Development : what it can do and what it cannot do

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BL 263 .M32 1883
McCosh, James, 1811-1894
Development

I

PHILOSOPHIC SERIES— No. Ill,

DEVELOPMENT

WHAT IT CAN DO

WHAT IT CANNOT DO

BY '

JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D., D.L.

AuTHOB OF "Thb Method of Divine Government," "Emotions," etc.
Pkesident of Princeton College

NEW YORK

CHARLES SORIBNER'S SONS

1883

Copyright, 1883, by
CHARLES SCHIBNER'S SONS

Trow's

Printing and Bookbinding Companv

201-213 ^«J^ Twelfth Street

NEW YORK

^*J

TABLE OF CONTENTS.

SECTION I.

PAGE

Development is an Organized Causation, .... 3

SECTION II.
Development is Causation Working in an Environment, . 6

SECTION III.

Regular Results from Combined Causation and Environ-
ment, 8

SECTION IV.
Evolution in Inanimate Nature, 12

SECTION V.
Development in Organic Nature, 17

SECTION VI.
What Development cannot do, 24

SECTION vn.

New Powers Appearing in the Ages 28

IV TABLE OF CONTENTS.

SECTION VIII.

FAOK

The New Powers Working with the Old, .... 36

SECTION IX.
Spiritual Powers, , . 39

SECTION X.
Oversights m Spencer's Evolution, 47

DEVELOPMENT

WHAT IT CAN DO AND WHAT IT CANNOT DO.

The phrases Development and Evolution, so frequently
used in the present day, have much the same meaning.
Both point to one operation seen under somewhat different
aspects. Development is the process going on, wliereas
evolution rather refers to the process as we look back upon
it. We speak of the seed developing into the plant, and
the plant being evolved from the seed.

There is a constant employment of the phrases and a
continued reference to the process. But there is an
equally persistent avoidance of an explanation of its pre-
cise nature. Instances, many rich and varied, are given,
and inferences legitimate and illegitimate are drawn ; but
there has not been a wise, judicious, and scientific attempt
to explicate its components, to spread out its contents, and
prescribe its boundary.

The phrases are used to cover all sorts of meanings —
" it is a great sheet let down by the four corners upon the
earth, wherein are all manner of four-footed beasts and
creeping things of the earth, and fowls of heaven." Evo-
lution in itself is a great vehicle moving on from age
to age, and from world to woi-ld, carrying with it all sorts
of wares, precious and baser metals, suns and soils, flowers

2 DEVELOPMENT.

and weeds. Scientific men discourse profoundly of the
development of worlds and systems of worlds, of plants
and animals, of individuals and of species, from the monad
on to man. But we hear and read also of the develop-
ment of the resources of a country, of its wealth, its mines,
its o-old and silver; its crops and corn, its wheat and
fruits ; of its sheep, cattle, and horses ; of its industry,
its trade and commerce ; of its cities, their streets, houses,
and harbors; of its education, its colleges and schools.
They give you histories of the development of the sciences
of astronomy, chemistry, and geology, of literature in
prose and poetry ; of language from its simpler forms up
to the higher, such as Greek, German, or English ; of the
fine arts, as painting, sculpture, and architecture, from their
ruder to their highest shapes ; and of the useful arts, as
masonry, carpentry, and engine-making. They talk, too, of
the evolution of things from a simpler to a more complex
state ; of pottery, of wax-work, of metal-work, of vases,
of dinner-sets, and tea-cups. It must surely be a compre-
liensive phrase, or quite as possibly a loose and ambiguous
one, which embraces all these things and a thousand more.
In these circumstances it is surely of moment, when
any one is talking of development, for or against, to
insist on his telling us precisely what he means by it. " I
am sick," says the man of common sense, who is not to be
taken in with high-sounding phrases, *' of this pretentious
power ; I prefer the old way of speaking, when it was
believed that all thinsis came from God." But I ask this
man, who is after all making large pretentions to uncom-
mon sense, whether he is prepared to affirm that he was
not developed from his good father and mother ; whether
he, the man ,of forty, has not grown out of that boy whom
he pleasantly renjiembers going to school at the age of six.
But I am a religious man, he tells us, and I am sure that

AMBIGUITY OF THE PHRASES. 3

God and not development guides the universe. But if lie
will listen to me, I venture to ask liim whether he has
an J right to dictate to Deity how he shall govern his own
world ; whether hy development or in some other way ;
whether God may not have made this man himself to grow
by development; and whether the same God has not
evolved the Christian from the Jewish faith, and the Jevv-
isli from the patriarchal. When we lay down the rigid
rule for ourselves, that we explain beforehand what we
mean by the phrases we employ, we are in a better posi-
tion to require the same on the part of our opponent,
and to insist on knowing what he means by the evolution
he is defending. An evolution out of nothing ? An evolu-
tion without a God to set it agoing or to guide it ? An
evolution of life from the lifeless ? Of mind from the
mindless ? Of man from the monkey ? Of the monkey
from the mollusc ? Of the mollusc from the monad ? Of
all from the senseless molecule ?

SECTION I.

DEVELOPMENT IS AN ORGANIZED CAUSATION.

Development is evidently not a simple power in nature,
like mechanical force, or chemical affinity, or gravitation.
It is clear that there is a vast, an incalculable number and
variety of agencies in the process, whether it be the de-
velopment of a sun from star-dust, of the plant from its
seed, of the bird from its eo^jr, the horse from its dam, of
the threshing-machine from the flail, of the reaping-ma-
chine from the reaping-hook, of our present kitchen
utensils from those used by our grandmother. The ques-
tion arises : Is there anv unity in " the thousand and one "

4 DEVELOPMENT IS AN ORGANIZED CAUSATION.

things that act in the process ? I believe that there is.
Let us inquire what it is, and this will settle for us what
truth and what error there is in the common expositions,
that is development of developments.

The one common quality in the process as denoted by
the phrases is, that one thing is developed into another
thing, and that one thing is evolved from another. But
it is universally regarded as settled that when one thing
produces another, or is produced out of another, it is by
causation. It follows that there must be causation in de-
velopment. Causation necessitates development. This fol-
lows from the nature of cause and effect as it is commonly
apprehended. It follows more particularly from the view
which I have given of Energy in the paper on the subject
in this series. I have shown that in physical action the
cause always consists in two or more bodies which act on
each other, and that the effect consists of the same bodies
modified ; that the ball A striking the ball B constitutes
the cause, and that the effect consists of the ball B gaining
the energy which A loses. But I need not insist on this
here, as whatever be our theory of causation, the cause
must be regarded as developing the effect, and the effect
as evolved from the cause.

It has been generally admitted for the last two or three
centuries (it was anticipated in a vague way from the com-
mencement of reflection) that causation works through all
nature, not only divine causation but physical causation,
that is, that the ordinary occurrences of nature are pro-
duced by agents acting causally. In other words, fire
burns, light shines, and the earth spins round its axis and
rotates around the sun, and as the issue we have heat and
light, and the beneficent seasons. Men of enlarged minds
do now acknowledge that in the doctrine of universal causa-
tion, of God acting everywhere through second causes,

{\

CAUSATION LP:ADS TO DEVELOPMENT. 5

there is nothing irreligious* On tlie contrary, the circum-
stance that God proceeds in a regular manner which can
be anticipated, is evidently for the benefit of intelligent
beings who can thus so far foresee the future and prepare
for it a'ld act upon it. But causation leads to develop-
ment. If there be nothing irreligious in causation, as lit-
tle is there impiety in the development which issues from
it. It will be shown that development by causation is the
plan by which God carries on his works, thus connecting
the past with the present, and the present with the future.
It was my privilege in my earliest published work to jus-
tif}^ God's method of procedure by natural cause and natu-
ral law, as specially adapted to man's constitution.' I
reckon it as a like privilege in my declining life to be able
to defend God's way of acting by development, which
gives a consecutive unity to all nature, and as a stream
from the throne of God flows through all time, widening
and deepening till it covers the earth, as the waters do the
sea, with the riches it carries.

But development, while it is carried on by causation,
does not consist of a single chain with successive causes
and effects as its links. The causes as thej^ operate com-
bine and the effects are joint, and we have a great reticu-
lated machine. Development is essentially a combination
of causes. It is a corporation of causes for mutual action,
an organized causation for ends. The past has developed
into the present, which will develop into the future. The
configuration of the earth, its hills and dales, its rivers and
seas, which determine the abodes and industries of men,
and the bounds of their habitation have been produced by
agencies w^hich have been working for millions of years.
The present is the fruit of the past and contains the seed

' Method of Diviue Government, Plijsical and Moral.

6 CAUSATION WOEKING IN AN ENVIRONMENT.

of the future. The plants now on the earth are the de-
scendants of those created by God, and the ancestors of
those that are to appear in the ages to come.

There is through all times, as in the year, a succession
of seasons ; sowing and reaping, sowing in order to reap,
and reaping what has been sown in order to its being sown
again. This gives a continuousness, a consistency, to na-
ture amidst all the mutations of time. There is not only
a contemporaneous order in nature, there is a successive
order. The beginning leads to the end, and the end is the
issue of the beginning. This grass and grain, and these
forests that cover the ground, have seed in them which
will continue in undefined ages to adorn and enrich the
ground. These birds that sing among the branches, and
these cattle upon a thousand hills, will build nests and rear
young to furnish nourishmentiind delight to our children's
children in millennial ages. Every naturalist has seen a
purpose gained by the nutriment laid up in the seed or
pod to feed the young plant. I see a higher end accom-
plished by the mother provided for the young animal.
That infant is not cast forth into the cold world unpro-
tected : it has a mother's arms to protect it and a mother's
love to fondle it. Development is not in itself an irreli-
gious process ; every one who has been reared under a
father's care and a mother's love will bless God for it.

SECTION II.

DEVELOPMENT IS CAUSATION W^ORKING IN AN ENVIRONMENT.

Science has not determined, and never may be able to
determine, what are the original constituents of the universe.
Some are fond of looking upon them as atoms, some repre-
sent them as centres of force, others w^ill allow them to be

AGENTS FORM CAUSES. 7

only centres of motion — with nothing to move ! AVhatever
they be, there must be millions of millions of them work-
ing in the knowable world.

It is by no means certain that we have been able to de-
termine what is the number of elementary bodies in the
world. The ancient Greek division into earth, water, air,
and fire, merely pointed in a rude way to a division of
states — the solid, the fluid, the vaporous, and the ethereal.
The number of elements is supposed for the present and
provisionally to be sixty-five, but most chemists believe
that some of these may be I'esolved into components.

It would be wrong in us to aflirm dogmatically that we
know what are the varied forces, or, as some would prefer
expressing them, the powers of producing motion. One
point, however, has been established in our day, that all the
physical energies are in a sense one ; that they are all — be
it the mechanical, chemical, vital, electric — correlated, and
that their sum, real and potential, cannot be increased or
diminished.

What we have to do is to observe these entities, elements,
or powers as working, and to notice in particular that they
operate in the way of evolution.

