Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 30.djvu/69

Rh Reference has been made in these papers to a third general cause contributing to the rescue of education from middle-age formalism. This third cause was "discovery," that is, actual increase of knowledge in various domains. This enlarged knowledge was, for the most part, of a physical character; it had reference to the visible, measurable phenomena of Nature. There lay wrapped up in the wonderful advancements of the eighteenth century both bane and blessing. Society, as representing the external relations of men with one another, was immeasurably benefited. Civilization, as we now know it, received power to become only through the magnificent discernment of natural laws which, beginning in the earlier part of the eighteenth century, has proceeded with sure course to our own time. Health and wealth and all physical comforts were secured for men as never before by manifold scientific discoveries. We should go even further than this and recognize the relation which obtains between man's physical and his intellectual and moral well-being. To increase man's healthfulness is to make possible an increase in his intellectual and moral nature. An almost immeasurable amount of ignorance and vice must be attributed to bodily disease and untoward physical surroundings. To purify the air which man breathes and the food which he eats is to take the first steps for his culture and his salvation. All gratitude, then, for the work which has been done, and is now doing, to improve man's physical condition! Such work is organically connected with whatsoever is truly progressive in intellect, morality, and religion.

I have said that there was evil in the course of this movement in the eighteenth century which we are now considering. Denial, or rather that doubtful mind which is essential to the attainment of truth, became an end and afforded pleasure. No evil that can befall man is greater than the evil of loving to deny. This evil began its course in English deism, went on to fuller manifestation in the admirers of Voltaire, and found its completion in D'Holbach and Büchner. Let not this statement be misunderstood. Men are sick, and know not the disease which afflicts them. Disease is often concealed in its development along the line of generations. The father appears rational and well, the poisoned child becomes demented and dies. History is, as it were, the life of one man prolonged; whatsoever lies in this life finds time for development and full manifestation. English deism was an expression of the critical spirit in England. Whence did this spirit receive its peculiar power? From the deaths of persecuted seekers after truth. Here and there a man searched till he found. When he spoke, they slew him in the name of God and the Church. Ths age of discovery was come, and the instrument for the work was none other than this same critical spirit, the spirit which would test, which would inquire of Nature until she answered. Who should restrain this spirit, or withhold its manifold applications? When Tyndale and Shaftesbury, applying it to religion, resolved all creeds into one formula of