Relations will form a fitting conclusion to this brief sketch of his teachings in regard to the other world. An angel is instructing some novitiate spirits in regard to the daily life of the angelic society in which he (the angel) dwells. He says:

"Every morning from the houses around the public places are heard the sweetest songs of maidens and girls, with which the whole city resounds. It is one affection of spiritual love, which is sung every morning, that is, sounded by modifications of the singing voice, or by modulations, and that affection in the song is perceived as the affection itself; it inflows into the souls of the hearers, and excites them to a correspondence with it: such is heavenly singing. The singers say that the sound of their song is as it were self-inspired and self-animated from within, and exalted delightfully according to its reception by the hearers. When this is ended, the windows of the houses of the public places, and at the same time of the houses of the streets, are shut, and so also are the doors; and then the whole city is silent, and no noise is heard in any part of it, nor is any person seen loitering about all then are strictly performing the duties of their employ

ments.

:

"At noontime the doors are opened, and in the afternoon the windows also in some houses, and boys and girls are seen playing in the streets, while their nurses and tutors sit in the porches of the houses, keeping them within bounds.

"At the outskirts of the city, there are various sports of boys and youths; there are races, and games with balls; there are games with little balls which are struck back, called rackets; there are trials of skill among the boys, in order to discover which is the quickest, and which the most backward, in speaking, acting, and perceiving; and the quickest receive some leaves of laurel as a reward; besides many other things of a like nature, designed to call forth the latent abilities of the boys.

"Moreover, outside the city there are dramatic entertainments, in theatres, by actors who represent the various honourable qualities and virtues of moral life.

"There are here days of festivity appointed by the prince, in order that the lower minds (animus) may be relaxed from the weariness which the lust of emulation may have brought upon some. On these days there are

concerts of music and singing in the public places, and outside the city there are games and shows; in the public places at such times there are raised orchestras, enclosed by barriers, formed of vines entwined together, from which hang clusters of grapes; within these barriers in three rows, one above another, sit the musicians, with stringed instruments and with wind instruments, both alto and bass, loud-toned and soft, and at the sides there are male and female singers, who entertain the citizens with most pleasant solos and part songs, varied at intervals."1

Is this too much like some earthly Utopia, or Garden City? Is it, then, less probable therefor? These earthly imaginings represent the highest ideals of human happiness that cultured minds can conceive; where are they so likely to be realised as in heaven?

1 Conjugial Love, No. 17.

VOL 162.-No. 6.

GEORGE TROBRIDGE.

3 A

DEC.

INDEPENDENT SECTION.

[Under the above title a limited portion of THE WESTMINSTER REVIEW is occasionally set apart for the reception of Articles which contain opinions at variance with the particular ideas or measures it advocates. The object is to facilitate the expression of opinion by writers of high mental power and culture, who, while they are zealous friends of freedom and progress, yet differ widely on special points of great practical concern, both from the Editor and from each other.]

DOES SCIENCE EXCLUDE

CHRISTIANITY?

ONE of the greatest hindrances to Science, and one of the greatest misfortunes to Religion, has been the apparent impossibility of keeping their spheres apart; of pursuing scientific and religious inquiries to their final issues on parallel lines without permitting them to cross. Out of this difficulty has arisen "the conflict between Religion and Science" which has continued to rage for centuries, and will probably never entirely cease. There are two general aspects of this "conflict" which cannot but be present to every thoughtful mind-the difficulty of perfect impartiality and the mutual disadvantage of victory. It is almost unavoidable that the combatants-the Scientists on the one hand, the Christian Apologists on the other should enter this struggle with more or less of personal bias, each holding their views to be the truer. The great point in both cases is that the primary facts or doctrines be put in the simplest form and stated with absolute fairness. The want of this has often led to prolonged disagreement where no essential opposition really existed. When the original question is really probed to the bottom, and its actual content correctly understood, it often happens that, as in the case of Evolution, the objections of Christian Apologists to scientific truths, and of Scientists to religious truths, almost entirely disappear.

nents.

But this "conflict" is further complicated by the mutual disadvantage of victory. This is not a struggle in which either party should hope or expect to gain anything by vanquishing its oppoBoth parties professedly aim at the same goal-truth. And unless this goal be reached, the mere silencing of opposing facts or arguments through superior dialectical skill may be, after all, but a barren victory-a victory worse than a defeat. Consequently, we find that Scientists and Christian Apologists are by no means sharply divided into two camps, such as their names import, many

Scientists being eager Christian inquirers, and many Christian Apologists diligent students of Science. But, unfortunately, all disputants, either in the ranks of Science or Religion, do not view victory in this way. There are individuals and bodies of men on both sides who simply aim at silencing their opponents without any regard to the claims or triumphs of truth.

in this way is ProUniverse, a cheap The object of this

One of the most recent and gravest offenders fessor Haeckel, of Jena, in The Riddle of the translation of which has recently been issued. work is to prove that Science supersedes Christianity altogether; that the "monism" of Goethe and Spinoza, which modern Science teaches, "shatters" the central Christian doctrines of "the personality of God, the immortality of the soul, and the freedom of the will." Our purpose in the present article is to show that Professor Haeckel does not succeed in this attempt; that his reasoning is defective and his partisan bias conspicuous; that he misrepresents Science and misinterprets Christianity; and that therefore Science, instead of excluding Christianity, simply purifies it from accretions and corruptions. We shall discuss this subject under the five following heads: Law, Life, Truth, Morality and Progress.

common cause.