These existences, with their energies, combine to form
causes, and these form combined or organized causes. All
of them have affinities with each other. Some of these are
stronger than others in themselves, or from the relative
position which they occupy. These combine in their action.
"VYe may represent the agencies at work by the letters of
the alphabet. A, B, C, etc. A number of these, say A, D,
P, S, may join and produce powerful individual occurrences
— an earthquake, a volcano, a conflagration, a revolution.
Or they may abide and produce general issues, continued for
hours, or days, or years. Thus the winds combine and
go in currents, and we have the trade-winds. Thus the

8 RESULTS FROM CAUSATION AND ENVIRONMENT.

waters of the ocean are made to flow in one direction, and
we have the Gulf Stream, and the cold wave from Labrador.
But these organized causal operations do not embrace,
in at least an appreciable or calculable manner, all the
powers or causes of the universe ; they comprise only a
portion as in conspicuous operation. The causes that pro-
duce a cyclone in the Indian Ocean, may have no percep-
tible connection with those that produce a flood in the
rivers of America. The moral agencies that produce a
revolution in Paris, may have no visible relation with the
discontent which leads the Indians to rise and murder their
white neighbors in America. But there is no set of causes
in our world so isolated that they have no connection with
surrounding causes. Possibly A, D, P, S have some rela-
tionship with B, E, Q, T. These other powers will so far
act on the organized causation and modify it, it may be in
the way of strengthening or weakening the tendency, or
giving a special direction to the stream. While they do
so, they will themselves be affected, perhaps be absorbed
or driven off. The winds and ocean currents are all affect-
/-ed by the nature of the land over which they travel. The
/ tides are directed by the nature of the shore, and the sea-
sons, by, it may be, various solar or lunar influences. Every
combined mundane agency has a sphere, and this sphere
lias an atmosphei-e, or an evironment as it is called, which
it so far sways, and by which it may be swayed.

SECTION m.

REGULAR RESULTS FROM COMBINED CAUSATION AND ENVIRON-
MENT.

The former is a stream receiving contributions as it flows
on from the other, which constitutes its banks, that are
watered by it, it may be formed by it. From the inter-

REGULAR RESULTS. 9

action, specially from the unions and separations, there fol-
low certain regularities which are worthy of notice.

There are courses which go on for a time and then dis-
appear. The wind arises from there being a comparative
vacuum somewhere, into which it rushes, and then sinks
because the inequality is so far filled. There is a high
tide produced when the moon and sun are pulling in one
way, but it ceases when the two are not acting in unison.
There are epochs in which certain motives or impulses
prevail — periods of war and conquest, periods of commercial
enterprises, periods of the cultivation of the fine arts;
these have public opinion for a time in their favor, and
then give way before something else. In all such cases the
combination of the causes producing the movement is
loosened and new combinations are formed.

There are results that abide the same from year to year,
and from age to age : that stream has for a thousand years
risen in the same fountain, among the same hills, and
flowed through the same valleys into the same creek
of the ocean. Thus there are plants and animals now
living which have not been visibly changed since they
appeared millions of years ago in the early geological
ages. The Chinese have continued much the same in
character, occupations, and mode of life, for thousands of
years. In all such cases the same causes have conthmed
to act and produce the same effects. In other cases there
have been irruptions, convulsions, and wars which have
produced new modes of life ; such, for instance, was the
irruption of the hordes from the northeast upon the de-
caying Roman empire.

The most curious instances of regularities are those
which are periodic. A certain combination of causes pro-
duces certain issues, and is then dissolved, to be succeeded
after a certain time by the formation of a like combina-

10 RESULTS FROM CAUSATION AND ENVIRONMENT.

tion and the same issues following. It is thus that at
certain seasons there are daily sea-breezes and daily land-
breezes. As more marked and obvious we have the
seasons. " While the earth remaineth, seed-time and
harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and
day and night shall not cease." Here w^e have sun and
seed and soil concurring to produce an orderly series of
events which run their course and are succeeded by a
like series. Malarial influences are introduced into the
system, which take a certain time to work and to be cast
off ; and we have diseases lasting four days or ten days or
fourteen days. We have such a periodic process in every
plant springing from a seed, and every animal from a
germ, having a growth and an average life and then dy-
ing, but first producing a new life. W^e have such periods
in the movements of the heavenly bodies, as in the preces-
sion of the equinoxes.

It is more to our present purpose to remark that in de-
velopment there is usually progression. At times indeed
there is degeneracy, as when plants do not thrive in a nig-
gardly soil, and animals get weaker in a deleterious cli-
mate. But, upon the whole, there has been an advance in
our earth from age to age. The tendency of animal life
is generally upward, from all fours to the upright position,
from which men can look up to heaven. There are spe-
cies of plants and animals which have become larger and
more robust. Geological causes made our earth fit for the
abode of man, who had cereals and cattle provided for
him. Human beings have come to occupy places which
in earlier ages were handed over to wild animals. There
is now a larger amount of animal food than in any pre-
vious age. As the ages roll on there is a greater fulness
of sentient life, and a larger capacity of happiness. The
average life of human beings in civilized countries is in-

DIFFERENTIATION AND INTEGRATION. 11

creasing. The intellectual powers have been made stronger
and firmer, like the trunk of a tree, and the feelings, like
the flowers, have been made by culture to take a fuller
expansion and a richer color.

Under this head may be placed those grand generaliza-
tions which have been so magnified by Herbert Spencer in
his " First Principles." He assumes a Persistence of Force
in the universe, derived from an unknow^n and unknow-
able power beneath it. This leads to a constant differentia-
tion and integration ; in simpler terms, a separation of ele-
ments, and again an aggregation. He shows that '' any
finite homogeneous aggregate must lose its homogeneity,
through the unequal exposure of its parts to incident
forces." Hence the instability of the homogeneous and
the pei'petual motion in the universe. This scattering
issues in an integration. The result is to change an indefi-
nitfe homogeneity into a definite heterogeneity, and then
aggregates of all orders are evolved. Everywhere there is
a change from a confused simplicity to a distinct complex-
ity, from a diffusion to a concenti-ation. But opposed there
may be a more powerful attraction which separates and
diffuses the aggregate : " Evolution and dissolution as to-
gether making up the entire process through which things
pass." " There is habitually a passage from homogeneity
to heterogeneity, along wath the passage from diffusion to
concentration." This may be expressed in terms of Matter
and Motion, "and if so, it must be a statement of the
truth that the concentration of Matter implies the dissipa-
tion of Motion, and that, conversely, the absorption of
Motion implies the diffusion of Matter." In the end, to
the vast aggregate, even to the earth itself, Dissohition
must eventually arrive, and " universal Evolution will be
followed by universal Dissolution."

These generalizations are very w4de, and the conclusions

12 EVOLUTION IN INANIMATE NATURE.

far reaching. Possibly there may be gaps in the processes.
The giant, in marching on with his seven-leagued boots,
may have overlooked many agencies which modify his
theories. He is wrong in declaring that the power under-
neath the persistence of force is unknown and unknowable.
According to his own account it is so far known, it is
known to be a power, and a power persisting and working
certain effects. It can be shown to be a power character-
ized by wisdom and love. He omits certain powers which
are as patent as those he notices. In particular he regards
mind as consisting of nerves, and overlooks all its special
properties — of intelligence, conscience, and will. When
these are introduced they give a new, and, I venture to
say, a juster and more attractive aspect to the whole of
nature. I am not satisfied when I find myself and my
friends represented as mere developments from homogene-
ous matter, produced by diiferentiation. But I am willing
to accept his generalizations so far as the physical powers
of nature are concerned.

SECTION IV.

EVOLUTION IN INANIMATE NATURE.

" Evolution," says Herbert Spencer, " is a change from
an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent
hlo^geneity through a continuous differentiation and in-
teo-ration." I am willing to take this doctrine, but I have
to unfold it in my own way, which will be less technical,
but fully as accordant with facts.

In nature there is a very large, but still definite number
of bodies, all acting causally. As they act a number are
drawn into aggregates by their mutual attractions or af-

PROGRESSION AND DESIGN. 13

finities, or their proximity. The action is of the nature of
causation ; I call it a combined or organized causation.
Thus, in our mundane system, we have the sun, planets,
and moons, with a certain shape — an oblate spheroid — with
a rotation round their axes and round each other. These
may be regarded as developments produced by differentia-
tion. As a result of the collocation of the sun and the
earth we have the seasons, with their regularities and their
irregularities. We have also had the stratified structure of
the earth, and mountains heaved up, and valleys between.
All this has arisen very much from combined causation.
In the aggregates produced there are internal changes go-
ing on. Thus the earth is supposed in the geological ages
to have become cooled and fitted for the abodes of ani-
mated beings. But the combination of causes is in the
centre of an immense number of other causes, which may
be called its surroundings, or, more technicalh', an environ-
ment. The aggregate and its environment act on each
other and produce farther changes, it may be in accumu-
lation, say in adding plant-fostering soil on the earth's sur-
face, or washing away seas and increasing dry land.

But there is a second characteristic of development ob-
servable everywhere in nature, and that is a progression.
There is an advance from a homogeneous to a more differ-
entiated state in which new aggregates with their functions
appear. This may be produced by accumulations of forces
breaking out in convulsions, which change so far the face
of the earth ; or more frequently by small increments, as
the growth of soil by the decay of plants.

In all this I discover order and design. I do not see
that the constituents of the world, its atoms or molecules,
necessarily produce beneficent results. If left to them-
selves they might produce evil quite as easily and naturally
as good, and might have been formed into destrnctiv^e

14 eyolutio:n^ in inanimate nature.

machines and pestiferous creatures, into flaming meteors
with burning worlds, into serpents and wild beasts devour-
ing each other and arresting all forms of beauty and bene-
ficence, and yet incapable of dying. But, instead of this,
these million agencies combine to accomplish good and
benign ends, so as to show that there has been a mind dis-
posing them and an end in view.

Let us notice, first, that the combination of elements
acting as causes has produced general laws and beneficent
order : in the seasons, in the growth of the plant — first the
blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear — in the
animal enjoying its time, and handing down its life to
another generation. All this is not the action of simple
properties acting fortuitously or fatally ; it is the result
of the adjustment of numerous properties of matter —
gravitating, mechanical, chemical, electric — all conspiring
toward an end.

Second!}'-, the combination accomplishes special ends, such
as those so happily illustrated by Paley and other writers on
natural theology. There are, for example, the joints of the
bodily frame composed of bones that fit into each other for
good ends, namely, easy and convenient movements ; the
firm clasping of the hand, and the simple forward and
backward motion of the fingers, and the ball and socket
at the shoulder admitting rotation all round. There are the
bodily senses— the eye, the ear, and touch — so delicately
adapted to the external world, with which they make us ac-
quainted. There is the whole animal frame, made up of
various parts, yet all combining into a living machine of
exquisite structure.

Xot only is development, when properly understood, not
inconsistent with religion, it will be found that the com-
bination and adaptation in it clearly argue design. Sooner
or later there will be written a work on natural theology,

DESIGN IN DEVELOPMENT. 15

after the manner of Paley, showing that as there are plan
and purpose in the well-fitted limbs and organs of animals,
so there is also design, and this quite as evident and as
wondrous in the way in which, by a process running
through ages, the bones and muscles have been adjusted
to each other to produce the horse we diive or ride on.
There is a manifest beneficent end in the knittings of our
frame, but there is quite as palpable a purpose in the way
in which all the parts have been moulded in the geolo-
gical ages, and handed down by heredity.

