Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 17.djvu/40

30 that matter is eternal and imperishable, for experience has never shown us that even the smallest particle of matter has come into existence or passed away. . . . Hence a naturalist can no more imagine the coming into existence of matter than he can imagine its disappearance, and he therefore looks upon the existing quantity of matter in the universe as a given fact. If any person feels the necessity of conceiving the coming into existence of this matter as the work of a supernatural creative power, of the creative force of something outside of matter, we have nothing to say against it. But we must remark that thereby not even the smallest advantage is gained for the scientific knowledge of nature. Such a conception of immaterial force, which at the first creates matter, is an article of faith which has nothing whatever to do with human science. Where faith commences science ends. Both these arts of the human mind must be strictly kept apart from each other. Faith has its origin in the poetic imagination; knowledge, on the other hand, originates in the reasoning intelligence of man. Science has to pluck the blessed fruits from the tree of knowledge, unconcerned whether these conquests trench upon the poetical imaginings of faith or not."

With much which is contained in the preceding quotation I entirely agree. Where faith commences, science ends; this is perfectly true; but I miss any recognition of the truth that the supernatural power which most persons "feel the necessity of conceiving" is something much beyond a "creative force outside of matter." It is difficult, I think, for most of us to keep our minds clear of the conception of such force outside of matter, though I quite agree with the author that nothing is gained for the scientific knowledge of nature by adopting the conception. But what I think the mind feels chiefly the necessity of conceiving is the existence of a Being who is the ground of all the moral phenomena of the world; and, if a writer on natural history goes beyond his subject at all, he should recognize the fact that the passing of the boundary carries the mind into a region of moral philosophy and religion, and not merely into a speculation concerning the possible origination of matter.

That this criticism is not unfair and not unimportant may be, I think, concluded from the results to which Ernst Haeckel is himself led, and to which he wishes to lead his readers. He tells us that he has no fault to find with the hypothesis, if we feel it to be necessary, of an origin of matter; but he tells us subsequently that there is no purpose in nature, and no such thing as beneficence on the part of a Creator.

"Every one," he writes, "who makes a really close study of the organization and mode of life of the various animals and plants, and becomes familiar with the reciprocity or interaction of the phenomena of life, and the so-called 'economy of nature,' must necessarily come