Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 3.djvu/129

 question we are now considering may be taken as an example. It is pretty well agreed by the latest schools that, as the universe exists in relations, so thought is carried on in relations, and, by its very constitution, cannot transcend them. It is agreed that as music in all its inexhaustible complications is still made up by the combination of simple wave-pulses, so intelligence, in all the range of its complications, is made up of the combination of perceived relations; and we might as well talk of the higher exploits of musical art as transcending the vibrations of which they are constituted, as of the "restless expatiations" of thought transcending the relations of which mind is constituted. Sir William Hamilton is fair authority, and he says: "Limitation is the fundamental law of the possibility of thought. For, as the greyhound cannot outstrip his shadow, nor the eagle outsoar the atmosphere in which he floats, and by which alone he may be supported; so the mind cannot transcend that sphere of limitation within and through which exclusively the possibility of thought is realized." We therefore fear that, should any adventurer break bounds on a winged horse, and take his flight through the ultra-phenomenal tracts, the tidings wafted back would prove altogether unintelligible.

Mr. Godwin says: "Am I to infer from your objections to my remarks that holds materialism, atheism, and naturalism, to be the legitimate outcome of science?" Exactly the contrary. We do not believe that the legitimate outcome of science is materialism or atheism, and our attempt was to show that certain problems and procedures, which Mr. Godwin declared to be spurious science and obnoxious to these charges, were genuine science, and not obnoxious to them. We objected, in order to rescue a portion of science from an aspersive charge to which all science is equally liable. Büchner may be a materialist, and Comte an atheist, and Taine may be both, although it does not follow, because he affirms the correlation of mind with nervous motion, that he is either. What moved us to protest was the gross injustice of branding Mr. Spencer's expositions of the doctrine of Evolution as sham science, and then loading it with the opprobrium which its associations and the argument implied. Of Spencer's system, Mr. Godwin says, on his own and higher authority, that it is "full of unsupported assumptions, logical inconsistencies, and explanations which explain nothing, while in its general character it tends to the sheerest naturalism." We do not deny that it contains defects—it would be, indeed, surprising if so vast and original a discussion did not; but to say that it is "full" of the vices alleged, or that they characterize it, is a reckless exaggeration. As a set-off to this opinion, we refer the reader back to page 32, where he will find the latest estimate of Mr. Spencer's philosophy by a man who is an authority upon the question he discusses.

As to the religious "tendencies" of the system, although they are charged with being all that is bad, and although the charge would undoubtedly be sustained by a popular vote, we are of opinion that it is bound to be very differently viewed in the future. Mr. Spencer is a profound believer in religion, and at the very threshold of his system he has shown the ultimate harmony of science and faith. Yet he has not tried merely to patch up a transient truce between religion and science; but, foreseeing the intenser conflicts that are inevitable as science advances, he has labored to place their reconciliation upon a basis that no extension of knowledge can disturb. When tho method of science is raised to its rightful supremacy in the human mind, and the rule of science is