think this Evolution hypothesis is to be flouted away contemptuously; I do not think it is to be denounced as wicked. It is to be brought before the bar of disciplined reason, and there justified or condemned. Let us hearken to those who wisely support it, and to those who wisely oppose it; and let us tolerate those, and they are many, who foolishly try to do either of these things. The only thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism on either side. Fear not the Evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves in its presence upon that faith in the ultimate triumph of truth which was expressed by old Gamaliel when he said: If it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to nought.' Under the fierce light of scientific enquiry, this hypothesis is sure to be dissipated if it possess not a core of truth. Trust me, its existence as a hypothesis in the mind is quite compatible with the simultaneous existence of all those virtues to which the term Christian has been applied. It does not solve--it does not profess to solve-the ultimate mystery of this universe. It leaves in fact that mystery untouched. For granting the nebula and its potential life, the question, whence came they? would still remain to baffle and bewilder us. At bottom, the hypothesis does nothing more than transport the conception of life's origin to an indefinitely distant past.'

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Those who hold the doctrine of Evolution are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they yield no more to it than a provisional assent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as probable, and in the utter absence any evidence to prove the act illegal, they extend the method of nature from the present into the past. Here the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide. Within the long range of physical enquiry, they have never discerned in nature the insertion of caprice. Throughout this range the laws of physical and intellectual continuity

have run side by side. Having thus determined the elements of their curve in a world of observation and experiment, they prolong that curve into an antecedent world, and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of development from the nebula to the present time.

But you never hear the really philosophical defenders of the doctrine of Uniformity speaking of impossibilities in nature. They never say, what they are constantly charged with saying, that it is impossible for the Builder of the universe to alter His work. Their business is not with the possible, but the actual-not with a world which might be, but with a world that is. This they explore with a courage not unmixed with reverence, and according to methods which, like the quality of a tree, are tested by their fruits. They have but one desire—to know the truth. They have but one fear-to believe a lie. And if they know the strength of science, and rely upon it with unswerving trust, they also know the limits beyond which science ceases to be strong. They best know that questions offer themselves to thought which science, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency to solve. They have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there is no God, as with the theist who professes to know the mind of God. Two things,' said Immanuel Kant, fill me with awe: the starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man.' And in his hours of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering details of earth, it associates him with a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can neither analyse nor comprehend.

SCOPE AND LIMIT OF SCIENTIFIC

MATERIALISM:

AN ADDRESS

DELIVERED IN THE MATHEMATICAL AND PHYSICAL SECTION OF THE

BRITISH ASSOCIATION IN NORWICH,

19th August, 1868.

'As I proceeded I found my philosopher altogether forsaking mind or any other principle of order, and having recourse to air and æther, and water, and other eccentricities. I might compare him to a person who began by maintaining generally that mind is the cause of the actions of Socrates, but who when he endeavoured to explain the cause of my several actions in detail, went on to show that I sit here because my body is made up of bones and muscles; and the bones he would say are hard and have ligaments which divide them, and the muscles are elastic, and they cover the bones, which have also a covering or environment of flesh and skin which contains them ; and as the bones are lifted at their joints by the contraction or relaxation of the muscles, I am able to bend my limbs, and this is why I am sitting here in a curved posture;-that is what he would say, and he would have a similar explanation of my talking to you, which he would attribute to sound, and air, and hearing, and he would assign ten thousand other causes of the same sort, forgetting to mention the true cause, which is that the Athenians have thought fit to condemn me, and accordingly I have thought it better and more right to remain here and undergo my sentence; for I am inclined to think that these muscles and bones of mine would have gone off to Megara or Boeotia-by the dog of Egypt they would, if they had been guided by their own idea of what was best, and if I had not chosen as the better and nobler part, instead of playing truant and running away, to undergo any punishment which the State inflicts.'--PLATO, Jowett's Translation.

II.

SCIENTIFIC MATERIALISM.

THE CELEBRATED FICHTE, in his lectures on the 'Vocation of the Scholar,' insisted on a culture which should not be one-sided, but all-sided. The scholar's intellect was to expand spherically and not in a single direction only. In one direction, however, Fichte required that the scholar should apply himself directly to nature, become a creator of knowledge, and thus repay by original labours of his own the immense debt he owed to the labours of others. It was these which enabled him to supplement the knowledge derived from his own researches, so as to render his culture rounded and not one-sided.

As regards science Fichte's idea is to some extent illustrated by the constitution and the labours of the British Association. We have here a body of men engaged in the pursuit of Natural Knowledge, but variously engaged. While sympathising with each of its departments, and supplementing his culture by knowledge drawn from all of them, each student amongst us selects one subject for the exercise of his own original faculty-one line along which he may carry the light of his private intelligence a little way into the darkness by which all knowledge is surrounded. Thus, the geologist deals with the rocks; the biologist with the conditions and phenomena of life; the astronomer with stellar masses and