Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/597

Rh feeling at the outset doubtless was, and perhaps still is, that science and philosophy ought to be amenable to some higher control; but he has totally failed to show that such is the case. He finds that only by talking the language of science can he come into contact with science; and so with philosophy; and that there is no higher bar than their own before which these can be summoned. The result is instructive for all who lean to the opinion that Theology is still queen of the sciences, and that her writ runs through the whole domain of human knowledge. The return made to that writ in the most flourishing portions of the intellectual world to-day is: "No jurisdiction! Come down to facts!"

The ex-President of Yale is not opposed, he tells us, to evolution in every aspect: "Evolution or development, in their [sic] noblest and fullest signification, may spiritualize nature, ennoble man, and honor God. The evolution which we criticise is a composite of scientific theories—some true, others doubtful, and others false—which are held together and wrought into a fanciful philosophy by the very slenderest threads of analogy, and elevated into a negative theology by a daring flight of professedly modest or agnostic reserve." Recognizing that this "fanciful philosophy" is made up of several distinct elements, the critic announces that he will take up these in the order of their production and show their genetic connection. To our great surprise, after reading this declaration, we find that the following is the order in which the "elements" in question are placed:

 1. Darwinism, as applied to contemporary species. 2. The same extended into the region of paleontology. 3. The arguments drawn from biological study. 4. The doctrine of the conservation of force. 5. The doctrine of the development of the organic from the inorganic. 6. The extension of No. 5 so as to include the phenomena of sensibility among the developed products. 7. Its further extension so as to include the sense of personality. 8. The arguments drawn from the development of language and of human society. 9. The wider theory of cosmical development as suggested by the nebular hypothesis. 10. A materialistic interpretation of the universe. 11. Agnosticism.

How it could occur to Dr. Porter that this arrangement represents in any degree "the order of time and thought after which they" (i. e., the several elements of the prevailing evolution philosophy) "have successively come into form or being," we can not imagine. There is really not the least vestige of an historical order discernible. Instead of Darwinism being put first, it ought rather to have been put last. It was the apparent immutability of species that for a long time stood