I therefore see design in development. There is an ob-
vious end and a means arranged to accomplish it. We
notice purpose evident in the development which man is
ever accomplishing. The farmer uses a series of agencies
to secure a crop : he ploughs, he harrows, he sows seed,
he weeds, and in the end he gathers in a crop. The teacher
lays out a plan for developing the faculties of his pupils :
he imparts knowledge, he corrects, he stimulates, and he
reaches his aim, the improvement of the mind and a
■fitness for the duties of life. We are ever noticing cases
in which there is need of co-operation to accomplish an
end. A house is built and furnished because a number of
persons have done each his part — the mason, the carpenter,
the plumber, the slater, the glazier, the upholsterer. A
city becomes rich because the merchants have been far-
sighted, the manufacturers expert, and the tradesmen skil-
ful and industrious. The country prospers because the
master and the servant, the schoolmaster and the minister
of religion, are all and each doing their part. But there
are still more wondrous evidences of plan, and in the suc-
cession of the seasons, of the grass and grain and trees,
and in the living creatures advancing in fulness and strength,
in activity and beauty. It is not in the single operation
that we discover evidence of a purpose so much as in their

/

16 GOD IN DEVELOPMENT.

organization and orderly succession and development. De-
velopment is a sort of corporation in which each part, like
the citizen, fulfils its office.'

Evolution is not, any more than gravitation, chemical
affinity, or any other power or law of nature, an irreligious
process. Spencer accounts for all its operations by the per-
sistence of force beneath, and behind which he feels him-
self obliged to place an unknown power. I, too, am obliged
to place such a power ; but to me it is so far a known power.
There is more in the production than the persistence of
force ; there is an arrangement of all the evolved and in-
volved powers to work for an end, and in this I perceive
design and intelligence. I do not stand up for a develop-
ment any more than I do for a gravitation independent of
God. I see God in the persistence of force, and in the
beneficent way in which it works. I can see a good pur-
pose worthy of God served by universal gravitation, in
binding together all the parts of the universe, however
widely sundered. But I can also discover it to be a benefi-
cent arrangement, whereby by evolution the present is con-
nected with the past and the future, and the most remote
times are brought together. I do not say that God could
not have accomplished these ends in some other way, but
he has actually effected them by means of causation and
evolution, and I bless him for it.

1 see God in development throughout, and from begin-
ning to end. Because a rose, a dog, or liorse is gendered by
natural causes, it is not less the work of God. Our finest
roses are deris-ed from the common dog rose of Europe {^Eosa

' I am not here constructing or defending the theistic argument. If
it be objected that the existence of pain sets aside teleology, I simply
say that I am not to enter on the subject of the mystery of evil, but I
hold that there may be evidence of the existence both of suffering and
of love in one and the same world.

DEVELOPMENT IN ORGANIC NATURE. 17

canina) : that rose with its simple beauty by the roadside is
the divine workmanship ; but so is the rose with the fullest
form and the gayest color in our gardens. God, who rewards
us for opening our eyes upon his works, gives higher rewards
to those who, in love to him, or to them, bestow labor and
pains upon them. Dogs, it is said, have descended from
some kind of wolf. This does not make the highly de-
veloped shepherd or St. Bernard dog, with their won-
drous instincts, not to be the divine workmanship. Just
as little does the hypothesis that our living horse is de-
scended from the pliohippos, and this from the miohippos,
and this again from the small eohippos, which used to
tread with its five toes on marshy ground, prove that the
animal we ride on, so useful and so graceful, so agile, and
so docile, is not the creature of the Creator who formed it
and endowed it with the power of evolution.

SECTION V.

DEVELOPMENT IN ORGANIC NATURE.

There is no difficulty presented to the religious man in
development, so far as it relates to inanimate nature ; he
may believe in evolution as a mode of divine operation.
Doubts and difficulties arise when he is required to assent
to its universal application to every form of organized be-
ing. But surely if it exists and is prevalent in dead matter
without being atheistic it may also be allowed in plants
and animals.

It is admitted on all hands to have a place and power in
the individual plant and animal, both of which proceed
from the seed or germ, take a typical form, and have a
normal time to live and produce an offspring. There is a

18 DEVELOPMEXT IN INDIVIDUALS.

sense in which the oak is in the acorn, the child is father
of the man. Both grow partly by internal powers and
arrangements, and partly by external nourishment and
accretions from day to day, and from year to year. If
any one regards this as taking place independent of God,
he is so far an atheist. If he believes it to be accomplished
by the power of God, he is thus far a true theist, and his
heart may be filled with adoration and his mouth with
praise.

^^ot only is there development in the individual, but
also in the succession of individuals. There is here a ro-
tation, the egg from the living being developed into a
new living being, producing a new egg. It is equally true
that the bird is from the egg and the egg from the bird,
and both by evolution. Iso one will speak against such
an arrangement, as it provides children for the comfort of
parents and parents to care for children.

But disputes arise when development is carried farther.
It is allowed that there is development in the individual,
but may it also take place in the species ? In other words,
can one species grow out of another ? To clear the ground
for a fair discussion let us look at what is admitted.

It is allowed, nay, maintained, that there is such a thing
in nature as distinct species, genera, and orders. These, in
ordinary circumstances, cannot be changed into each other.
The lily cannot be transmuted into the rose, nor the sheep
into the goat. In the common operations of nature every
plant and animal is after its kind or species. Figs do not
produce thistles, nor do thistles produce figs.

It is also admitted by all that species develop varieties.'

' Prof. Asa Gray writes: "The facts, so far as I can judge, do not
support the assumption of every sided and indifferent variations. The
variations do not tend in many directions ; the variations seem to be
an internal response to external impressions."

DEVELOPMENT IN SPECIES. 19

I believe there is no one tree — oak or pine, elm or birch-
precisely the same in the old world and in the new. What
a variety of pigeons are there, all descended, it is supposed,
from the rock pigeon. These varieties are produced inter-
nally, largely by external circumstances, that is, by the en-
vironment. In a barren soil and a severe climate an oak
will become dwarfed and its descendants will be the same.
The dog can be trained to point at game, and a breed will
be produced possessing this aptitude. It has to be added
that these varieties tend to return, if the environment does
not continue to prevent it, to the original type of the species.
The cultivated plant, cast out of the garden, will be apt to
go back to its wild state. It is usual also that when animals
of different species have paired, the horse and the ass for
instance, the offspring — the mule — is not prolilic and dies
out.

We have approached the battlefield gradually, but now
we are in the midst of the fight, and we may watch it,
even though we do not take part with either side. Two
grand questions are before us. One relates to the pro-
duction of the species at the first. Wej-e the species of
amoeba, of molluscs, of insects, of fishes, of reptiles, of
mammals (the consideration of man had best be deferred)
created, very much as they now are, by the immediate fiat
of God at the beginning, or as the ages rolled on ? Or were
they evolved out of a previous material by internal laws
of development and by constant increments from the en~
vironment ? The second question is intimately connected
with the first, In rare and extraordinary circumstances
can new species come forth out of the old, as varieties do,
and these go down by heredity ?

The opinions of the ancients on such a subject are of no
value, as they have no scientific basis. Many deep think-
ers believed in spontaneous generation, and supposed that

20 DEVELOPMENT IN ORGANIC NATURE.

lower animated creatures came out of tlie sea or bubbled
out of marshes, and they did not see anything irreligious
in this, as they, or at least a number of them, believed it to
be done by a divine power. In the earlier centuries of the
modern era, naturalists were carefully observing the spe-
cies, genera, and orders, with the view of classifying plants
and animals, and they were fond of regarding kinds as
fixed and immutable. Religious people were inclined to
regard all natural species as created by God, and this re-
quired, when they came to believe in geological succession,
a perpetual creation down to the period at which man
appeared. Since the days of Mallet and Geoffroy St.
Hilaire there has been an ever-increasing body of natural-
ists inclined to account for the origin of species by natural
law.

Who is to settle these questions, or rather this question,
for it is one ? This can be done only by long and varied
observation and discussion. I certainly feel as to myself
that I cannot decide it. The tendency of modern specula-
tion has all been toward the prevalence of development by
natural causation. Yet there are phenomena of which it
may be said that they cannot at this present time be ex-
plained by any natural process. But there is one point
on which I am quite as much entitled to speak as any
other is : Does religion require us to insist that species and
orders in natural science are all fixed forever ? that in no
circumstances can a new species be produced by natural law ?

It is certainly conceivable that the God who created all
things should also have created by a direct act, without a
medium or without a process, the first member of every
one of tlie hundred thousands of plants and animals on the
earth, and then allowed, or, rather, enabled, them to go
down by an evolutionary heredity. But it is quite as pos-
sible and equally conceivable that God may have organized

HOVr PRODUCKD. 21

the species out of the previously existing materials, even
as he made man's body out of the dust of the ground. The
essential elements of organisms are oxygen, nitrogen, hy-
drogen, carbon, with sulphur and iron, and aqueous fluids.
These are represented as being the least volatile of the
elements and the most permanent in their combination,
and because of these qualities tliey may have been brought
and kept together in organisms. It is quite conceivable
that out of the constituents of the universe God may have
arranged that these should combine to form those aggre-
gates which we call plants and animals, and as the ages
run on, to form new species in rare and exceptional cir-
cumstances. It has to be added that these elements will
not of themselves form livhig beings without some in-
herent or superadded hereditary vital power, a subject
which will have to be considered separately. Xow, it is
not for me to say beforehand wdiich of these methods,
immediate or mediate, God should adopt. The former
of these might seem to bring in God more directly. It
certainly makes him interfere more frequently with the
W'Orks of nature ; but then, when he is thus interfering,
he is interfering with his own w^orks, wdiich we may sup-
pose to have been planned from the first in infinite wis-
dom. If it be found in fact that he has chosen tiie latter
method, we are just as much entitled in that case as in the
other to discover the action of God, and we may without
presumption discover evidences of beneficence. For God
does thus secure not only a connection of his works with
himself, but a connection of them one with another ; and
thus, on the one hand, there is a certain stability in natural
classes, while, on the other liand, there is a sufiicient
amount of variety and pi-ogression to suit the organism to
new positioTis and provide for the survival of the fittest,
which is certainly a good provision.

22 THp:orjES of development.

A number of tlieories have been devised to account for
the production of what seem to be new species. Darwin
gives prominence to the principle of Natural Selection,
wdth its accompaniment the Survival of the Fittest ; but
acknowledges in his later editions that he had attached
too much importance to it. The phrase is not a very
happy one, as it seems to imply choice, which certainly
has no place in the process. But it points to a fact that
the weakest plants and animals are most apt to die eai'ly
and leave no progeny, whereas the strong live and have a
more pow^erful offspring. I do not purpose to give all the
theories, or to examine them critically. They differ chietly
in this, that some attach more importance to the operation
of the internal elements, others to the external circum-
stances or environment. Some hold that there is an action
producing change, variety, and progression in the com-
ponents and structure of the organism, in the germ or in
its growth. Among those who thus look for the cause of
the development in the organs themselves may be men-
tioned Lyell, Mivart, and Professor Owen, in England ;
Professor Gra^j, and Professor Cope in America ; and, in
^Germany, Braun, Gegenbaur, Heer, Tsageli, Yirchow,
etc.* Most of them seem to make the development pro-
ceed by gradual steps, scarcely if at all observable ; others
through a metamorphosis of germs and hetei'ogenetic
leaps. Perhaps we may have to take with us both the
internal and external causes, in some cases tlie one, and in
some the other being the stronger. The development of
the individual certainly involves both an inwai'd power of

' We have an admirable work on The Theories of Darwin, by Ru-
dolph Schmid, excellently translated by G. A. Zimmermann (Jansen,
N M'Clurg & Co., Chicago). Tliis work is at once philosophical and scien-
Hific, and being now so accessible, renders it unnecessary for me to state
and criticize the tlieories of evolution.

