that religion and morality are so unified that they must stand or fall together are fond of insisting that evolution is fatal to both. This is very much like a desperate abandonment of both to destruction, for the theory is making headway at a rate unprecedented in the historical growth of opinion. It has been developed by studious scientific men, and promulgated like any other scientific conclusion to which they have been led by the established processes of investigation and the established rules of logic. All our science is pervaded by it, and there is no hope that it can be arrested. It is therefore important to know what it is going to carry away, what it is going to leave, and what it is going to give. Will it subvert morality, or will it lead to a higher morality?

The answer to this question we can not regard as doubtful. If evolution be true, and man's ethical nature is no exception to the general constitution of things, then evolution is the agency that has developed morality in the past and brought it to its present condition. Assuming that the principles of right and wrong and the laws which regulate human conduct are rooted in the natural order, the sciences of nature which explain that order must have close bearings upon the philosophy of human conduct, while the profoundest interpretation of the method of the universe that has yet been attained, and which throws a flood of new light upon the nature of man and the development of humanity, must certainly aid us in the study of human activities in their highest aspects.

At any rate, we desire to have a report upon the present state of knowledge on this important subject, and we want it from a man authorized to speak. Mr. Spencer's book on "The Data of Ethics" may be expected to give us the scientific groundwork of the subject in connection with the principle of evolution, and it can not fail to prove helpful to many minds, both by the instruction it will afford and by the solicitude it will dispel in the present state of transitional opinion.

print this month the last of a short series of very interesting articles on astronomical subjects by Professor Daniel Vaughan, of Cincinnati. Before we had received from him the corrected proofs of the last article, news came that he was dead. We were of course startled by this intelligence, as his death is a profound loss to American science, and we knew that he was by no means a very old man, and were not aware of his failing health. But there now come to us certain painful disclosures regarding his life, of which it is desirable to take notice.

was born in Ireland, of wealthy parents, about the year 1821. He had a good education from a tutor, and at the village school, and was noted for mathematical ability. He came to this country at the age of sixteen, and went directly West, becoming the teacher in a country school in Bourbon County, Kentucky. Here he studied in seclusion, and made great proficiency in the higher branches of scientific study; but, famishing for books and intelligent associations, he went to Cincinnati twenty-five years ago, mainly attracted by its library privileges. He now pursued a wide course of scientific inquiry with great vigor and enthusiasm, devoting himself mainly to astronomy and to the larger aspects of natural phenomena, which he treated with the freedom and independence of a strong