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TERMS OF SUBSCRIPTION.

For EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money-order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks and money-orders should be made payable to the order of LITTELL & Co.

Single Numbers of THE LIVING AGE, 18 cents.

IN OCTOBER.

I SAW the sunlight glinting down,
Where the tall trees stood gaunt and brown.

I saw the soft pathetic light

AT EVENTIDE.

OFTTIMES when all the storm-vexed day
The sullen clouds have ceaseless passed,
And winds have wailed as if to pray

For peace at last;

Touch the stream's foam to glistering white. Lo! as if rolled by hand of might,

I saw the tearful lustre shed,
Where falling leaves heaped gold and red.

I heard the music that they make
The becks that brattle through the brake,

And toss the withered fern-fronds by,
And laugh beneath the sombre sky.

I heard the river's ceaseless song,
Sweeping fir-crested hills among.

The chirpings of each lingering bird
That braves the angry North, I heard.

And a fresh yearning woke and cried,
A voice of Love unsatisfied;

And all the lovely autumn day,
In burning tears seemed blurred away.
To wood and glen, to hill and plain,
For Nature's balm I asked, in vain.
Then I said, low and suddenly,
"God keep my darling safe for me."
SUSAN K. PHILLIPS.

Macmillan's Magazine.

AD MUSAM.

Aside the gloom of cloud is pressed,
And the soft eve is full of light,

And quiet rest.

Thus, too, beyond our doubt and strife,
Which cloudlike hide the heavenly light,
Shadowing the fair noon of life

With sombre night,

Awaits a calm and peaceful eve.
Then sorrow shall be overpast;
Then fear shall cease, and struggles leave
God's peace at last.

DREAMS.

A. J. P.

A DREAM flew out of the ivory gate
And came to me when night was late.
My love drew near with the proud sad eyes
And the fathomless look of soft surprise.
I slept in peace through the summer night
As I dreamed of her eyes and their depth of
light.

A dream came out from the gate of horn
And flew to me at early morn.

I ran to the stable and saddled my steed,
We rushed through the dawn at a headlong

speed;

O MAID, that, far from town's tumultuous strife, When I reached my love the sun shone bright,
Leadest a country life!
And I found her dead in the morning light.
WALTER HERRIES POLLOCK.

Beneath the healthy blue,
Amidst the smiling green,

Gathering fresh flowers of every varied hue,
Thy form is oftenest seen.

The nightingale when singing to the night,
Under the starry light,

Oft sees thy upturned face
Shining in that dark place,
Where thou art sitting underneath the tree
To hear her minstrelsy.

The whistling ploughman, with his brawny
hands

On his stopped ploughshare, stands,
Midway in the furrow long,

To hear thy sudden song,

And see the flutter of thy garments white
Just vanish out of sight.

O come, sweet nymph, and make a home with

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Yet for all this, their beauty is not marred,
Nor in their hearts are they discomfited.
Still they endure, whatever whirlwinds roll
Around, -still glorious they endure, my soul !
JOHN W. HALES.

Hindscarth Cairn, August 30th.

Spectator.

From The Contemporary Review. NATURAL SELECTION AND NATURAL THEOLOGY.

It would be a sorry spectacle to behold a posse of scientific agnostics, fired with zeal against superstition, arming themselves with the costly implements of scientific research to make a furious onset on Westminster Abbey; piling the treasures of museums in an incendiary heap, flinging choice fossils, microscopes, and electrical apparatus through the windows; or employing a twenty-foot reflector as a battering-ram. Whatever temporary damage the venerable building might suffer, it is certain that the injury would be much more serious to the interests of science, and to the assailants themselves.

true domain. A great deal conventionally passes under the name, which is no more science than bricks and timber are a building. It is art, the art of making science. The facts patiently accumulated, accurately analyzed and recorded, on which, step by step, scientific inductions are raised, are the precious materials of science; but they are not science. The keen eye of the naturalist, the adroit and sensitive finger of the operator; the insight, imagination, and ready invention which mark the man of scientific genius from the mere plodder, and enable him to look behind the veil before he persuades nature herself to lift it: these are admirable, invaluable, indispensable to the progress of science. But they are not Grotesque as this supposition may be, science. Theories and hypotheses the we are compelled to witness a really more shelves on which we pack and label our lamentable and surprising spectacle, when | facts, the luggage-vans in which we forthose rich results of modern science ward them on their journey which are the wonder and lustre of our age, and those bold theories which are the feelers which science puts out into the unknown future, are employed by writers of cultured ability, not to deepen men's reverence and feed and quicken what is noblest in man's nature, but to blind his intellect in its heavenward gaze, and loosen his grasp on the unseen, the eternal, the divine.