THERE IS MORE THAN PHYSICAL ENERGY. 23

growtli, and also external support and nutriment ; both
are necessary to produce tlie full form, and the seed
which propagates the species. There may be the same
principle in the production, in rare circumstances possibly
only in the early geological ages, of new species. It is
conceivable that in the earlier times aggregates might not
have been so fixed as to render germs and species absolute-
ly unchangeable. They seem now to be so determined
that the species of animals and plants are comparatively
permanent.

It is always to be remembered that in vegetable and in
animal development there is more than mechanical en-
ergy. Mr, Spencer can scarcelj^ be said to have perceived
this ; certainly he has not given it its due place and prom-
inence. There is evidently a chemical power in exercise,
and this cannot be said to have yet been resolved into
mechanism. Then there is a power, which without de-
fining it, was simply called vital by our older naturalists,
and which, however it may have been produced, and
whatever may be its natui-e, is in actual operation higher
than either the mechanical or chemical. Even Darwin is
obliged to bring in a panzoism to account for the genesis
and continuance of organisms. Mr. Spencer himself has
to use physiological units to explain heredity. What are
these but particular exhibitions of the old vital forces ?

Perhaps the most remarkable example of this physio-
logical development is to be seen in the progress of the
embryo in the womb, as discovered by Yon Baer. The
germ is apparently (it cannot be so I'eally) much the same
in all animals except the lowest ; but it becomes differen-
tiatea and takes the form of the polyps, the worms, the
molluscs, and arthropods, and goes on to the fish, the
amphibia, the reptiles, to birds and mannnalia. Xow this
progression, as every one knows, is very much the same

24 WHAT DEVELOPMENT CANNOT DO.

as that of the animal races in the geological ages. This
does not imply, as I nnderstand it, that the germ of the
mammal, in its ascending process, ever does become a bird
or a reptile. It means that there are combinations of
agents in the germ and its surroundings, which proceed,
that is, are developed after a certain manner, and that
from a prearranged combination of matters and forces
there has been a like or parallel progression in the whole
animal kingdom. All this implies more than mere me-
chanical energy or persistence of force. Powers are im-
plied, which, in the present stage of science cannot be
resolved into the mechanical. Yet in no human machine
can we discover more clearly the evidence of a plan and
purpose. With these new powers acting, there is now a
higher manner and form of development, and we have
one generation of intelligent and moral beings succeeding
another.

SECTION VI.

WHAT DEVELOPMENT CANNOT DO.

While it can do much, it may not be able to do every-
thing. There is a tendency among eager and hasty thinkers
to push every newly discovered truth to an extreme. I am
as old as to remember the feeling kindled when Sir Hum-
phry Davy made his brilliant discoveries as to electricity
and chemical action. There were sciolists in our schools
of popular science, book critics in our newspapers, and
wandering lecturers who hastened to make electricity ac-
count for everything, for even life and mind itself. This
scientific fashion, never encouraged by the great discoverer
himself, soon ran and ended its course, and died out in

CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR ORIGIN. 25

the struggle for existence as other and equally powerful
agents catne into notice. Evolution is at present running
a like course. The great scientific work of the past age
has been to show what it can do ; that of the coming age
is to lay a restraint upon its career, and to show what it
cannot do. Like all creature action it will be found to
have very stringent limitations. We may fix on some of
these.

I. It cannot give an account of the oi'igination of
things. This is implied in its nature and its very name.
Development takes place among materials already existing.
Evolution is the derivation of one thing from another
thing. But the mind does seek after an origin. This
has been maintained by Aristotle, and by the profound
thinkers of all ages. The principle of causation insists on
going back from effect to cause, and from one cause to an-
other, and is not satisfied till it rests in an originating sub-
stance possessed of the power to produce all that follow\^.
Evolution implies a set of acting substances. So far from
accounting for these, say body with its attractions and af-
finities, and mind with its thoughts and feeliugs, it pre-
supposes that these exist and that they are acting. The
mind seems to demand an account of these ; development
cannot furnish this, and has to call in a creator and organ-
izer. Evolution simply shows a fiowing and widening
stream, ijnplying a fountain, which, however, it conceals in
mist.

II. It does not originate the power wdiich works in de-
velopment. That process shows us objects acting causally,
but takes and gives no account either of the objects or the ^
forces in them. To account for them, Herbert Spencer
calls in what he denominates the Persistence of Force — a
phrase to which some object. But call it what you please,
force or power or energy, or the persistence of force, or

26 WHAT DEVELOPMENT CAiX^saT DO.

the conservation of energy, there is certainly such a thing,
not imaginary or hypothetical bnt real. Spencer thereby
accounts for all the action of nature. But he is philoso-
pher enough to know that this implies something behind,
beneath, or above it. He is obliged to do this by the
nature and necessity of thought. He is constrained to
believe this because it is impossible to conceive the oppo-
site, which, according to him, is the ultimate test and
criterion of truth. I am not disposed to put the argument
in this form, but I join him in holding that we are neces-
sitated to believe that there is a something beyond the
matter and force which we notice. With him this is un-
known and unknowable, and he kindly and condescendingly
makes this the sphere of religion. Yet he himself is obliged
to acknowledge that he knows something about it. Indeed
it is impossible for him or any one to speak about it, to
make any predication of it, unless he so far knows it. He
knows it to be a power and to have power ; and surely this
is knowledge, and rather important knowledge. He every-
where speaks of a necessary " belief in a power of which no
limit in time or space can be conceived." This limitless-
riess is surely a farther knowledge. He can tell a great deal
about its working by differentiation and integration, pro-
ducing happiness and virtue, causing an advance, and fin-
ally dissolving all things in a universal conflagration.
Such a thing is not absolutely unknown. I agree with
him in thinking that there is, that there must be, such a
power. But on the same ground as he argues that it ex-
ists and is a power, I argue that we know it to be not only
a power but a wise power, a benevolent, a righteous power.
But evolution has not produced this power, it is the pro-
duction of it.

III. Evolution of itself cannot give us the beneficent
laws and special ends w^e see in nature. There is in force,

CANNOT ACCOUNT FOR ORDER. 27

considered in itself, neither good nor evil. It is as ready
to work destruction as to promote the spread of happiness.
The persistence of force might be a persistence in evil.
The separate agencies being blind might as readily produce
confusion as order. A railway train, without a head or
hand to put it on the right track, might only work havoc.
In order to operate beneficently the persisting never-dymg
force must have collocations, as Chalmers calls them,
adaptations or adjustments, as I call them, to enable them
to accomplish the good ends which are so visible.

These are of two kinds. One is a general order, or
what are called laws of nature, such as the seasons and the
periods of animal life. I am inclined to see purposes in the
very forms of animals and plants, and the manner in which
they grow into their type, while the type ever advances
as if to realize an idea. I discover an end in the manner
in which plants and animals are produced. Two arrange-
ments are necessary to effect this. First, there is the ten-
dency of every living thing to produce a seed or germ.
The powers necessary to accomplish this are very numer-
ous and very complex, but all conspiring toward this one
end, as if it w^ere one of the purposes for which the plant
was created. Secondly, there is the growth of the plant or
animal from its embryo. This, too, implies an immense
combination of arranged elements and forces. It looks
excessively like an end contemplated, an idea to be real-
ized. It looks all the more like this wdien we notice that
the seed or germ is after its kind, and produces a new life
of the same type.

I have endeavored to show in another work that in our
world there is not only law and general government, but a
particular providence accomplishing special ends.' The

' Method of Divine Government, Part II.

28 j^^EW rOWEES APPEAKIIN'G IN THE AGES.

laws produce general results, but tliey are also made to
conspire and concur and cross each other, so as to produce
individual events, which, as far as we know, follow no gen-
eral law. This is manifest in every part of God's govern-
ment, but is specially seen in God's dealings toward his
intelligent and sensitive creatures. " A sparrow cannot
fall to the ground w^ithout him." Thoughtful minds have
ever felt comforted by the thought that there is a God
watching over them, and ordering their lot from beginning
to end, sending health or disease at the proper season,
^ gratifying their wishes or thwarting them, according as may

^.^ ,-' be for their best good. All this may be done by the per-
sistence of force, but it is by a force guided by intelli-
gence and love. When man accomplishes any end, it is by
p^working on materials already prepared for him. Bat the
God who created the materials has also arranged them for
I the accomplishment of his purposes. There is need of a

y -^\ po^^er above evolution to account for the beneficence of

Y^ \ evolution.

SECTION vn.

NEW TOWERS APPEARING IN THE AGES.

I HAVE shown that in ])liysical causation there is merely
a changed state of the bodies acting as the causes. A and
B act upon each other and constitute a cause, the effect
being simply A' and B' in a new state with no new bodies,
and no added energy, the energy in the two A and B
being the same as in A' B', with a portion in the one
transferred to the other. In all such causation there is no
energy in the effect which w^as not in the cause. If there
be a new power appearing it must be superadded. But
new powers have appeared.

REVEALED BY GEOLOGY. 2d

For the purposes of mj exposition, it is not necessary
that I should determine what are the oi'iginal bodies or
powers in our world, what is their nature, and how many
they are. They may be atoms, simple and indivisible,
they may be molecules consisting of two or more atoms i;i
union. These no doubt have all their powers by which
they act.

Geology clearly reveals that new products have appeared.
There was a time when there was no organism and no life,
no plant or animal. But at a set time oi-ganized matter
appeared, say protoplasm. When there was no animated
being I believe that there was no sensation, pleasant or
painful, and it certainly cannot be proven that there was
any feeling in the protoplasm or in the plant. As ages
roll on we have creatures evidently feeling pleasure and
liable to pain. Organisms both in the vegetable and ani-
mal form rise higher and higher, and animals become
possessed of impulses which prompt them to act in a cer-
tain way. We have now powers higher than the mechan-
ical, we have the vital, the sensitive, and the beginning of
the psychical. Hiickel divides the organic world into
three kingdoms — the protista, the vegetable, and the ani-
mal. He traces twenty-two stages in the rise from the
protista on to man, eight of them belonging to the inver-
tebrate and fourteen to the vertebrates. I am not dis-
posed to sanction this pedigree and every stage of it. But
it is clear that there is such an advance. In the animal
kingdom there is first sensation, then instinctive impulse,
then lower rising to higher forms of intelligence, distin-
guishing things that differ, conducting long processes of
reasoning and induction, and giving us glimpses of spirit-
nal and eternal truth. Finally, we have a moral nature
discerning between good and evil, laying obligations upon
us to promote the happiness, and as higher, the moral

30 NEW POWERS APPEARING IN THE AGES.

good of man, and pointing to a judgment-daj. Natural-
ists may be tempted to overlook these last, the higli ideas
of which we are conscious ; but these are realities, are
facts revealed to the inner sense quite as clearly and as
certainly as the visible and tangible molecular and molar
parts, the seed, the limbs, the joints, the nerves and brain,
revealed to the external senses.

