it is tried by scientific methods and sought for in a scientific spirit. If it is urged that there are biassing influences in favor of a philosophy that satisfies our higher wants and aspirations, we reply that there are also biassing influences against such a philosophy. If theism attracts some minds on what are called. theological grounds, atheism does the same. For atheism is as truly a theology as theism, and now and then seems capable of kindling a zeal that overleaps reason and flames into a fanatical ferocity. 8. On the other hand there is serious danger lest the devotees of a special science should make it the rule for every other, and exalt it into a fundamental philosophy. Some of us remember the fable of a besieged city for whose defence a council of citizens was called, representing the chief occupations of its inhabitants, and how, after each man had set forth the virtues of the material he dealt in, the tanner contended that among all there was nothing like leather. This story is exemplified in so grave a matter as the philosophy of the universe. The ultra-materialist cannot believe that anything is real except matter, or that there are any properties or laws which science is bound to respect except the properties and laws of matter. It is no dishonor to the devotees of the physical sciences to assert that they are especially exposed to this temptation. These sciences are, as they ought to be, largely sciences of observation and experiment, and the facts and theories of which naturally engross the attention and occupy the mind. The philosophy on which they rest is a matter of curious interest only to the few. It has no direct interest for those who are occupied with ordinary physical researches. It is not surprising that such men should be ready to explain the phenomena of life and of spirit by the forces and laws with which they are familiar, and be prepared to believe that matter and motion account for the existence of the universe and the occurrence of its phenomena. This is less surprising in consideration of the fact that so great a variety of the most refined material forces, as light and heat and electricity, have to the satisfaction of many been resolved into a single force, and that this force has been ascribed to the capacity D of material particles for varied forms of motion. If this be so, the physicist reasons, let the material be a little more refined and the motions be modified, and matter will put on the phenomena of life. Let the process advance to a higher potency and spirit will appear in its feebler and humbler forms; let it proceed still farther onward and upward and the highest forms of intellectual and moral activity will be manifest. If what was once dead matter can by forces and agencies within itself be sublimated to their finer activities-if that which seems so gross can be finely touched to issues so fine as these-then the universe of matter, self-moved to the noblest manifestations of thought and feeling, has no occasion for any other intelligence than such as sleeps in its own atoms and can be evoked by a happy combination or a swiftly moving stroke. The growth of materialistic evolutionism is similarly accounted for. Let the phenomena of life attract the scientific study of a generation of devoted students. Let the mysterious process of growth from the seed to the plant and the embryo to the perfected animal be the subject of curious yet familiar interest and development becomes the word of the hour, at once exciting the curiosity by its peculiar mystery and then sating it by its frequent recognition till it forgets that it is the greatest of wonders. Let it be discovered that development has a wider range and application than had been supposed, even among living forms and beings; that many. so-called species have originated from a simpler form. Let the truth be accepted among zoologists and palæontologists that a law of progress can be traced from simpler to more complex forms of life, from the fossil period down to the present. To any conclusions of this sort philosophy can have no possible objection, provided they are sustained by scientific evidence and are supported by scientific arguments. But when the analogies of the growing seed or embryo are extended to lifeless matter and made the substitute for creative force; when an unthinking tendency to variation coupled with a tendency to conservation equally blind are asserted to be the last formulæ which philosophy needs; when star-dust, rushing from a rarer to a denser medium, is deemed the only, and the ample, explanation of the structure and order of the planetary system, of the production of air and water and earth, of the production of D animal and vegetable life, of the manipulation of sensitive, intellectual, and spiritual activity, of conscience, law, and religion; when, in short, the development of the germ of plant or animal is accepted as the ultimate solution of the evolution of the kosmos and all which it contains, even to the mind of a Humboldt which reflects it by scientific explanation, then we have a right to say in the name of philosophy that the idols of a single private chapel of knowledge shall not be admitted into its sacred fane and lifted up upon the high altar of philosophy. And we do this with reason, forasmuch as the doctrine of evolution, even if it were true, is no fundamental conception on which all the sciences can stand, but supposes many other such conceptions, pre-eminently one, and that is the conception of a plan beginning millions of ages past, most comprehensive of minute detail, infinite in the possibilities which it realizes and rejects, and steadily pressing forward towards its fulfilment—in a word, supposes a creative energy of unexhausted capacity and intelligent wisdom. In some of these remarks I have anticipated the discussions which lie before us. The remarks may, however, serve to impress the conviction which thinkers of all schools of science are beginning to acknowledge, that the questions that are now agitating the devotees of any department of knowledge can only be answered by asking profounder questions in respect to man's nature, i.e., his capacity to know either matter or mind; in respect to the essence of matter, of life, of sensibility, of science itself; in respect to duty and right and immortality; and again, in respect to the destiny of man as an individual and as a race, in the present and in the future life-most of all in respect to God whether science compels us to recognize Him or must shut and bar forever the brazen gates which seem to lead into His inner sanctuary, and will forever delude and tantalize the successive generations that stream towards those gates by painted and gilded mockeries that at a distance seem to reveal the mysteries of the highest truth, and on a near approach vanish like the vapor before the sun. Questions of this sort agitate thinking men to the very depths of their being. They cannot be evaded. They can D only be answered by cherishing the truly scientific spirit—that spirit which, according to the great expounders of the modern scientific method, is coincident with the spirit which the great Master of Christian truth declared was indispensable to a man who desires to enter into the kingdom of heaven. In prescribing this spirit in searching after truth, the great Master of Christian thinking has given the sufficient rule and inspiration for all philosophical inquiry. Hence when he founded the kingdom of God upon earth he provided a place, and a very large place, in it for a Christian philosophy. FREEDOM OF WILL EMPIRICALLY CONSIDERED. I [A Paper read before the American Institute of Christian Philosophy, BY JOHN BASCOM, LL.D., President of the University of Wisconsin. T is not our present purpose to present again the proofs of liberty in human action. These proofs are so primitive in their character, approach so nearly the first principles of reason, that later discussions of them between the defenders of philosophical systems do not often subserve any purpose of conviction. The object we now have in view is a consideration of liberty as it offers itself in experience, first, in the relation of the mind. to the brain; and, second, in the reaction between the powers of the mind and the products of those powers in the world about it. If we were to grant liberty theoretically, should we find its exercise possible under our present experience? This: is the question we wish to answer. It will not be amiss to remind ourselves in starting of the nature of the interests involved in this discussion of liberty. Moral facts are supreme facts in human society. The axiomatic principle on which these rest in the general mind is, Responsibility is commensurate with power. This involves at once choice as the indispensable condition of virtue. We are not considering in morals a balance of tendencies, but a balancing of tendencies-a dealing of the mind with tendencies. No adverse statement at this point has weakened the general convictions on which morality proceeds, or presented itself as more D |