In the realm of Law Haeckel errs in tracing two quite different things, "the life of an organism," "the origin and activity of living beings "ie., the initiation of matter and forces; and "natural phenomena ❞—the relation of material elements and bodies-to a Both the origin of organic and inorganic forces and substances and their growth and changes are alik ascribed to "mechanical laws," to " blind and unconscious agenc es" (p. 92 et seq.). This involves the two very serious contradictions-(1) of regarding laws or sequences as "causes," of tracing to merely orderly operation an originating and purposive power; and (2) of identifying the forces that now sustain Nature with those which originated it. If mere "mechanical laws," mere "blind and unconscious agencies," be "the real and efficient causes" of the life and structure of animals and plants, how, we ask, is it that they have so entirely changed their character and powers since the creative epoch, that they have not, since the world began, produced a single new thing, not even the smallest atom or germ, but simply, as Haeckel says, "explained phenomena"? To meet this difficulty, the Monist must explain how these mechanical and unconscious forces possessed, at a certain epoch, powers absolutely different from any they have since shown. Even if matter and force be eternal (p. 86), there must still have been some stage in their history when they gave the earth (or the universe) its present ordered form-Haeckel puts it at forty

eight million years before man appeared-and when mechanical laws and agencies ceased to be creative, and became merely controlling or developing forces.

Natural science, it may be safely affirmed, according to its most reliable authorities, affords no ground whatever for Haeckel's view of "mechanical laws" as causes either of matter or life. "Gravity," said Newton, "may put the planets into motion, but without the Divine Power it would never put them into such a circulating motion as they have about the sun; and therefore for this, as well as other reasons, I am compelled to ascribe the frame of this system to an intelligent Agent." That the primary aggregation of matter is scientifically traceable to gravitation is no proof that matter itself was due to it. The force which causes the apple to fall does not create the apple; nor have the laws of chemical affinity any part in the production of the substances whose mutual relations they control. It does not follow that because "the processes of growth" appear to be consistent with "a (rational and) monistic conception of nature" (other conceptions may be "rational ") that this conception explains the origin of nature. Many eminent scientists (as Haeckel himself admits) hold that this demands quite a different explanation. Lord Kelvin, for instance, declares that "Science positively affirms creative power." And Professor Huxley's verdict on this point was that, "The materialistic position, that there is nothing in the world but matter, force and necessity, is as utterly devoid of justification as the most baseless of theological dogmas.”

In the sphere of Life, Haeckel is seriously at fault in tracing the source of life in plants, animals, and man to "spontaneous generation." He acknowledges "that the problem is one of the most contentious and confused in the science of the day"; adding, "I restrict the idea to the first development of living protoplasm out of inorganic carbonates " (p. 91). But it has been repeatedly shown that there is no such thing as "spontaneous generation" in the sense of originating permanent forms of existence, all professed claims to having verified it being always promptly negatived on further observation. The production of low forms of life due to putrefactive changes, and the microscopic organisms of the laboratory -the only actual embodiments of this "most contentious and confused problem"-show no tendency whatever to further development, and either remain stationary, or perish through lack of organic matter. Haeckel quotes Harvey's formula for the origin of life, “omne vivum ex ovo" (every living thing from an egg) as if it bore out his contention, whereas it is really equivalent, as the following quotation shows, to the modern doctrine, maintained by Huxley and others, that all organic life is due to previous life; that the true formula, whatever Harvey thought, is "omni vivum ex vivo" (every living thing from a living thing).

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Harvey believed, as implicitly as Aristotle did, in the equivocal generation of the lower animals. But while the course of modern investigation has only brought out into greater prominence the accuracy of Harvey's conception of the nature and mode of the development of germs, it has as distinctly tended to disprove the occurrence of equivocal generation, or abiogenesis, in the present course of nature. . . . It is certain that the germ is itself simply a detached portion of the substance of a previously living body; and the evidence has yet to be adduced which will satisfy any cautious reasoner that omne vivum ex vivo is not as well established a law of the existing course of nature as omne vivum ex ovo" (Encyclopædia Britannica, vol. viii., 9th ed., p. 746).

Two special considerations show the fallacy of the "spontaneous generation" theory of organic life-that it makes the result different from and greater than the cause. Even if mechanical changes could account for the lower types of life, how could they be conceived as generating its higher forms; not the insect or the savage, but the grandest human personalities—a Plato, Bacon, Newton, or Shakespeare? Surely this involves the philosophical contradiction of an effect, not only utterly diverse from, but greater than, its cause; or, in other words, of a cause less than the result. No wonder that "modern metaphysics," as Haeckel says, " continues to regard supernatural and telic forces as indispensable, and mechanical causes as inadequate " (p. 91). This is unavoidable unless we are prepared to regard that which has never, within historic time, produced anything-not even a germ or molecule having any separate existence as having originated all things; that which has never generated a single plant, animal, or human being, as the original source of all plants, animals, and human beings.

In the domain of Truth, Haeckel's two outstanding errors are, (1) that Reason-i.e., logical reason-is the only channel of knowledge; and (2) that Mystery precludes belief. The untenableness of the former point is shown by the fact that Haeckel himself virtually refutes it twice over in the very paragraph in which he asserts it. "By reason only," he says, can we attain to a correct knowledge of the world and a solution of its great problems. Nevertheless," he immediately adds, "it has only reached this high position by the progress of culture and education, by the development of knowledge" (p. 6). Now, it can never be affirmed that "culture and education" have been confined to the reasoning faculty to purely intellectual studies; and if not, then knowledge has been received through other channels-through the emotions and imagination—which Haeckel proceeds to stoutly deny. The fact is, he is here reasoning in a vicious circle, which renders his argument worthless-first, saying Knowledge is due to Reason, and then that Reason is due to (or largely dependant on) Knowledge. It is, therefore, perfectly true (though Haeckel calls it a "dangerous error") that "besides our god-like reason, we have two further