Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/777

Rh He must be a scientific optimist, indeed, who refuses to admit that society has come to a critical juncture. That the rule of human life may ultimately be placed on grounds wholly independent of religion is a possibility which, once more, is not here disputed, though it is reasonable to wait for the demonstration of experience. But the interval may be one of serious disturbance. To use an undignified comparison, the crustacean may bo sure to get another shell, but he will be soft in the mean time. It seems impossible to question the fact that the morality of the mass of the people, at all events, has hitherto been greatly bound up with their religious belief. Ecclesiastical dogma may have had no effect on them; perhaps it has had worse than none, inasmuch as it has put forms in place of moral realities—an evil equally great

 to popular morality. To say this, and to illustrate it historically, as I did in the "Atlantic," is a very different thing from saying that science is immoral. The inroads made, not more by science than by the other agencies and influences enumerated, on the evidences of religion have been recognized by me in the article on "The Prospect of a Moral Interregnum" with a freedom which must, I should think, have shown anybody not blinded by philosophical antipathy that it would be absurdly unjust to identify me with reactionary and obscurantist orthodoxy. My position, frankly avowed in all the articles, is that of doubt. I think I may venture to say that no one who is acquainted with me, and knows what my course has been on university questions, and questions of education generally, will deny my loyalty to genuine science. Instead of disparaging the morality of scientific men I have expressly recognized their moral superiority as a class, only pointing out that we can not reason from their case to that of the multitude. To those of the number who served on the Jamaica Committee I have paid the best tribute in my power by saying that they were "among the foremost champions of humanity on that occasion," as Miss Bevington finds herself compelled with very manifest reluctance to admit. There can be no harm in saying that the passage was inserted in the second "Macmillan" article to satisfy Mr. Herbert Spencer, who, as I learned in a conversation with him, had misconstrued, strangely as it appeared to me, a passage in the first. I assured him that I felt, and had always expressed in public and private, the greatest admiration and gratitude for the noble conduct of Mr. Huxley and others of that school in the Jamaica business, and that, if there was any possibility of misapprehension on the subject, I would take the first opportunity of removing it. In what respect I failed to fulfill my promise I am at a loss to see. I could not say that science was the main support of the movement in the country; the main support of this, as of the anti-slavery movement, Miss Bevington would have found, if she had carried her statistical researches a little further, was the Christianity of the Free Churches. What a political clergy might do from political motives could in no way affect religion. That in the case even of the men of science, a philanthropy, the offspring of the Christianity in which we have all been nurtured, was likely to be the impelling influence rather than anthropology, was an opinion for which I had my reasons, and which at all events was not offensive. In the interest of scientific truth Miss Bevington does not shrink from affecting to believe that I am assailing science when I deprecate the invasion of Afghanistan in quest of "a scientific frontier." Nor does she shrink from making up a quotation out of two passages, one of which is taken from an article in "Macmillan," the other from an article in the "Atlantic Monthly," and which, if they relate to the same controversy, do not relate to the same persons. The tone of the article in the "Fortnightly" was such as could hardly fail to act as a warning against too ready an acceptance of its statements. But anything published in so eminent a journal goes forth with some authority, and the idea that p. large circle of readers might be led utterly to misconceive my feelings toward science and men of science gave me, I confess, some pain.