Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 47.djvu/570

556 and heredity are all within the limits of human knowledge? Can we then he sure that the knowledge of why evolution has worked as it has is unattainable?"

It is really somewhat lamentable that a man who has evidently had some training in science, and who perhaps either is, or is about to become, a teacher of it, should reason in this way. Because a certain line of inquiry, dealing with natural causes, has proved eminently fruitful, therefore we may—such is the argument—reasonably suppose that another line of inquiry, dealing not with natural causes at all, but with the supposed motives of an Absolute Being, will also prove fruitful. When will our institutions of learning knock a little common logic into the heads of their graduates, so that they shall not be at the mercy of the first idle and misleading analogy that happens to flit through their brains? We should like to know whether Mr. Clark has ever tried to form any clear idea of what he means by attaining to a knowledge of the why—what, exactly, it would be like to see into the mind of a Divine Being, and acquire an understanding of his thoughts and purposes. Straining his imagination to the utmost, can he give us any hint as to the steps by which such knowledge as he aims at could be approached? In all the ages that have passed, has the smallest commencement been made toward an insight into the "Why"? The religions of the past have all, in their manner, grappled with the question, but with what result? Absolutely none. We know no more on this subject than our ancestors of a hundred generations ago; but we differ a little from our ancestors in being more content than they to abide in a necessary ignorance. We find, moreover, that a knowledge of the How renders in many cases a knowledge of the Why not only unnecessary but inconceivable—renders the very idea of such knowledge absurd. When we have once grasped the law of gravitation in its application to the solar system, do we feel any special need to ask why it was arranged that the attraction exerted by the sun and the planets upon one another should be directly as mass and inversely as distance? When we learn the properties of oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, do we feel as if we must also know why they are endowed with such properties? When we see how running water sifts earthy materials, how the action of the waves furrows the sand, wears away rocks, and smooths pebbles, do we exclaim, "But why? oh, why?" When we study the laws of mechanics and grasp the simple formulas which express the action of the lever, the screw, and the inclined plane, do we feel that it would elevate us greatly in the scale of being to know why these things are so? It may be said, perhaps, that these are not the phenomena which suggest the question Why? If so, we reply that if we would know the true nature of that question we must apply it to such matters as these. Applied to these, we see that it is a silly and meaningless question; but none the less is it silly and meaningless when applied to other matters. Men want to know why a pestilence or famine was sent (as they say) at a particular time; they do not trouble themselves with the prior question whether it was sent at all in any proper meaning of the word. What we know is that sanitary science is showing an admirable power of controlling pestilences, and that famines only occur where there is defective knowledge and inferior social organization. Here again, therefore, a knowledge of the cause renders