Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/607

Rh He probably would not then have written the following awkward and pointless sentence: "The altruistic experiences which somehow find themselves within the arena of man's private experience naturally secure to themselves the response of man's interested gratitude; selfishness awakens a natural antipathy." Surely the word "experiences" here should be replaced by "sentiments." Imagine "experiences" securing a "response of interested gratitude"! Then, what is meant by qualifying gratitude as "interested"? We imagine that it is of the nature of gratitude to be interested. The main point is, however, that the evolution philosophy does explain, if not to Dr. Porter's satisfaction, to the satisfaction of many, the origin and growth of altruistic sentiments, and that it is not correct, therefore, to speak as if that philosophy wholly failed to grapple with the question.

It is remarkable how free the ex-President of Yale seems to feel himself to treat de haut en bas the leaders of modern evolutionary thought. He twitted them, it will be remembered, with not knowing how to state their own case to the best advantage. He now talks of "the dreary and meaningless theories" of Spencer and Lewes, and smiles at the "naïveté" of Spencer in acknowledging that he had found the germ of his system in the philosophy of Wolff. Then of Spencer's application of Wolff's idea he says, "There never was a profound spiritual truth more ignominiously misinterpreted and more basely perverted to earthly uses." We should like much to see the evidence that Spencer had misinterpreted Wolff. According to Dr. Porter, to misinterpret a writer is apparently to accept some thought contained in his writings, but to develop and apply it differently from what he had done; and to confess the obligation is "naïveté"! Really, the ex-president is teaching us some strange lessons.

Perhaps he (Spencer) "was incapable," our critic haughtily remarks, "of discerning the difference between a homogeneity in matter, necessarily and blindly tending toward a heterogeneity, and such a law of organism [sic], progress, and growth as requires a spiritual intelligence to originate and maintain it." Perhaps he was, poor man! or perhaps he thought he had better discern and formulate progress where he could do it to the best advantage, and leave the postulating of spiritual intelligences to those who had a greater talent than he for building in the region of the unverifiable. It would have been "far more creditable" to Spencer, Dr. Porter remarks, if he had taken the pantheistic theory for better or for worse, in lieu of his own conclusion in favor of an Unknowable Cause of all things. It will occur to some, we think, that Herbert Spencer's "credit" is quite as safe in his own keeping as it would be in his critic's.

Let us, hasten, however, to the conclusion of the whole matter. Dr. Porter's final position is that "evolution, as a consistent theory, in its logical outcome will be found to give a material substratum and material laws for the human spirit; to involve caprice in morality,