Was there Life in the original atom, or molecule formed
of the atoms ? If not, how did it come in when the first
plant appeared ? Was there sensation in the original mole-
cule ? If not, what brought it in when the first animal
had a feeling of j^leasure or of pain ? Was there mind in
the first molecule, say a power of perceiving an object out
of itself ? Was there consciousness in the first molecule or
monad — a consciousness of self ? Was there a power of
comparing or judging, of discerning things, of noting their
agreements or differences? Had it a power of reason-
ing, of inferring the unseen from the seen, of the future
from the past ? Were there emotions in these first exist-
ences? say a hope of continued life or a fear of approach-
ing death ? Perhaps they had loving attachments to each
other, perhaps they had some morality, say a sense of
justice in keeping their own whirl, and allowing to others
their rights and their place in this dance ! Had they will
at the beginning, and a power of choosing between pleasure
and pain, between the evil and the good ? Perhaps they
had some piety, and paid worship of the silent sort to
God!

It is needless to say that there is not even the semblance
of a proof of there being any such capacities in the original
atoms or force-centres. If so, how did they come in ?
Take one human capacity: how did consciousness come
in? Herbert Spencer, the mightiest of them, would have
us believe that he has answered the question, and yet he

SENSATIOX. 31

has simply avoided it. In his " Psychology " ' he is speak-
ing of nerves for hundreds of pages ; he shows tliat in
their development there is a succession of a certain kind ;
and adds simply that " there must arise a consciousness^'' !
This is all he condescends to say, bringing in no cause or
link or connection. Thus does he slip over the gap — a
practice not unconnnon with this bold speculator.

It is pertinent to ask, How did these things come in ?
IIow did things without sensation come to have sensation ?
things w^ithout instinct to have instinct ? creatures without
memory to have memory ? beings without intelligence to
hav^e intelligence ? mere sentient existence to know the ^
distinction between good and evil ? 'I am sure that when "^
these things appear, there is sometlnng not previously in
the atom or molecule. All sober thinkers of the day ad-
mit that there is no evidence wdiatever in experience or in
reason to shov^r that matter can produce mind ; that me-
chanical action can gender mental action ; that chemical -
action can manufacture consciousness ; that electric action
can reason, or organic structure rise to the idea of the good
and the holy. I argue according to reason and experi- ^
ence that we must call in a power above the original physical
forces to produce such phenomena. I may admit that a body
may come out of another body by the powers with which -
the bodies are endow^ed ; but I say that a sensitive, intelli-
gent, moral discerning soul cannot proceed from the ele-
ments of matter. IS^ew powers have undoubtedly come in
when consciousness and understanding and will begin to
act. They may come according to laws not yet discovered,
but they are the laws of the Supreme Lawgiver.

It will be argued by some that there must liave been all \
along in the atoms a latent life, sensation, consciousness,

Psychology, Vol. I., Sec. 179.

32 NEW POWERS APPEARIXG IN THE AGES.

and mind, with beneficence and capacity of choice, ready
to be dev^eloped in the ceons, some in thousands and some
in millions of years. Those who deny that any new pow-
ers have appeared must resort to some such supposition.
It may be allowed that this is a thing imaginable and pos-
sible, but there is not the semblance of a proof in its favor.
Certainly there is no evidence that sentient beings could
have passed through the intolerable heat of the star-dust
from which our former worlds are supposed to have come.
Even if we should discover proof of this, we should, in the
very fact, have proof of design in the way in which these
latent powers have come forth at the appropriate times,
and continued ever afterw^ard to operate in organized
plants, in sentient animals, and in intelligent man. AVe
have to choose our horn. If all the endowments now in
our world were in primary molecules ready to come forth
at the fit time, it is clear that they must have been the
creature of an intelligence of inconceivable power. If
they were not there, it is necessary to call in a subsequent
creation, or at least some forthputting of Omnipotence.

Another supposition may be resorted to, somewhat more
plausible, but still without any positive evidence. In
water there are properties which do not appear in the ele-
ments oxygen and hydrogen. In organized matter there
are powers wdiich cannot be discovered in the components.
It may be argued that in like manner at the appearances
of new products there were conjunctions which produced
life and feeling, consciousness and memory, intelligence
aTid love. It may be safely said that proof is as much
wanting here as in the other supposition. A necessity of
thought founded on experience does indeed imply that
there must be some extraordinary power called in to ac-
count for the extraordinary result which is beyond the
potency of the common mundane agencies. But what this

THE SCRIPTURAL ACCOUNT. 33

power is we have really no means of knowing. It is cer-
tain that the power which has provided intelligence and
conscience cannot be the ordinary mechanical or the chemi-
cal, or even the vital powers. These new powers imply, if
not a creation, at least a providence.

The objects we are now looking at lie on the horizon
of our vision and appear dim. We are constrained to call
in a power to produce the effects, but whether it is to be
regarded as natural or supernatural, we may not be able to
say. God is w^orking, but whether without or with sec-
ondary instrumentality we cannot determine. AYe may
have come to a region where the difference between nat-
ural and supernatural disappears. We may have remarked
that the Scriptures never mention such a distinction ; they
ascribe all to the will of God. The distinction may have
an importance only in this lower and mundane sphere where
w^e have worlds, but no experience of the ci-eation of
w^orlds.' Paith and science may both be satisfied with our
ascribing the whole process to a Divine Power, without
dogmatizing as to how it has been acting.!/ - "

Have we not, after all, the most satisfactory account of
the process in the opening of our Scriptures ? There is
certainly a wonderful correspondence or parallelism be-
tween Genesis and geology, between the written record
and the record in stone. We are to be on our guard in-
deed against straining either one or other to bring them
into accordance. The general agreement of the two is as
obvious as it is wonderful. The only diiference is that tlie\
one record is sensible, while the other is scientific. The
one is the account of the scene as it would have appeared
to a spectator then living ; the other is the conclusion
drawn from careful exploration.

That there is an accordance between the Scriptures and
science has been shown by the three men on this continent

A^

34 NEW POWERS APPEARING IN THE AGES.

who are most entitled to speak on the scientific question :
Professor Dana, of Yale ; Professor Dawson, of Montreal ;
and Dr. Gujot, of Princeton. Both testimonies give the
same general account of the progression and of the order
in which the powers appear. " llowbeit that was not first
which is spiritual (iruevfjuarLKov), but that which is natural
(yjruxi'fcov), and afterward that which is spiritual." "And so
it is written the first man was made a livino^ soul : the
second Adam was made a quickening spirit " (1 Cor. xv. 44-
46), where we may mark the advancement from the merely
living soul {-^v^^v ^coaav) to the quickening spirit {irvev}jLa

^COOTTOiOVv).

More particularly the book of Genesis represents the
work as proceeding by days, which in every part of Scrip-
ture is employed to denote epochs ; thus in chap. ii. 4, it is
said, " In the day that the Lord God made the earth and
the heavens." Eegarding the days as epochs, there is a
very remarkable parallelism between the order in Genesis
and the order in geology, quite as much so as that between
the stages in embryology and that in paleontology pointed
out by Yon Baer.' In the beginning or origin (eV a/0%/7)
God created the heavens and the earth, and gave the original
constituents their potencies which began to act. The earth
was at first without form and void, with only the materials,
or star dust, as Laplace's theory requires, the homogeneous
state of Spencer. When the differentiation or evolution
began there was in the first day light, as we might expect.
In the second day came the expanse, that is, the sinking

' Mr. G. Romanes declares " that the order in which the flora and
fauna are said by the Mosaic account to have appeared upon the earth
corresponds with that which tlie theory of evolution requires and the
evidence of geology proves " (Nature, August, 1881). Elsewhere he re-
fers this to "traditional history." But there can be no traditional his-
tory of the production of plants and animals.

THE SCKIPTUliAL ACCOUTs^T. 35

of the more solid materials and the elevation of the more
ethereal. On the third day there was the separation of land
and water, and plants were produced. On the fourth day the
sun and moon appeared as distinct bodies, in accordance
with the theory of Laplace. On the fifth day animals are
brought forth — the lower creatures, tannim or swarmers,
then fishes and fowls. On the sixth day the higher animals,
reptiles and cattle, and as the crown of the whole, man,
with qualities higher than all the other creatures, making
him like unto God.

There are two accounts of the creation of man. One is
in Genesis, chap. i. 26. There is council and decision : " Let
us make man in our image." This applies to his soul or
higher nature. The other account is in chap. ii. 7 : " And
the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life ; and man be-
came a living soul." This is man's organic body. We have
a supplement to this, Psalm cxxxix. 15, 16: "My sub-
stance was not hid froin thee, when I was made in secret,
and curiously wrought in the lowest parts of the earth.
Thine eyes did see my substance, being yet unperfect ; and
in thy book all my members were written, which in con-
tinuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none of
them." Tliis passage used to be quoted by Agassiz. This
is my creed as to man's bodily organism. I so far under-
stand what is said. Man is made of the earth. There is
a curious preparatory process hinted at ; a process and a
progression going on I know not how long, and all is the
work of God, and written in God's book. I understand
this, and yet I do not understand it. Socrates said of the
philosophy of Ileraclitus that what he understood was so
good that he was sure the rest would also be good if he
understood it. So I say of this passage. I so far under-
stand it, and get glorious glimpses of a divinely ordained

36 THE XEW POWERS WORKING WITH THE OLD.

process, and jet I do not understand it, for it carries me
into the secret things wliich belong unto tlie Lord our God.

IP I affirm with confidence tliat there is not, in geological or
biological science, any truth even apparently inconsistent
witli his statement.

^^<' I cannot saj how man's body was formed. BlU the
Scriptures evidently speak truly when they declare that
it was formed out of previously existing materials — out
of the dust of the ground. They also declare that God
" breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and he be-
came a living soul." As to his higher nature, it is said
that he was made after the image of God. This must
mean in knowledi^^e of truth and in holiness. He cannot
know all truth, but he knows of certain propositions, scien-
tific and practical, that they are and must be true. He
knows and appreciates the good and distinguishes between
good and evil. This he does by the conscience, an essen-
tial part of his nature, represented by the tree of knowl-
edge of good and evil. Both these qualities raise him
high above the brutes, who have some discernment of
tilings that differ, and a fear of pain and punishment, but
have no idea of necessary truth or of the beauty of moral
excellence. In all this there is a new power not produced
by mechanical or animal agency.

SECTION Ylll.

THE NEW POWEKS WOKKING WITT! THE OLD.

