for two or three commodities among two or three trading bodies, but all the functions involved are so complicated in character that there is not much fear of scientific method making rapid progress in this direction. If such be the prospects of a comparatively formal science, like political economy, what shall we say of moral science? Any complete theory of morals must deal with quantities of pleasure and pain, as Bentham pointed out, and must sum up the general tendency of each kind of action upon the good of the community. If we are to apply scientific method to morals, we must have a calculus of moral effects, a kind of physical astronomy investigating the mutual perturbations of individuals. But as astronomers have not yet fully solved the problem of three gravitating bodies, when shall we have a solution of the problem of three moral bodies?

The sciences of political economy and morality are comparatively abstract and general, treating mankind from simple points of view, and attempting to detect general principles of action. They are to social phenomena what the abstract sciences of chemistry, heat, and electricity are to the concrete science of meteorology. Before we can investigate the actions of any aggregate of men, we must have fairly mastered all the more abstract sciences applying to them, somewhat in the way that we have acquired a fair comprehension of the simpler truths of chemistry and physics. But all our physical sciences do not enable us to predict the weather two days hence with any great probability, and the general problem of meteorology is almost unattempted as yet. What shall we say then of the general problem of social science, which shall enable us to predict the course of events in a nation?

Several writers have proposed to lay the foundations of the science of history. Buckle undertook to write the History of Civilisation in England, and to show how the character of a nation could be explained by the nature of the climate and the fertility of the soil. He omitted to explain the contrast between the ancient Greek nation and the present one; there must have been an extraordinary revolution in the climate or the soil. Auguste Comte detected the simple laws of the course of development through which nations pass. There are always three

phases of intellectual condition, the theological, the metaphysical, and the positive; applying this general law of progress to concrete cases, Comte was enabled to predict that in the hierarchy of European nations, Spain would necessarily hold the highest place. Such are the parodies of science offered to us by the positive philosophers.

A science of history in the true sense of the term is an absurd notion. A nation is not a mere sum of individuals whom we can treat by the method of averages; it is an organic whole, held together by ties of infinite complexity. Each individual acts and re-acts upon his smaller or greater circle of friends, and those who acquire a public position exert an influence on much larger sections of the nation. There will always be a few great leaders of exceptional genius or opportunities, the unaccountable phases of whose opinions and inclinations sway the whole body. From time to time arise critical situations, battles, delicate negotiations, internal disturbances, in which the slightest incidents may change the course of history. A rainy day may hinder a forced march, and change the course. of a campaign; a few injudicious words in a despatch may irritate the national pride; the accidental discharge of a gun may precipitate a collision the effects of which will last for centuries. It is said that the history of Europe depended at one moment upon the question whether the look-out man upon Nelson's vessel would or would not descry a ship of Napoleon's expedition to Egypt which was passing not far off. In human affairs, then, the smallest causes may produce the greatest effects, and the real application of scientific method is out of the question.

The Theory of Evolution.

Profound philosophers have lately generalised concerning the production of living forms and the mental and moral phenomena regarded as their highest development. Herbert Spencer's theory of evolution purports to explain the origin of all specific differences, so that not even the rise of a Homer or a Beethoven would escape from his broad theories. The homogeneous is unstable and must differentiate itself, says Spencer, and hence comes the variety of human

institutions and characters. In order that a living form shall continue to exist and propagate its kind, says Darwin, it must be suitable to its circumstances, and the most suitable forms will prevail over and extirpate those which are less suitable. From these fruitful ideas are developed theories of evolution and natural selection which go far towards accounting for the existence of immense numbers of living creatures-plants, and animals. Apparent adaptations of organs to useful purposes, which Paley regarded as distinct products of creative intelligence, are now seen to follow as natural effects of a constantly acting tendency. Even man, according to these theories, is no distinct creation, but rather an extreme case of brain development. His nearest cousins are the apes, and his pedigree extends backwards until it joins that of the lowliest zoophytes.

