A Century of Science, and Other Essays. Fiske John

was obliged to modify his statement, and confess that, instead of looking so far forward, he had better have looked about him. I remember hearing Mr. Darwin laugh merrily over this at his own expense.

      This extension of the doctrine of evolution to psychical phenomena was what made it a universal doctrine, an account of the way in which the world, as we know it, has been evolved. There is no subject, great or small, that has not come to be affected by the doctrine, and, whether men realize it or not, there is no nook or corner in speculative science where they can get away from the sweep of Mr. Spencer's thought.

      This extension of the doctrine to psychical phenomena is by many people misunderstood. The "Principles of Psychology" is a marvel of straightforward and lucid statement; but, from its immense reach and from the abstruseness of the subject, it is not easy reading. It requires a sustained attention such as few people can command, except on subjects with which they are already familiar. Hence few people read it in comparison with the number who have somehow got it into their heads that Mr. Spencer tries to explain mind as evolved out of matter, and is therefore a materialist. How many worthy critics have been heard to object to the doctrine of evolution that you cannot deduce mind from the primeval nebula, unless the germs of mind were present already! But that is just what Mr. Spencer says himself. I have heard him say it more than once, and his books contain many passages of equivalent import.[6] He never misses an opportunity for attacking the doctrine that mind can be explained as evolved from matter. But, in spite of this, a great many people suppose that the gradual evolution of mind must mean its evolution out of matter, and are deaf to arguments of which they do not perceive the bearing. Hence Mr. Spencer is so commonly accredited with the doctrine which he so earnestly repudiates.

      But there is another reason why people are apt to suppose the doctrine of evolution to be materialistic in its implications. There are able writers who have done good service in illustrating portions of the general doctrine, and are at the same time avowed materialists. One may be a materialist, whatever his scientific theory of things; and to such a person the materialism naturally seems to be a logical consequence from the scientific theory. We have received this evening a communication from Professor Ernst Haeckel, of Jena, in which he lays down five theses regarding the doctrine of evolution:—

      1. "The general doctrine appears to be already unassailably founded;

      2. "Thereby every supernatural creation is completely excluded;

      3. "Transformism and the theory of descent are inseparable constituent parts of the doctrine of evolution;

      4. "The necessary consequence of this last conclusion is the descent of man from a series of vertebrates."

      So far, very good; we are within the limits of scientific competence, where Professor Haeckel is strong. But now, in his fifth thesis, he enters the region of metaphysics—the transcendental region, which science has no competent methods of exploring—and commits himself to a dogmatic assertion:

      5. "The beliefs in an 'immortal soul' and in 'a personal God' are therewith" (i.e., with the four preceding statements) "completely ununitable (völlig unvereinbar)."

      Now, if Professor Haeckel had contented himself with asserting that these two beliefs are not susceptible of scientific demonstration; if he had simply said that they are beliefs concerning which a scientific man, in his scientific capacity, ought to refrain from making assertions, because Science knows nothing whatever about the subject, he would have occupied an impregnable position. His fifth thesis would have been as indisputable as his first four. But Professor Haeckel does not stop here. He declares virtually that if an evolutionist is found entertaining the beliefs in a personal God and an immortal soul, nevertheless these beliefs are not philosophically reconcilable with his scientific theory of things, but are mere remnants of an old-fashioned superstition from which he has not succeeded in freeing himself.

      Here one must pause to inquire what Professor Haeckel means by "a personal God." If he refers to the Latin conception of a God remote from the world of phenomena, and manifested only through occasional interference—the conception that has until lately prevailed in the Western world since the time of St. Augustine—then we may agree with him; the practical effect of the doctrine of evolution is to abolish such a conception. But with regard to the Greek conception entertained by St. Athanasius; the conception of God as immanent in the world of phenomena and manifested in every throb of its mighty rhythmical life; the deity that Richard Hooker, prince of English churchmen, had in mind when he wrote of Natural Law that "her seat is the bosom of God, and her voice the harmony of the world,"—with regard to this conception the practical effect of the doctrine of evolution is not to abolish, but to strengthen and confirm it. For, into whatever province of Nature we carry our researches, the more deeply we penetrate into its laws and methods of action, the more clearly do we see that all provinces of Nature are parts of an organic whole animated by a single principle of life that is infinite and eternal. I have no doubt Professor Haeckel would not only admit this, but would scout any other view as inconsistent with the monism which he professes. But he would say that this infinite and eternal principle of life is not psychical, and therefore cannot be called in any sense "a personal God." In an ultimate analysis, I suspect Professor Haeckel's ubiquitous monistic principle would turn out to be neither more nor less than Dr. Büchner's mechanical force (Kraft). On the other hand, I have sought to show—in my little book "The Idea of God"—that the Infinite and Eternal Power that animates the universe must be psychical in its nature, that any attempt to reduce it to mechanical force must end in absurdity, and that the only kind of monism which will stand the test of an ultimate analysis is monotheism. While in the chapter on Anthropomorphic Theism, in my "Cosmic Philosophy," I have taken great pains to point out the difficulties in which (as finite thinkers) we are involved when we try to conceive the Infinite and Eternal Power as psychical in his nature, I have in the chapter on Matter and Spirit, in that same book, taken equal pains to show that we are logically compelled thus to conceive Him.

      One's attitude toward such problems is likely to be determined by one's fundamental conception of psychical life. To a materialist the ultimate power is mechanical force, and psychical life is nothing but the temporary and local result of fleeting collocations of material elements in the shape of nervous systems. Into the endless circuit of transformations of molecular motion, says the materialist, there enter certain phases which we call feelings and thoughts; they are part of the circuit; they arise out of motions of material molecules, and disappear by being retransformed into such motions: hence, with the death of the organism in which such motions have been temporarily gathered into a kind of unity, all psychical activity and all personality are ipso facto abolished. Such is the materialistic doctrine, and such, I presume, is what Professor Haeckel has in mind when he asserts that the belief in an immortal soul is incompatible with the doctrine of evolution. The theory commonly called that of the correlation of forces, and which might equally well or better be called the theory of the metamorphosis of motions, is indispensable to the doctrine of evolution. But for the theory that light, heat, electricity, and nerve-action are different modes of undulatory motion transformable one into another, and that similar modes of motion are liberated by the chemical processes going on within the animal or vegetal organism, Mr. Spencer's work could never have been done. That theory of correlation and transformation is now generally accepted, and is often appealed to by materialists. A century ago Cabanis said that the brain secretes thought as the liver secretes bile. If he were alive to-day, he would doubtless smile at this old form of expression as crude, and would adopt a more subtle phrase; he would say that "thought is transformed motion."

      Against this interpretation I have maintained that the theory of correlation not only fails to support it, but actually overthrows it. The arguments may be found in the chapter on Matter and Spirit, in my "Cosmic Philosophy," published in 1874, and in the essay entitled "A Crumb for the Modern Symposium," written in 1877, and reprinted in "Darwinism and Other Essays."[7] Their purport is, that in tracing the correlation of motions into the organism through the nervous system and out again, we are bound to get an account of each step in terms of motion. Unless we can show that every unit of motion that disappears is transformed into an exact quantitative equivalent, our theory of correlation breaks down; but when we have shown this we shall have given a complete account of the whole affair without