"We have seen that in the ages new powers are intro-
duced— powers of life, feeling, and intelligence — whether
by natui-al or supernatural causes we may not be al)le to
determine, because the operation takes place in a region

INTERACTIOIT OF POWERS. 37

where it is difficult to say what is creative and what is
creature action ; what is done by instnunents and wliat
without instruments — like the oiiginal creation out of
nothing. When these new powers come they act upon,
and they act with, the previously existing powers. The
seed of the plant falls into the soil already formed, and
works in it and with it. The sentient power, when ani-
mals appear, acts along with the mechanical energy in the
bodily frame. It is the same when higher intelligence is
introduced into animalism. The senses still work and
supply information, which is received and formed into
shape by the intellect. When the moral power begins to
act it does not supersede the understanding, which tells us
what things are, and upon this representation the conscience
proceeds. These superadded powers seem to me to be all
very much of the nature of seeds. They continue, and
there is reciprocal action between them and their environ-
ment. They have life in them and they germinate and
grow, influencing their surroundings ; and being swayed
by them we have joint results which could not have been
produced by either agent, and a development with vastly
more varied potencies and of a more marked character,
the ne^v powers mixing with the old in the offspring, as
they do in the parents. When the plant appears there is
an interaction of the organic and inorganic poAvers, and we
have development, in ^vhich both are combined, the growth
of the plant and in due time its decay and dissolution, but
with a seed left behind. When animals with sensation
and will come forth we have now a more complex aggre-
gate, still terminating in death, but with a new life in the
offspring. The organic as the higher uses the inorganic
powers and turns them to its own uses. When mind in-
terposes it acts harmoniously with matter, and the soul
and body act and interact, only the mind as the higher

38 THE NE\y POWERS WORKING WITH THE OLD.

subordinates the other. There is like joint and reciprocal
agency as the mental powers rise higher and higher. The
memory proceeds on the information given by the senses,
and the understanding with its judgments and reasonings,
and the conscience with its moral discernment and senti-
ments, presuppose and proceed upon both the senses and
memory. The development now goes on under the new
powers, but using all the old powers, and therefore with
accumulated momentum. What is gained by any species
goes down to the generation following.^

As one of the issues the operations of nature are apt to
go on in epochs, eras, or cycles. The organized causations
pass through time like stage-coaches or omnibuses, which
take in and give out passengers on to their journey's end.
Thus, in animal life we have infancy, childhood, mature
age, declining life, old age, and death. We have epochs in
history, times in which there is a strong disposition to
emigrate and form colonies, as when the Greeks, in the
sixth century before Christ, spread themselves over many
countries. We have seasons when the cry is for war among
large bodies of people, ending perhaps in a demand for
peace when the evils of war have been felt, and this
continuing till it is needful to defend rights which are being
trampled on. We have fashions not only in dress and
in modes of social life, but in literature — the Byronic pe-

' Prof. Cope has remarked (American Naturalist, April, 1880) that the
psychical powers modify and strengthen development. "In living
things the powers display design, having direct reference to conscious-
ness, to the satisfaction of pleasure and the avoidance of pains. Mind
also controls structure : the evolution of mind has a corresponding effect
on organism, a view which is confirmed by palaeontology. The mind
producing struggles of animals has led to machines for grinding, cut-
ting, seizing, digging ; for running, swimming, and flying. Man being de-
fective as to these instruments, has been compelled to exercise caution
and reflection, and has become restricted to peculiar modes of life."

SPIRITUAL POWERS. 39

riod or the Diclvens period ; and in art — the llaphaelites
and pre-Raphaelites ; in all of which, be it observed, there
13 a prevailing taste which continues for years. You
could often tell at what age a book was written or an edi-
fice built simply by inspecting its style and expression.

While there is an occasional degradation by reason of
the want of fitting in the environment to the new life,
there is upon the whole a progression. This arises mainly
from the continuance of the new and higher powers in-
troduced— say life, or intelligence, or conscience. These
abide and go down by heredity, and as they act draw in,
influence, and use the surroundings to produce new or
higher aggregates. There results an advance upon the
whole in the vegetable and animal kingdoms, in the soil,
and it may be the climate. The progression is especially
seen in man, with his intelligence and moral nature, which
in spite of errors and sins, leads on to the employment for
endi~ormany and varied powers, and these of a higher
order. These ends are specially secured by the founding
of hospitals for the diseased and the weak, and, above all,
by the founding of schools and colleges for the cultivation
and refining of man's higher nature ; and the improve-
ments go down by heredity from one age to another, when
they raise up still nobler products.

SECTION IX.

SPIRITUAL POWERS.

We have seen that there is an advance in the powers
working in our world from the inanimate on to the or-
ganic, the sentient, the instinctive, the conscious, the
intelligent, and the moral. I have sometimes thought that

40 SPIRITUAL POWERS.

in nature itself I can discover anticipations (I would al-
most call them predictions) of something higher to come.
Agassiz was fond of finding prophecies of man's noble form
in the frames of the lower animals. He erred, so I think,
in not allowing suflTicient influence to development. Pro-
fessor Owen, too, was disposed to believe that the forms
of the lower creatures pointed on to man as the archetype.
Some of the views of tliese great thinkers as well as
great comparative anatomists, may be somewhat anti-
quated, or at least reckoned so by our extreme evolution-
ists. But evolution, properly understood, does not even
tend to set aside those ideals which our greatest natural-
ists have seen, and been elevated as they looked on them.
But it may be doubted whether the natural man, the mere
animal man, is the true ideal ; say the selfish man, the
lustful man, the deceitful man, the vindictive man. Every
man is in a sense a moral man ; he is possessed of a con-
science discerning between good and evil, " accusing or
else excusing." But our moral nature denounces much
that we do, and claims to do so in the name and by the
authority of God. Under this God we look for a rectifi-
cation. This cannot be had in the conscience, which only
condemns. Our moral nature points to a law of love, but
shows no way of reaching it. In these circumstances we
should not be indisposed to look round and inquire
whether God, in following out liis plan, may not super-
add, as ho has ever been superadding — some remedial
measure, by which his own Idea (using the phrase in the
Platonic sense) may be accomplished and realized.

The Scriptures announce clearly and emphatically^ that
there has been an interposition and addition, and this not
inconsistent with the original plan, but i-ather cari-ying it
out. There is a new dispensation going beyond the old
and animal ones, beyond even the intellectual and the

THE NATUEAL AND SPIRITUAL. 41

moral into the spiritual. God, who created man in his
own image, has a means of restoring that image when it
was lost. We are privileged to live under the dispensa-
tion of the Spirit. There were anticipations of his work
under the Old Testament, in his woi-king on individuals
to convert and sanctify them. Still such operations were
only partial and anticipatory. " For the Holy Ghost was
not given, because Jesus was not yet glorified." But Jesus
when on earth spake of the Spirit, which they that be-
lieve on him should receive. When he had finished his
work of atonement for sin, and was taken up into heaven,
the disciples waited for the accomplishment of the prom-
ise, which was fulfilled when the day of Pentecost was fully
come, and the Spirit was poured out from on high. This
Power continues to work in the church, and will extend
its influence till the Spirit of the Lord is poured on all
flesh.

Development now goes on under two potencies, the
natural and the spiritual. There are the old powers still
M^orking — those of sense and understanding, of reason and
of conscience. These constitute the life which God breathed
into man when he became a living soul. They compose
the higher reason made after the likeness of God, which
sin has defaced, but which is deep down in our nature be-
neath tlie incrustations covering it from tlie sight, but
which is capable of being restored. Upon these the new
and spiritual powers work. Much that takes place is the
joint result of the two. The inspiration of Moses, of the
prophets and apostles, did not destroy their natural char-
acter, it only sanctified and elevated them. The spirits of
the prophets were subject unto them. Religion does not
eradicate the natural powers, it moulds and directs them
to higher ends. The man's faculties and his temperament
are not changed by his becoming pious ; if he was lively

42 SPIRITUAL POWERS.

before lie will be lively still, if lie was dull and solid he
"will continue so.

It should be noticed, however, that as the new powers
come in there may be opposition offered by the old powers,
and a contest ensues. Science tells us that in the animal
ages there was " a struggle for existence and the survival
of the fittest.-' There is a like struggle in the human
period between the evil and the good. Some of our old the-
ologians held that death was introduced among the lower
animals by the sin of Adam. There is no such statement
in the Scriptures, and geology shows that death has reigned
all along in the animal kingdom. But there is a unity in
our world in this respect as in others, that there has been
a contest in all ages. In this world the seed of the ser-
pent contends with the seed of the woman, and in the
heart '' the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit
against the flesh." "The whole creation groaneth and
travaileth together until now," but in the hope that the
higher will conquer the lower, and that " the creation
itself shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption
into the glorious liberty of the children of God" (Rom.
viii. 19).

The development goes on in eras or epochs like the ages
of geology, like the days of Genesis. The patriarchal dis-
pensation grows out of the antediluvian, the Jewish out
of the patriarchal, the Christian out of the Jewish. We
may discover marked epochs even in the Christian church :
the time of the fathers — a time of establishing ; the med-
i^e-val church — preserving like the winter the seeds depos-
ited ; the Reformation — bursting forth like the spring ; the
denominational churches — discussing doctrines and settling
creeds ; the missionary cliurches — carrying the truth to all
lands, and about to expand into the millennial church.

Upon the whole, there is progression in the spiritual as

JOI^^ED WITH THE NATUIIAL. 43

in the natural kingdom. Indeed many interesting corre-
spondences may be traced between the two kingdoms. In
both there are old powers and new working together and
leading on to higher and higher products. The kingdom
of heaven is like unto leaven, which a woman took and hid
in three measures of meal, and which ferments there till
the whole is leavened. It is a seed becoming a plant ;
there is first the blade, then the ear, and then the f nil corn
in the ear.

There is a development in the revelation of truth. First
there is the shadow and then the substance, there ai-e first
types and then the archetype. There are promises and
then performances, predictions and then fulfilments. We
know little of antediluvian times, but evidently there was
then a light like that of the dawn. There were prefigur-
ations in the LeVitical institutions made after the pattern
shown in the mount. There is higher ethical teaching in
the :N'ew Testament than in the Old. The discourses of
our Lord, who is the light of the world, shed a brighter
light than had shone before, Greek or Jewish. There is
the fullest revelation of doctrinal truth in the Epistles of
Paul, of Peter, and of John.

We may discover this conjunction of powers in the writ-
ing of the Scriptures. Moses spefiks, and David speaks,
and Isaiah speaks, and Paul speaks, and John speaks ; and
we discover the natural temperament of each, and the in-
fluence of the age and circnmstances in which they lived.
But God too speaks : " Thus saith the Lord." All this is
in analogy with God's mode of procedure. The " higher
criticism," as it is called, may look at and search and even
find fault with the human element, but let it beware of
meddling with the Divine element. If it does so it will
be seen in the end only to show its weakness and fallibility,
by, it may be, castmg out, though the critic may not see it,

44

SPIRITUAL POWERS.

;

sometliing fitted to accomplish a good end. " All Scrip-
ture is given bj inspiration of God, and is profitable for
doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in
righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thor-
oughly furnished unto all good works" (2 Tim. iii. 16).

