Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 33.djvu/720

702. If, therefore, the Duke of Argyll does not wish us to frame large hypotheses, he must prohibit and prevent our forming small ones. He must break us into seeing miracle everywhere. There is really no tenable middle ground between the reign of superstition, with all its blindness and terrors, and the reign of science, with its calm, undismayed survey of realities. The Duke of Argyll and other assailants of evolution may find many flatterers among the timid and the reactionary, but they will not persuade the world to return to the standpoint of the middle ages, nor will they ever succeed in appreciably retarding the march of science or the growth of a scientific philosophy.

vicissitudes of the seasons give rise every year to more or less controversy as to the propriety and efficacy of petitions for changes in the weather; and we notice discussions of this character now in progress in different quarters. It is ill arguing against sentiments that have almost the force of instincts; and we have no wish to say or do anything calculated to check the exercise of a religious spirit. The number, however, is probably increasing from year to year of those who are disposed to regard the question referred to mainly as one of evidence, and in the few remarks we have now to make, it is this class exclusively that we have in view.

Among the things we know on this subject is the fact that, in all ages, the weather has been a frequent cause of anxiety to mankind, particularly to those immediately depending on the soil for the reward of their labor. In all ages there have been seasons of hurtful drought and seasons of excessive rain, seasons of deficient heat and seasons of undue heat, and men have been compelled to adapt themselves to these varying conditions as best they could. Occasionally the abnormities of the weather have been such as to produce famine on a wide scale; and it is to be remarked that the intensity of these visitations has been proportioned to the ignorance and general backwardness of the communities upon which they have fallen. In all ages prayer has been resorted to as a means of obtaining propitious seasons, and often it has been re-enforced by sacrifices, human or other; but history furnishes no evidence whatever that the weather has at any period, or under any religious dispensation, been governed or modified by such expedients. What has been the case in the past holds good to-day. We have, like the ancient Romans, Greeks, Indians, and Chinese, our favorable seasons and our unfavorable ones. The farmer has his battles to fight just as of old; and there is, perhaps, reason to believe that his more highly developed, or, at least, specialized strains of fruits, vegetables, and grains are more liable to the attacks of parasites, and more sensitive to atmospheric conditions, than were those of ancient times. On the other hand, the civilized farmer of our century has a greater command of scientific knowledge wherewith to combat his foes than was possessed by the agriculturist of two thousand or even of one hundred years ago, while the community as a whole possesses resources of capital and facilities both of communication and of transportation such as to put famine on a large scale almost out of the question. We may thus claim to have positive and conclusive evidence that the security of human life depends in the most direct manner on knowledge and social organization, while we are compelled to recognize a complete lack of evidence that it depends directly or indirectly on anything else. What is true of the vicissitudes of the seasons is true also of diseases and pestilences. Prayer has always been resorted to to ward them off; but history tells us that, in ages of ignorance, they were vastly more severe and destructive than they