Evolution is simply the widest generalization of all facts, gathered from remotest orbs as well as from the gases about us and the grasses beneath our feet. It is a declaration of the procedure of the present from the past, of the future from the present. the statement of belief that this was always so and always will be so, and that the universe is complete and self-regulating under the control of this principle.

Being thus a generalization from natural facts, the Philosophy of Evolution does not need to borrow weapons from old reasoners or books of the past. It asks nothing of nominalist or idealist; it shows scant respect for metaphysician or logician. It has little to say to the old disputants about "cogito, ergo sum," or the essence of being, or the thing in itself, or the ontological proofs of the existence of God. When reading the metaphysical philosophers, one is fain to be persuaded that important interests for humanity are bound up in their conclusions; but Evolution brings one to his sober senses and discloses the habit of trifling which metaphysical studies give to minds devoted to them. As an example, consider how many hours good minds have wasted over Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason," with its fruitless propositions. What is the use of reasoning as to whether space and time have only formal existence or also real existence, excepting as an exercise of ingenuity? It is a pretty piece of chess-playing, perhaps. And all his learned discussions as to how a priori judgments are possible as if there were any such reasonable judgments and the like, are they aught but mere excursions of curiosity, worthy of attention only from those who have no serious pursuits? Evolution, not having been rocked in the metaphysical cradle, gives cool recognition of these and similar studies. It merely calls attention to the fact that either side of their questions has no material proof, and therefore lacks in the first condition of a verifiable proposition.

The wide difference of methods existing between the Metaphysical and Evolutionary Philosophies is seen nowhere more forcibly than in the systems for discovering truth employed by the Transcendentalist, Hegel, and the Naturalist, Darwin, respectively. Both were men of extraordinary intellect, of great industry, of pertinacious devotion to their ideas, of wide range of investigation, and comprehensive

statement.

But Hegel sat down in his study and gave his days and nights to profound reflections on abstract Being, and the course of nature as a course of thought. He then developed a series of abstract, verbally logical sequences, on whose lines he affirmed the universe to have been laid down, and expounded them with awful toil and subtlety. His main principle of the identity of contradictions proved as barren as other metaphysical discoveries. The reasoning was cogent, the proof by definition (if definition could ever prove anything) was convincing, but still nothing ever could grow from it all. Verbal propositions can produce only verbal progress, and verbal progress is like Mr. Carlyle's spavined horse, "all move and no go."

As if to make the futility of metaphysical investigation even if its principles were true. the more startling, Hegel's dialectic had the advantage of being itself evolutionary in its form and spirit. One proposition springs out of another by a surprising derivation, resembling a real parentage and sonship as closely as words can resemble the facts of the world. But it proved to be valueless all the same for thought can never have the value of things, except when it represents things exactly. It is otherwise but a baseless fabric of vision. the cloud-world of the maybe, not the land of the real. One might go on entertaining its theorems for centuries, as happened during the ages of scholasticism, and not a step forward for the welfare of mankind would be made in consequence.

Compare this whole procedure with that of Mr. Darwin in his endeavor to discover the order of nature. Not in the closet, nor in his own mind, did he fancy that he could find the principles of the universe, but only in nature herself. To nature, therefore, he applied himself, made a voyage of study round the world, seeking everywhere the material facts and procedure of things, comparing and sifting verities with tireless industry and for many years, until his main proposition of the transformation of species was established. Then he enlarged his theory and disclosed the everlasting mutation of the restless universe, the instructive and fruitful law that anything may become anything else if its material basis is properly handled. And this philosophy brought, at last, the long fumbling of the metaphysicians to an end. Never again could their endless logomachy interest sober minds. Never again could they

atleyae 12 32 416, 17tary filters2. Tin VAL we willerente and the credenza di mamons New. W na to thi that their wo YALO! *** & mapering waha mi abella, wille the Kernel of the water tas de ezized a known by neither. buat the Volumes då kronkion reppired of the metapunyaibala waa real proot for any of their assertions, and the demand it was widen brongia ter vinly quarrels to yoshide. They tat no real proof, and soon it became clear that they never could fumích any. They had been furnishing verval proof, on both sides of interminable questions, for centuries, but real proof in the actual working of the shiverse there was Long, and they could therefore bring hole tortil And when Evolution came forward, offering to demonstrate by tare facts a multitude of propositions all going to verify its own main principle, no wonder it arrested the attention of all and drew disciples in crowds from the schools of the old teachers. For it at least furnished a standard of truth, which the former had failed to do after ages of painful industry.

