PESSIMISM AND POSITIVE SCIENCE. § 1. Modern pessimism-"The Occidental Buddhism." Explanation 2. Answer to the pessimist: from the experience of the majority; from the interpretation of consciousness. Consciousness not essentially a want and a pain. Pessimism not the word of life 4. Causes of the rise and spread of the positive spirit. Whether the old metaphysical questions, stripped of their unreal ele- ments, may not be answered from the positive point of view 5. The positive standpoint suffices at least for all questions relating 203 THE MESSAGE AND THE PROMISES TO MANKIND. 2. The truths of science calculated to beget a resigned and religions 3. Knowledge the emancipator and deliverer. The pursuit of know- ledge the worship and sacrifice accepted by Nature. Grace 4. What medical science and physiology have done for us TO THE POOR. SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM. § 1. The socialist's indictment against modern society. Causes of poverty and all social evils, according to the socialist. The 2. Reply of the sociologist and political economist. Social evils spring from imperfect human nature, not from unjust laws, or imperfect constitution of society. Further development of 246 252 265 3. Truth and error in both preceding views. The socialist's pro- gramme impracticable, human nature stopping the way, Mistake of the sociologist. Human nature modifiable for a 4. Co-operative labour. Limits to the application of the principle. 5. Under one contingency, the normal slow rate of social evolution might be greatly accelerated. The aristocracy of thought and letters on the side of labour. Best present advice to the toiling many. The social agitation in all civilized states a ON THE MATERIALISM OF ATOMS AND FORCES. § 1. Is science atheistic? Distinction between science and the 2. Two kinds of materialism, one constructing the universe from PAGE ... 3. A third Something behind all phenomena material or mental. ON THE EVOLUTION-MATERIALISM AND THEOLOGY. § 1. What is necessary to establish a complete materialism. The 2. The argument for God's existence as the Author of the moral law attacked by evolution. Evolution account of the origin and 3. Continuation and conclusion of the evolution-materialist's argu. 4. Reply to this materialism. How far the controversy with the materialist may now be narrowed. Futility of all materialism PAGE § 5. Real danger of Darwinism and the evolution philosophy in another direction; tends to make not Matter but Chance the must believe in Purpose ON THE DEVELOPED CONCEPTION OF GOD. § 1. The modern conception of God. Its origin and development 2. The conception illustrated in detail. How far it coincides with 3. The conception of Kant and Schliermacher 4. Will the new conception offer a barrier to the new materialism in ... 7. True source of the supposed intuitions of the religious sense OBJECTIONS TO THE EVOLUTION ETHICS. § 1. (1) That the new teaching destroys virtue by making it a matter 373 ... 376 2. (3) That the relaxed sense of moral obligation will destroy society and civilization. Parallels of history. Stages of moral decay specified. This result more to be dreaded if the theory of the mechanical or materialistic derivation of all actions is CONFLICT AND PARTIAL CONCILIATION BETWEEN THE NEW AND OLD ETHICS. § 1. Only mode of partial conciliation. Concession by evolutionist to the spiritualist and moral idealist. Nature of our moral im- pulses to be learned from the impulses themselves, not from their origin. Our obligation to truth and justice. Limitation 2. Evolutionists may concede that men follow ideals more than ever. Morality will not be touched in essence; but a new valuation of the virtues may be required. Doctrine of heredity 3. Irreducible contradictions between real and ideal morality. The contradictions in our nature and in the conditions of life. Tendency to further conciliation, ever short of full harmony 406 INTRODUCTION. §1. I PROPOSE in the following pages to give the chief conclusions reached by Modern Science on the central questions of religion, morals, and society,-to state, in a word, the general creed of Science; and, as the scientific faith may still be fallible, or of unequal degrees of credit, I propose, in the second place, to offer some comments and criticisms on some of its more doubtful articles, with a view to their reconsideration or revision. Already many have taken in hand to set forth the scientific faith, together with the grounds on which it rests. In particular, eminent physicists and naturalists both in this country and in Germany-Huxley, Clifford, Tyndall, Haeckel, Helmholtz, Tait, and Balfour Stewart have all attempted it in essays, addresses, or books, with more or less pretence at fulness. But the physicists and naturalists, though they may be depended upon to reflect accurately the tendency of scientific thought on the questions within their respective provinces which touch on the sphere of religion, do not speak with the same authority on questions moral, social, or philosophical. The scientific thinkers, to whom the work more properly belongs, have also attempted to give expositions of scientific faith and doctrine. Within the past forty years Comte, Mill, Strauss, and Herbert Spencer have all essayed it. But as the two former wrote before the discovery of the two most comprehensive generalizations in physics and biology-the law of the Conservation of Energy and the law of Natural Selection-they failed to reach the new and more commanding point of view which these two laws place henceforth at the disposal of thinkers. Their systems are accordingly to a considerable extent superseded as incomplete scientific explanations of the universe, while the moral and social doctrines of both are pronounced by Herbert Spencer inconsistent with the deepest and widest generalizations of the laws of life and society. Herbert Spencer has himself, in the various volumes of his new system of evolution-philosophy, given the most complete and philosophic statement of the scientific faith, and he has given it with special references to the above-named highest laws. But waiving the fact that physicists object to some of his physics, and philosophers to some of his philosophy, the system is itself so voluminous and vast-in fact, so severe a course of reading, which postulates a special facility in the art of quickly apprehending the meaning of a train of abstract symbols, scientific and philosophic-that a more compendious if not an easier exposition would seem a matter to be desired. To supply some such condensed exposition to the large and increasing class who have an intelligent human interest in the new scientific theories, and in the great collision and controversy now going on between the new and old beliefs is one object of this book ; to supplement the exposition with a criticism which may |