eration where there are no facts in the way, ought not to trouble any one. It is only when we come back to the rational definition of science that discrepancies are seriously worth considering.

The world of speculation is a free world; and it is free because no man can speak with authority in it. Authority in the sphere of the historical goes only with the verities of history; and where these cease to be verities, authority ceases and freedom comes in. Everything may have been in the fire mist just as truly as if the geologist had been there to make a diagram or take a photograph of the situation; but by the historical argument it can never be demonstrated. It must therefore, for us, stand only in the realm of the probable or possible. New evidence may come in to increase or diminish our confidence in its truth; or, inasmuch as it is not a purely scientific conclusion, it may be completely changed by later science, just as science or verified knowledge reversed the universal belief that the sun revolved about the earth. When it comes to inferences and speculations, the geologist has no more liberty, and scarcely more power, than any other speculator. Certainly the moment he steps beyond his facts he loses his pre-eminence. A philosopher who could not tell sandstone from granite may easily become his superior in the realm of pure speculation.

(2) Biologists also find vast fields for their research. But a mist has gathered here, because of a failure to distinguish between fact and fancy. The naturalist has gathered his facts with noble enthusiasm, but these, after all, are to be significant only in their own sphere. The moment any deductions are made beyond the centre of gravity of these facts, so to speak, those deductions are of no scientific value. It is not history that is then given us, but assumption. Any one is at equal liberty to assume differently; and no man can assume authoritatively. Some persons forget, apparently, that the development "theory" in its absolute form is not a "devel

opment fact." Science has not told us by the purely historical method that everything has developed from something below it. The verified facts of all the investigators in these fields are not sufficient to show, whether things have developed wholly upwards, or in part downwards; or whether they began in the middle, so to speak, and developed both ways; or whether, outside the limit of species, there is a development in either direction. The development theory when applied to the whole universe of matter and mind, the organic and the inorganic, is absolutely untenable without admitting a series of unexplained introductions, or of additions by creation, which would modify it so fundamentally as to destroy its primary and literal force.

(3) Those who have been searching to find the elements of life and spirit in matter have never been able to find them. They find matter in motion, but, from the very nature of the investigation, they find nothing more. They have no instruments for anything more. The physiological psychologists can only push their investigations, under more favorable circumstances, one step further into the delicate realm where the molecules are moved. They can locate the source from which the motion proceeds; they can measure its strength: but the animating energy itself forever eludes them. No new introduction of names can cover their defeat or solve the mysteries of "life."

But what are to be our inferences from all this here? It is true that those last substances upon which the physiologist can do his work are properly called only the "physical basis" of life and spirit. But out of the situation there is always arising, not a presumption, but an assumption, that, because nothing but matter can be discovered, therefore there is not a duality of matter and spirit, but a monality of matter alone. The physiological scientist and those who follow

1 See Sir William Dawson's latest work, Some Salient Points in the Science of the Earth. New York: Harper Bros. 1894.

his lead are to be bound by the limitations of the historical argument. They can truly say that they find only matter in motion. Did any rational man, understanding the instruments with which they must work, ever expect anything more? Can it be said that there is therefore no spiritual existence in connection with matter, or apart from it? By no manner of reasoning. All such investigations can never create a presumption against spiritual realities. Is there no mind because we cannot find it with the probe? Is there no personal God because science cannot find him in the universe? As well affirm that there is no architect of the palace because he is not discoverable in the building. Physical science finds its sphere in the physical side of existences, and there its authority will depend upon the exactness of its work. It can only demonstrate that matter conditions spirit, as well as that spirit influences matter; or, in other words, that the shape of the potato will be determined in part by the obstacles in the soil.

On the other hand, however, President Stanley Hall declares that he has not been able to enumerate a dozen materialists among contemporary writers, and of these only two are academic; and he affirms that the present tendency in science is toward dynamic views of matter, rather than to the materialistic views of force. If this be true, and many of the recent followers of Herbert Spencer would seem to bear out the claim, it will be just as necessary in the future to insist upon the validity and importance of the historical argument for science as it has been necessary in the past to call attention to its limitations. There is certainly no less to be said against a monality of force and spirit in the universe, than against a monality of matter. It is not a legitimate limitation of the historical argument when, for any purpose whatever, facts of importance on either side of a question are ignored.

1894.

1"The New Psychology as a Basis of Education," Forum, August,

Mr. Benjamin Kidd's great point is in showing that science has made a fundamental omission in failing to estimate the great fact of religion. He says: "What then are the religious systems which fill such a commanding place in man's life and history? What is their meaning and function in social development? To ask these questions is to find that a strange silence has fallen upon Science. She cannot answer. Her attitude toward them has been curious in the extreme, and widely different from that in which she has regarded any other of the phenomena of life. . . . These religious phenomena are certainly among the most persistent and characteristic features of the development which we find man undergoing in society. . . . Yet contemporary literature may be searched almost in vain for evidence of any true realization of this fact. Even the attempt made by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his Sociology to deal with the phenomena of religions can scarcely be said to be conceived in the spirit of evolutionary science as now understood. It is hard to follow the author in his theories of the development of religious beliefs from ghosts, and ancestor worship, without a continued feeling of disappointment and even impatience at the triviality and comparative insignificance of the explanations offered to account for the development of such an imposing class of social phenomena." To Mr. Kidd this failure of evolutionary science to give due regard to the historical factor has not only weakened, but vitiated, its conclusions.

3. In Literary and Biblical Criticism the historical argument has, in like manner, a special need of recognition. The impulse for greater exactness in the scrutiny of literary and artistic work as a means of determining authorship and time of production, is but a part of the increased interest in historical exactness in general. In its best form it is helped along by a desire to strengthen insufficient historical evidence, or to help to determine the character of that evidence. When

1 Social Evolution, pp. 19–22.

an old painting or an ancient piece of sculpture is brought to light, it is the aim of "criticism," not by a priori reasoning, but by legitimate comparison with works of known antiquity and authorship, to determine whether it is possible to classify the new-comer with any degree of confidence. Or a manuscript is found, which in the light of what is already known in this field, and not by the mere subjective mental state of the inquirer, is located with great confidence, or on the other hand with many improbabilities about it. If the testimony in its behalf is not historical, as well as critical, it can never come to be in itself a direct historical authority.

This great activity in seeking to determine by criticism. what is genuine, and what is not genuine, has been extended more directly into the realm of religion. But here there is also a biblical and religious criticism, which seeks, largely by methods of its own, to determine the authorship and genuineness of our religious bocks and the character of their teachings. It is important to know how to estimate the real scientific value of this branch of investigation. It is understood at the outset, and from its very nature, that it is critical, and therefore not historical. It appeals not to well-authenticated testimony, but to a priori reasons, and to appearances. Standing alone, it can therefore never be authoritative. These critical judgments furnish presumptions, as working hypotheses; and standing alone they can never be anything else in the courts of evidence but presumptions.1 Literary critical argument is therefore to be distinguished from the historical method. The two do not conflict with each other necessarily or primarily. They may indeed work together as well as otherwise. But they generally work apart. In other words, where the historical argument is strongest and most complete, the literary critical is least workable. The literary critical has the best field where there is a marked lack of his

1 German historians have in frequent use the word Foraussetzungen, which is generally translated "presuppositions."