Under this double influence the Christian grows. He
" adds to his faith virtue ; and to virtue knowledge ; and to
knowledge temperance ; and to temperance patience ; and
to patience godliness ; and to godliness brotherly kindness ;
and to brotherly kindness charity." Xot that he is every
instant advancing, but he is, upon the whole, progressing.
He may have his periods of declension, but he rises above
them. He is like a man ascending a high mountain; as he
mounts up he may have to cross valleys deep and dark,
but, upon the whole, he is rising higher and higher. The
Christian dies like Samson, amid the glories of his strength,
and slays in his death the last of his spiritual enemies.
The church, too, extends. It is ever spreading into new
countries, and it gives evidence that it will at last subdue
all lands. Wherever it goes it carries with it innumerable
blessings, hi the lessening of human suffering, in improved
legislation, in the promotion of education— lower and
higher — and generally in the elevation of the race in
knowledge and character.

Here it is interesting to notice the unity of the devel-
oped and developing history of our world. It does not
take at first the form of a perfected world, but of a world
going on toward perfection. It is not optimist, as Leibnitz
painted it, but it is to become optimist. It has evil in it ;
but it is not pessimist, as Schopenhauer and von Hartmann
represent it, going to the other extreme. As it is now
going on it is a scene of contests, with defeats and victor-
ies through all its past history. It is a scene of contest
from the beginning, of warring elements, of creatures suf-

ACCESS TO GOD. 45

feringwho had not sinned "after the similitude of Adam's
transgression." There is in it at this moment a contest
between the evil and the good, like that between winter
and spring, in which the spring, led on by the sun in the
heavens, shall certainly prevail.

It is the most blessed of our privileges in thi^ dispensa-
tion that every one who believes has access to God. There
is a sense, indeed, in which God makes himself known to
all his intelligent creatures, and " lighteth every man that
cometh into the world." He does so in his ordinary provi-
dence, in which he brings events to pass according to causes
which he has instituted, and in which he acts quite as cer-
tainly as/lFhe produced everything without subordinate
agency. [ But earnest minds have never been satisfied with
such distant views of God as are given by causation and
consequent evolution. They aspire after and long for im-
mediate intercourse with God. They pray in the belief
that there is one to hear them, and they expect an answer.
They will not allow themselves or others to think that God
has so shut himself out from his own world that he cannot
act in it and on it. They deny that our petitions are so
bound to the earth by gravity that they camiot mount
upward and reach the ear and the heart of our Heavenly
Father w^ho is felt as pitying them. They believe that
their spirits can hold communion with God, who is a spirit,
quite as certainly as our earth can act on the sun, and the
sun on the earth. They have faith that there are wider
and closer unions than the attraction of matter to matter.
They are sure that all holy intelligences throughout the
universe are in union with the holy God. Sure as we speak
to God in faith God hears us. He speaks if we will but
hear. "Truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with
his Son Jesus Christ."

From this double powei*, natural and spiritual, arises the

46 SPIRITUAL POWERS.

difference in Christian experience and character. People
have different natural inclinations, and are beset by differ-
ent sins and temptations, and he suits his manifestation to
their diversities. No Christian should insist that the work
of God should be the same in the heart of every other as
in his own. Xor should any one doubt of the reality of a
spiritual work in himself because his experience is not the
same as that of some others of whom he has read, or who
may have opened up their feelings to him. Just as there
is a diversity in the works of nature, in the color and form
of plants and animals peopling the earth and ocean ; just as
there is a variety in the shape and countenance of the bod-
ily frames of men ; just as one star diff'ereth from another,
so Christians, while after one model, are made to take differ-
ent types and hues of beauty on earth, and shall thus with
their individualities be transplanted into heaven to adorn
the paradise of God, and shine as stars in the iirmament in
heaven. In heaven the foundations of the wall of the city
are garnished with all manner of precious stones, and the
tree of life in the midst of the garden bears " twelve man-
ner of fruits," so the saints will there have each his own
character ; and the song which ascends will be a concert of
diverse voices, each melodious, but each in its diversity join-
ing with the others to make the harmony. Each in his
own way will join in singing " the song of Moses and the
Lamb."

SECTION X.

It is of no use denying in onr day the doctrine of evo-
lution in the name of religion, or any other good cause.
An age or two ago many religious people were afraid of
geology. It can now be shown that it rather favors religion
by its furnishing proofs of design, and by tlie wonderful
parallelism between Genesis and geology. The time is at
hand when all intelligent people, religious and irreligious,
will perceive that there is nothing impious in development
considered in itself ; though it may be carried to excess
and turned to atheistic purposes. The business of inquirers
now is to explain its nature. This is what I have endeavored
to do, to the best of my ability, in this little ^vork. In
doing this I have given an account diiferent from that of
Herbert Spencer. My work is a small one compared with
his elaborate volumes. I do not purpose at the close of
it to review his theory. In another number of this Series I
propose examining his philosophy as culminated in his
Ethics. 1 am here merely to show that I have set forth
some truths not noticed by that powerful speculator, who
is as remarkable for what he has overlooked as for what
he has looked at. I think I have helped somewhat to clear
up the subject by representing evolution as an organized
causation. This requires us~alvvays to look for an adequate
cause of the new product attributed to evolution. Mr.
Spencer, and his follower Mr. Fiske, refer the whole to
the Persistence of Force, as if there were only one power,
and this apparently only mechanical or biological. But

48^ OVERSIGHTS IN SPENCER'S EVOLUTION.

there are other powers, or at least manifestations of power,
of which we have as distinct evidence as we have of these.
In particular there is a mental power, of which we are con-
scious, but at the peculiarities of which he has never looked,
and which cannot be produced by any persistence of his
forces.

It w^as charged against Locke by Liebnitz, and repeated
by Cousin, that in constructing his theory — that all our
ideas are derived from sensation and reflection — he did not
begin with a careful introspection of the ideas themselves,
and that, in fact, he overlooked Jhe peculiarities of some of
our most important ideas, such as infinity and moral good.
A like charge may be brought against Spencer. As might
be expected of one trained as an engineer, he is well ac-
quainted with mechanical power, and has acquired a large
knowledge of biology, some of his theories in wdiich, how-
ever, as, for instance, his development of nervous forces,
are not acknowledged by our highest authorities. But he
seems to me to have never looked patiently, by the inner
sense, at purely mental acts, such as consciousness, cogni-
tion, moral discernment, and will. '' I believe that the ex-
periences of utility, organized and consolidated through all
past generations of the human race, have been producing
corresponding nervous modifications, which, by continued
transmission and accumulation, have become in us certain
faculties of moral intuition." Our moral intuitions are
thus nervous modifications become hereditary.

He speaks often, as even the materialist does, of psychical
acts. lie thinks he has accounted for them by evolution.
He has done so, simply overlooking their distinctive qual-
ities as revealed by consciousness. He tries to evolve the
conscious from the unconscious, thought from that which
has no thought, and the moral from that which has no
morality. He has thus in the effect what is not in the

OVERLOOKS MENTAL ACTS. 49

cause. If we scrutinize his theory carefully, we shall find
that what he accounts for is not properly psychical or men-
tal operation, is not the consciousness of self, is not the
feeling, the emotion, the reasoning, the resolution, the sen-
timent disclosed to the internal sense. The mind being
merely an aggregate of nerves (he seems incapable of con-
ceiving it as anything else) he can so far account for it by
evolution. But when we look on mind as nerceiving, judg-
ing, discerning between good and evil, we discover that he
has not explained its rise by his evolution ; he is not able
to derive the rational from the irrational, or the good from
that which has no moral perception. The fact is, his de-
velopment is merely an evolution by the physical forces,
not of the mental acts, but merely of their surroundings or
the environment. These forces do have a powerful influ-
ence on the internal or psychical powers, not in producing
them, but in directins* them in certain channels. He thus
believes himself, and makes it appear to others, that he
is evolving consciousness and conscience when he is merely
developing their accompaniments, and has never looked at
anything else. Thus with all his zeal for development, he
has never noticed seriously the grand results produced when
psychical, and especially moral power, is joined with phys-
ical causation.

I know full well that exclusive physicists will look down
with contempt upon my insisting on giving the higher
intellectual and moral powers a place in evolution. But I
hold these to be realities quite as much as bodies, with their
energies and the motion they produce. It is not encourag-
ing to the highest thought to find how few of those who
have produced such a revolution in biology of late years have
ever been trained in colleges or otherwise to consider purely
mental phenomena. I do not regard their disposition to
set aside these as a proof of the comprehensiveness of their

50 OVERSIGHTS IN SPENCER's EVOLUTION.

minds, but ratlier of their narrowness. For myself I have
carefully tried never to allow my devotion to mental science
to tempt me to neglect physical and physiological facts. I
claim that never in my teaching or in my writings have I
set myself against any discovery in natural science which
has turned out to be true. Our naturalists would be
elevated if, in looking at material agencies, they did not
overlook mental, moral, and spiritual powers. ' The full-
orbed truth is discerned only by those who go round it and
look at all its sides. Thus only can the mind be open to
all knowledge, and become expanded in any measure corre-
sponding to the width of the universe disclosed to us.

PHILOSOPHIC SERIES

CRITICAL NOTICES.

"It is a familiar experience, that there is a gain in clearness and condensa-
tion when one writes anew on subjects which one has previously handled in
more copious treatises. In truth, an author himself often feels, when he has
finished a book, that he is just prepared to write it. The effect of the dis-
cussion,is to reduce his own thought to its lowest terms, and to disentangle it
from surplus and irrelevant matter. The readers of Dr. McCosh's pamphlets
will in this way reap the benefit of the author's earlier and more elaborate
consideration of the same topics. An adherent, though not a servile adherent,
of the Scottish school, he has brought to his inquiries for many years the best
powers of a clear and vigorous intellect and of a mind well-informed in the his-
tory of speculation. * * * The titles of the numbers of "The Philosophic
Series," which are yet to appear, indicate that they will deal with the most in-
teresting and momentous questions which are now agitated among metaphysi-
cians and speculative naturalists. It is gratifying to see that the venerable
President of Nassau Hall retains all the freshness of his youthful interest in
these grave problems, and is disposed to present in a form so convenient to
readers the fruit of his ripened powers and of the mature studies of a life which
has been largely devoted, and with distinguished success, to philosophical re-
flection."— New York Tribime.

" It is not unlikely to prove true in the end that the most useful, popular
service which Dr. McCosh has rendered to the cause of right thinking and to
sound philosophy of life, is his philosophic series, the first number of which,
Criteria of Diverse kinds of Truth, as opposed to Agnosticism. Being a
treatise on Applied Logic, we have perused with gi-eat satisfaction. Dr. Mc-
Cosh has prepared in the compass of this little brochure of sixty 12 mo. pages,
which can easily be read in a few hours, a treatise of the basis of knowledge and
the method of reaching it, in doing this he has placed in front of the most influ-
encial heresies of our times a luminous exposition of a sounder philosophy.
* * * Brief as the treatise is it contains the mature conclusions of one of the
foremost philosophers of the day and the outlines of consistent philosophy of
life. The manual is written with directness and vigor and goes straight to the
point of greatest need in the present condition of opinion." — N. Y. Inde-
petident.