And the main difference between Evolution and all preceding systems is perhaps most of all in this, that its adherents can verify their assertions by a standard of proof, whereas the metaphysicians are still unable to do so, as they have no standard, and therefore every man says that which is

right in his own eyes. The evolutionist appeals to fact, the metaphysician to thought, with the advantage to the first that the fact remains while the thought perpetually changes.

A special illustration of the superiority of this Evolutionary appeal is seen in its application to those fanatics of wilfulness and hap-hazard, the Intuitionalists. These thinkers, of whom Ralph Waldo Emerson is the anointed high-priest and oracle, were disporting themselves like dolphins in the high seas, amid what they claimed to be high themes, showing an originality and brilliancy of expression unrivaled. So long as they were not called upon to establish any of their assertions, they were very successful, and astonished the empyrean with the splendors of their rhetoric and the lustre of their paradoxes. Who could surpass Mr. Emerson in the courage and kindling fire of his discourse? Who could seem nearer to nature and the true order of nature than he? He held his audiences and readers enthralled, as he seemed to open to them the loftiest heaven of thought and to disclose all the secrets of spirit and spiritual worlds. But the arrow of evolution, alas! takes him also in its winged flight,-him the beautiful Achilles, and glancing strikes the vulnerable tendon of his heel with fatal effect. For what the Philosophy of Evolution undertook to do was, as I said, to prove its positions with the amplest evidence. It would listen to everything, but accept nothing without demonstration. It had no ears for glittering generalities. It would have chapter and verse from the Bible of fact for any proposition which the arrested Intuitionalist might be inspired on his tripod to deliver. This threw a coolness over the industry of those venturesome and guileless thinkers, which we fear will deepen as time goes on. For surely the grasshopper-like flight of their thoughts is calculated to bring them nowhither. They spring into the air and come down wherever God wills. But Evolution, as a doctrine, builds a solid causeway of proved truth through the trembling swamp of human conjecture wherein they wander,- a causeway over which the nations of the future may march to ever-increasing power, wisdom, and happiness, as long as the world may last.

The Positive Philosophy, so-called, of August Comte, has something to say to Evolution, and claims many of its doctrines and benefits for its own. In so far as it induced

men to leave the pathless woods of metaphysics and mythology for the cleared land of science it of course deserves the laudation of philosophers; but it came far short of discovering the fundamental postulates of evolution. It was itself metaphysical and fragmentary. It was so little familiar with the true method of philosophizing that it at last landed its believers in the paltry and time-wasting cult of its founder's mistress, and in a Religion of Humanity which is good enough for an ideal but has no roots in the nature of things. It elevates a sentiment to that throne of authority which fact alone can satisfactorily fill. Positivism played an excellent part in its insistency that a philosophy should deal with the universe itself rather than with various notions about the universe. It deserves a magnum cum laude for pointing out the unsatisfactory service rendered by metaphysics. But it was only a door to the method of nature, and not that method itself.

Leaving now the other systems to their own intrepid adherents, let me say that the Evolutionary Philosophy seems to me to be essentially materialistic. It is true that its greatest apostles, Spencer and Huxley, and Mr. John Fiske as well, allege that of the two world-old dilemmas between mind and matter, every analysis leads rather to the conclusion that we know the universe far more as all mind than we do as all matter. They do indeed deny that we can claim to know its real nature at all, and so sustain themselves in the airy spaces of agnosticism, declaring the existence of "an Unknowable Reality" beyond our ken. Mr. Spencer labors the point frequently, asserting that consciousness and reason alike fail to carry us beyond a knowledge of relations, which never disclose the absolute reality. The permanent substratum of mental being, which abides behind all the changes of thought, and the permanent substance in which all the qualities of matter inhere, must forever remain hid from us. But if we were to decide anything as to the nature of the ultimate substance, he says we should decide it to be mental rather than material, for consciousness itself is nearer to mind than it is to matter, so far at least as we see it internally. All our knowledge is declared to be given. in units of feeling at last, and these units of feeling are mental. We seem thus to be crowded back to the old metaphysical basis for all philosophizing the primitive testimony of consciousness. While one may