Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 52.djvu/721

Rh the new sense better fits lately discovered facts. The point, however, is not one which we care to discuss at length; and if the learned professor says that the Hebrew lexicon should be revised from time to time, so as to keep it abreast of modern physical science, we see no reason to object. Let the authorities on Semitic philology look to it.

It is admitted by the writer to whom we are referring that evolution compels us to "view types and design in a new light." Types are not to be considered as "artificial models to which all actual cases must more or less closely conform." We must rather look on them as "the generalized results of variations during past generations, the accumulated effects of growth and variations somehow or other acquired in the past and, we know not why, persisting by heredity." They are not, he distinctly says, "a stamp impressed from without." As to the manifestations of design, we must regard them as "dependent on some internal qualities by which organisms became accommodated to the exigencies of their place in the world." The choice is presented to them, we are told, of becoming so accommodated or perishing; some manage the accommodation and some perish. It is needless to say that there is very little left here of the old and venerable doctrine of design, and that in the account above given of type the classical idea is equally attenuated. There is, nevertheless, we are assured, no reason why we should not "regard all these phenomena as illustrating the method of divine creation and government."

Coming down to particular theological doctrines, the writer claims that they may one and all be held consistently with a full acceptance of the evolutionary standpoint; and here again we have no desire whatever to dispute his contention. What science demands above all things is intellectual sincerity and integrity. Science in its infinite variety interests different minds in many different ways; and he who has the true scientific spirit will, so far as the order of facts in which he is especially interested is concerned, follow to the very best of his ability a rigorous scientific method. In other regions of thought or speculation he may be less exacting as to proof and more disposed to indulge what Bagehot called "the emotion of belief." Science grows by what is done for her in different fields by men who themselves may be widely at variance with one another as regards large sections of their thought. It is therefore unwise for any one to attempt to set up, in the name of science, one scheme of opinion upon all subjects for all classes of minds. We have known, or at least heard of, graceless zealots of materialism who called in question Faraday's claims to be a true man of science because he did not carry the inductive method into questions of religious belief. It is fortunate that the interests of science are not committed to the hands of such; for no possible rigor of method could make amends for the incurable narrowness of their imagination.

Science, we have said, demands intellectual integrity, and it rests with each individual, upon his own responsibility as an individual, to satisfy its demands. Science means truth; it exists to establish and advance truth, to build up in the world a coherent system of doctrine valuable for the guidance of human life and the further enlargement of human thought. It is not for one worker unnecessarily to judge another, or to impugn his fidelity to the great cause to which all owe a