"The author's clean cut classical method of putting truth before his readers,
gives one a sense of novelty and freshness, to attain which must be the highest
praise of a writer who follows Aristotle and Francis Bacon. * * * We rise from
the study of this first number with a mental refreshment rarely experienced in
the perusal of modern philosophic treatises." — Phila. Episcopal Register,

"Dr. McCosh's work grows more interesting as he proceeds. There is
something alsolutely new in his treatment of the principle of causation. He
shows that there is a duality or plurality in causation, also a duality or plur-

ality in the effect. The use of this fact is seen in the author's attempt to ad-
just the old doctrine of causation to the lately discovered doctrine of the con-
servation of energy or the persistence of force. * * * jj^.^ McCosh's
style is clear, bold and fervid, often rising into eloquence. He is easily
understood. For young men who wish to become acquainted with cor-
rect methods of testing the truth, nothing could be better than this series.
For busy men, also, this bird's-eye view of what the author calls ' a sober
i philosophy,' will be found invaluable. ' He who runs may read.' " — Columbus
Gazette.

*' This is the first of a promised series of pamphlets on some of the import-
ant subjects of modern philosophy. It need hardly be said that whatever
comes from Dr. McCosh's pen is characterized by remarkable vigor and clear-
ness and even if the tone be somewhat dogmatic, it must be remembered
that it is the dogmatic tone of one of the ablest living leaders of Scotch
thought The first of the series just referred to goes over partly the ground
of Institutions and the Logic of the same author. There has been much con-
densation and there are some valuable additions. The work has been pre-
pared with special reference to the Agnosticism of the day, it is sufficiently
controversal to make it of interest to the general reader, it is sufficiently
simple to make it of value as an academic text-book of reference." — Presby-
terian Revieiv.

" This first issue deals, in a masterly way, with the very popular but sui-
cidal error of agnosticism. It sets forth the criteria of first principles, the ax-
ioms of reasoning, and also those of individual facts, and their laws, and thus
teaches how to distinguish between diff"erent kinds of truth. It is thorougli
and clear, and will be very helpful to those who have become unsettled either
by the opposing theories of scholars, or by the difficulties which surround al-
most every science when investigation is carried beyond the limit of the
knowable. The distinction here pointed out between necessary and probable
truths is of great importance. The want of this discrimination lies at the root
of the whole system of agnosticism ; and, we may add, of the religious dog-
matism which has characterized the later theology of Rome," — The Chiirch-
inaJi.

"Perhaps Dr. McCosh has done nothing more truly serviceable during his
long and useful life, than the publishing of these most valuable pamphlets."
— Phila. Natio7ial Baptist.

" Its style is so clear and direct, its presentation of the whole subject is so
natural and forcible, that many persons who habitually ignore discussions of
abstract topics, would be charmed into a new intellectual interest by giving
Dr. McCosh's work a careful consideration." — N. V. Observer.

"There are many, even of believers, who will walk with a firmer step after
reading this masterly discussion. — Cincinnati Christian Siajidard.

"This is not a controversial dissertation, but a clear and profound state-
ment of the facts, and laws of intellectual and moral being as they bear
directly on the question of spiritual knowledge, or the basis of faith. Dr.
McCosh has the happy faculty of stating profound and abtruse reasonings and
conclusions, with such clearness and felicity that the intellectual reader has no
difficulty in following his thought and understanding the points he makes." —
N. Y. Evangelist.

The Emotions,

,i;y
JAMES McCOSH, D.D., LL.D.,

Presideiit of Princeton College.

One Volume, crown 8vo., _ - _ $2.00.

In this little volume of two hundred and fifty clearly printed pages
Dr. McCosh treats first of the elements of emotion, and, secondly, of the
classification and description of the emotions. He has been led to the
consideration of his theme, as he says in his preface, by the vagueness and
ambiguity in common thought and literature in connection with the subject,
and by " the tendency on the part of the prevailing physiological psychol-
ogy of the day to resolve all feeling and our very emotions into nervous
action, and thus gain an important province of our nature to materialism."
The work is characterized by that " peculiarly animated and commanding
style which seems to be a part of the author."

CRIXaCAIi NOTICES.

" Dr. McCosh''s style is as lucid, vigorous, and often beautiful as of old. There
5s never any doubt as to his meaning, nor any hesitation in his utteiance." — London.
Academy.

"It would be well if all who have it as the'r business to influence the character of
men would study such a work as this on the Emotions." — Exafniner and Chronicle.

"We recommend it to all students as a perspicuous and graceful contribution to
what has always proved to be the most popular part of mental philosophy." — fhe N. Y.
Evangelist.

"The work is marked by great clearness of statement and profound scholarship — two
thin£;s which are not always combined. ... It will prove attractive and instructive
to any intelligent reader.''— ^/^rt«^ Evening Journal.

"The analysis is clear and the style of crystalline clearness. We are inclined to

think it will be the most popular of the author's works. We have read it from beginning

to end with intense enjoyment — with as much interest, indeed, as could attach to any
work of iicuaw."— The Presbyterian.

" The whole subject of the volume is treated by Dr. McCosh in a common sense way,
with lar^e reference to its practical applications, aiming at clearness of expression and
antness of illustration, rather than with any show of metaphysical acuteness or technical
nicety, and often with uncommon beauty and force of diction." — N. Y. Tribune.

"Apart from the comprehension of the entire argument, any chapter and almost
every section will prove a quickening and nourishing portion to many who will ponder
it. It will be a liberal feeder of pastors and preachers who turn to it. The almo.st
prodisal ouday of illustrations to be found from first to finis, will fascmate the reader if
nothing else ^0^%." —Christian Intelligencer.

*^* For sale by all booksellers, or sent, postpaid.^ upon receipt of
trice, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers,

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York.

The Conflicts of the ^ge.

One Vol., 8vo, - Paper, 50 Cts. ; Cloth, 75 Cts.

The four articles which make up this little volume are:

(i) An Advertisement for a New^ Religion. By an Evolutionist.

(2) The Confession of an Agnostic. By an Agnostic.

(3) What Morality have we left ? By a New-Light Moralist.

(4) Review of the Fight. By a Yankee Farmer.

The secret of its authorship has not yet transpired, and the reviewers
seem badly puzzled in their attempts to solve the mystery.

CRITICAL NOTICES.

"Nowhere can an ordinary reader see in a more simple and pleasing form the
absurdities which lie in the modern speculations about truth and duty. We have no key
to the authorship, but the writer evidently holds a practiced pen, and knows hov/ to give
that air of persijlage m ireatuig of serious subjects which sometimes is more effective
than the most cogent dialectic."' — C>4r/j/z.-i« Intelligencer.

"It is the keenest, best sustained exposure of the weaknesses inherent in cerain
schools of modern thou ^ht, wliic'.i we have yet come across, and is couched in a vein of
fine satire, making it exceedinijly readable. For an in.sight into the systems it touches
upon, and for its suggestion.s oi methods of meeting them, it is capable of bemg a great
help to the clergy. It :s a new d-parture in apologetics, quite in the spirit of the time." —
The Living Church,

"The writer has chosen to appear anonymously; but he holds a pen keen as a
Damascijs blade. Indeed, there are few m^n living capable of writing these papers,
and of dissecting so thoruuehiy the popular conceits and shams of the day. It is done,
too, witti a coolness, self-possession, an ' scin^-froid, that are inimitable, however un-
comfortable it may seem to the writliing victims." — Ihe Guardian.

" These four papers are unqualifiedly good. They show a thorough acquaintance
with the whole rang<i of philosophic thought in its modern phases of development, even
down to the latest involutions and convolutions of the Kvolutionists, the sage unknow-
ahleiiess of the Agnostic, and the New Light novelty of Ethics without a conscience." —
Lutheran Churi.h Review.

" These papers are as able as thev are readable, and are not offensive in their spirit,
beyond the necessary ofTensiveness of belief to the believmg mind." — N, Y. Christian
Advocate.

"The discussion is sprightly, incisive, and witty; and whoever begins to read it
will be likely to read it through." — New Knglandcr.

*** P'or sale by all booksellers, or sfnt, postpaid^ upon receipt of
price, by

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, Publishers,

743 AND 745 Broadway, New York.

DR. McGOSH'S WORKS,

PUBLISHED BY

EGBERT CARTER AI^D BROTHERS,

NEW YORK.

I.

Eleventh Thousand.

THE METHOD OF THE DIVINE GOVERNMENT,

Physical and Moral. 8vo. $2.00.

'* It is refreshing to read a work so distinguished for originality and
soundness of thinking, especially as coming from an author of our own
country. " — Sir William Hamilton.

n.

Fourth Thousand.
TYPICAL FORMS AND SPECIAL ENDS IN CREATION.
By James McCosh, LL.D., and Dr. Dickie. 8vo. $2.00.

"It illustrates and carries out the great principle of analogy in tlie
Divine plans and works far more minutely and satisfactorily than it has
been done before ; and while it presents the results of the most pro-
found scientific research, it presents them in their higher and spiritual
relations." — Argus.

m.

Fifth Thousand.
THE INTUITIONS OF THE MIND. New and improved
edition. 8vo. $2.00.

" Never was such a work so much needed as in the present day. It
is the only scientific work adapted to counteract the school of Mill,
Bain, and Herbert Spencer, which is so steadily prevailing among the
students of the present generation." — London Quarterly Review^ April^
1865.

IV.

Second Thousand.
A DEFENCE OF FUNDAIVIENTAL TRUTH. Being an
Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill's Philosophy. 8vo. $2.00.

" The spirit of these discussions is admirable. Fearless and courte-
ous, McCosh never hesitates to bestow praise when merited, nor to attack
a heresy wherever found." — Congregational Retie^o.

V.

Third Edition.

SCOTTISH PHILOSOPHY : Biogbaphical, Expository, and
Critical. 8vo. $4.00.

"Dr. McCosli's expositions of philosophical doctrine are no less re-
markable for their lucidity than their fairness. Nor is his volume
confined to the mere analysis and exhibition of speculative theories. It
is enlivened with numerous personal details, which present the great
names of Scotland in their domestic and social environment, and make
its perusal as attractive as it is miovmmg.'' —Tribune,

VI.

Eighth Thousand.

LAWS OF DISCUKSIVE THOUGHT : Being a Text-Book
of Formal Logic. 12mo. $1.50.

TJie iieculiarity of this icoi^k is that while it treats fully of the proposi-
tion and reasoning^ it unfolds specially the nature of the notion.

' ' This little treatise is interesting as containing the matured views of
one of the most vigorous reasoners of the times on the forms of reason-
ing. It is written with singular directness and vigor. . . . The
use of this work as a text-book in schools and colleges will afford admir-
able training to students. . . . It is doubtful whether there is any-
where a class-book in this science likely to be so generally acceptable."
— Evening Post.

vn.

Sixth Thousand.

CHRISTIANITY AND POSITIVISM. A Series of Lectures
to the Times on Natural Theology and AjDologetics.
12mo. $1.75.

*' Dr. McCosh is a man of great learning, of powerful intellect, clear,
and sharp, and bold in utterance. These lectures present the result of
years of labor, in a form to be useful to all classes of minds, and espe-
cially instructive and comforting to those who have been troubled by
the skeptical suggestions of some modern naturalists. The volume will
prove immensely valuable to ministers and Bible-class teachers, as it
furnishes ready and conclusive answers to objectors and skeptics, and
assurance to inquiring minds. It is an able and timely book." — Baptist
Union.

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