Page:The Monist Volume 2.djvu/205

Rh some of the loftiest and profoundest intellects of the age—men renowned for vast and exact erudition, for scientific research or critical acumen. Philosophers, poets, historians, novelists, openly or silently disavow Christianity. In palaces, in lordly mansions, in college halls, in secluded homesteads, and here and there in rectory or vicarage, scepticism, if it has not a bold and fearless utterance, at least expresses itself in a guarded whisper. It becomes doubly a duty, then, when notwithstanding the general diffusion of avowed or latent unbelief, we trace everywhere the presence of a conservatism that conceals and hesitates and trembles at the doubts which it cannot suppress, that individual dissentients should candidly disclose their theological divergences. Christianity, indeed, which has had its triumphs in the past, will long conserve a portion of its power, and continue to furnish guidance not only for the unreasoning multitude, but for thousands of excellent men and women who cannot abandon the old religious ideal. But there is no final arrest for the intellectual progress of mankind."

We now turn to Mr. Call's work on "Final Causes." In an introductory chapter of eight pages he compresses the history of the doctrine of Design in nature from Anaxagoras, B. C. 500, to our own time, stating its modifications, criticisms, denials. In the second chapter a brief account is given of "Natural Theology," whose modern form is found to rest fundamentally on Newton's generalisation, that a body at rest continues at rest unless acted upon by some external force; and on the geometrical order of planetary revolutions. Starting anew from this point the human mind has discovered in the varied realms of nature apparent evidences of a supersensuous Intelligence. Kant, however, is brought to criticise Newton. "Kant notes with delight that the 'harmonical relations which excite the feelings in a more sublime manner than even the contingent beauties of nature originate in the properties of space'; and this inevitable congruity he refers ultimately, indeed, to Divine Wisdom, but directly to a common dependence on a single sovereign ground, to a unity of possibilities which it is no more difficult to conceive as self-existent than it is to conceive an Intelligent Cause as self-existent." Matter is not, then, naturally inert, but an aggregate of forms and forces, and nature a self-adjusting, self-evolving power. In a chapter on "Order and General Adaptation" it is shown that nature contains vast realms of Disorder; and alleged "special adaptations" are shown too as often as otherwise for cruelty and agony. "With