The theories of Darwin and Spencer are doubtless not demonstrated; they are to some extent hypothetical, just as all the theories of physical science are to some extent hypothetical, and open to doubt. Judging from the immense numbers of diverse facts which they harmonise and explain, I venture to look upon the theories of evolution and natural selection in their main features as two of the most probable hypotheses ever proposed. I question whether any scientific works which have appeared since the Principia of Newton are comparable in importance with those of Darwin and Spencer, revolutionising as they do all our views of the origin of bodily, mental, moral, and social phenomena.

Granting all this, I cannot for a moment admit that the theory of evolution will destroy theology. That theory embraces several laws or uniformities which are observed to be true in the production of living forms; but these laws do not determine the size and figure of living creatures, any more than the law of gravitation determines the magnitudes and distances of the planets. Suppose that Darwin is correct in saying that man is descended from the Ascidians: yet the precise form of the human body must have been influenced by an infinite train of circumstances affecting the reproduction, growth, and health of the whole chain of intermediate beings. No doubt, the circumstances being what they were, man could not be otherwise than he is, and if in any other part of the universe an exactly similar earth,

furnished with exactly similar germs of life, existed, a race must have grown up there exactly similar to the human race.

By a different distribution of atoms in the primeval world a different series of living forms on this earth would have been produced. From the same causes acting according to the same laws, the same results will follow; but from different causes acting according to the same laws, different results will follow. So far as we can see, then, infinitely diverse living creatures might have been created consistently with the theory of evolution, and the precise reason why we have a backbone, two hands with opposable thumbs, an erect stature, a complex brain, about 223 bones, and many other peculiarities, is only to be found in the original act of creation. I do not, any less than Paley, believe that the eye of man manifests design. I believe that the eye was gradually developed, and we can in fact trace its gradual development from the first germ of a nerve affected by light-rays in some simple zoophyte. In proportion as the eye became a more accurate instrument of vision, it enabled its possessor the better to escape destruction, but the ultimate result must have been contained in the aggregate of the causes, and these causes, as far as we can see, were subject to the arbitrary choice of the Creator.

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Although Agassiz was clearly wrong in holding that every species of living creature appeared on earth by the immediate intervention of the Creator, which would amount to saying that no laws of connection between forms are discoverable, yet he seems to be right in asserting that living forms are distinct from those produced by purely physical causes. "The products of what are commonly called physical agents," he says, "are everywhere the same (ie. upon the whole surface of the earth), and have always been the same (i.e. during all geological periods); while organised beings are everywhere different and have differed in all ages. Between two such series of phenomena there can be no causal or genetic connection." Living forms as we now regard them are essentially variable, but from constant mechanical causes constant effects would ensue. If vegetable cells are formed on geometrical principles

being first spherical, and then by mutual compression dodecahedral, then all cells should have similar forms. In the Foraminifera and some other lowly organisms, we seem to observe the production of complex forms on geometrical principles. But from similar causes acting according to similar laws only similar results could be produced. If the original life germ of each creature is a simple particle of protoplasm, unendowed with any distinctive forces, then the whole of the complex phenomena of animal and vegetable life are effects without causes. Protoplasm may be chemically the same substance, and the germ-cell of a man and of a fish may be apparently the same, so far as the microscope can decide; but if certain cells produce men, and others as uniformly produce a species of fish, there must be a hidden constitution determining the extremely different results. If this were not so, the generation of every living creature from the uniform germ would have to be regarded as a distinct act of creation.

Theologians have dreaded the establishment of the theories of Darwin and Huxley and Spencer, as if they thought that those theories could explain everything upon the purest mechanical and material principles, and exclude all notions of design. They do not see that those theories have opened up more questions than they have closed. The doctrine of evolution gives a complete explanation of no single living form. While showing the general principles which prevail in the variation of living creatures, it only points out the infinite complexity of the causes and circumstances which have led to the present state of things. Any one of Mr. Darwin's books, admirable though they all are, consists but in the setting forth of a multitude of indeterminate probleins. He proves in the most beautiful manner that each flower of an orchid is adapted to some insect which frequents and fertilises it, and these adaptations are but a few cases of those immensely numerous ones which have occurred in the lives of plants and animals. But why orchids should have been formed so differently from other plants, why anything, indeed, should be as it is, rather than in some of the other infinitely numerous possible modes of existence, he can never show. The origin of everything that exists is wrapped up in the past history of the universe. At some one or more points in past time there