A class of thinkers have arisen, not endowed with any overplus of modesty, who (so far as their writings enable us to judge) value science chiefly as a weapon with which to assail religion. A plainspoken protest (it seems to me) is needed, in the name of science as truly as in the name of religion, against this perversion of its triumphs and its authority to a purpose utterly alien from its true spirit. For the lessons of science are yet more precious than her gifts. She has given us much and has more in store. But her gifts would be bought too dear if the price were the impoverishment of our spiritual nature and bankruptcy of faith. Cultivators of science, I take leave to professors and amateurs alike

are among the most useful implements of scientific discovery. But they are not science. Above all, the dicta of individual scientists, how eminent soever, are not science. To claim for what at best can but rank as "pious opinions" the authority of infallible dogma, is both disloyal to truth and perilous to intellectual freedom.

For, be it remembered, liberty of thought a phrase which often stands for much liberty but little thought—is inconsistent with science. Where science begins liberty ends. Any one is at liberty either to think that two ultimate atoms of matter can occupy the same space, or to think that they are impenetrable, mutually excluding one another. This liberty results from our present ignorance. But no one is at liberty to think that the angles of a plane triangle can be less than two right angles, or that they can be greater; because we certainly know them to be equal. Liberty of thought is not even the path, of which science is the goal. It is simply the throwing down of all hedges and walls, and banishment of all threatening notices, think watch-dogs, patrols, and man-traps, whereare doing not a little to loosen its author-by our right to explore the waste was ity, and especially to imperil if not destroy limited; so that we are free to make our its educational value, by neglecting to own path as the stars guide us. But we draw the boundary line sharply round its take our own risk of bogs and precipices.

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Doubt may unlock the fetters of tradition, | any sane man by asking him which he and start us, with its sharp spur deep in chooses; we feel that such language our heart, in quest of truth. But it might be justifiable even praiseworthy guides us no step of the way; and in pres- regarding a question of practical moence of ascertained truth it expires. The rality, but that is grievously out of place freedom of inquiry, and of provisional in the region of abstract truth. When, belief or disbelief, which is the condition again, encouraged by such an example, of honestly working out a scientific de- the writer of what purports to be a scienduction or induction, becomes irrational tific exposition of Darwinism not only when once the result is known. Much tells his readers that if they don't agree nonsense about intellectual liberty might with him it is because they are weakhave been spared, if people would bear in minded, but declares that if he is mismind the obvious fact that free thought taken the blame lies with the Creator for and science are mutually inconsistent. having so constructed the universe as to The one supposes the absence of the mislead him, we feel that it would be well other. Hence the immense importance if he could be made to understand that of not anticipating science by erecting he has sinned as much against the laws into dogma the theories, conjectures, or of scientific argument as against those of personal opinions of scientific leaders. decency.

66

When, for example, we are told in a Akin to these unwholesome and illegithandbook of physical geography that imate methods of dealing with scientific we now know" that the primitive an- thought for purposes outside the scope of cestors of the present human race led for science, is the device of representing the thousands of years the life of wild beasts defenders of either natural or revealed in the forests, the opinion of certain an- theology as living in a state of hysterical thropologists is illegitimately presented terror at the march of science. They are to the learner as an integral part of the supposed to "shriek" at each fresh beam body of established fact. The grounds of light, and to wink all the harder, like of this opinion (such as they are) ought bats into whose cave the unwelcome sun to be fairly stated; and, at the same time, is peering. The "shrjeks" are, in fact, the learner ought to be made aware, that as imaginary as the danger. Nothing is the most ancient human remains yet dis- more peacefully certain than that truth covered present a form and development can never war with truth. There was a of skull utterly inconsistent with the no- teacher, more than eighteen hundred tion that the possessors of those skulls years ago, who said to the students in lived the life of monkeys. Were such his school, "Ye shall know the truth, and an opinion unanimously voted by a pan- the truth shall make you free." Those anthropological congress, it would not who reckon themselves his disciples thereby be constituted a part of science. should be the last men to dread the ad. It would still be competent to any in-vance of truth in any possible direction. structed person to say: "Your opinion Rather, they may well believe that the seems to me at variance with the facts." lowliest truth is akin to the highest. And if his protest were simply hooted Even the story of an earthworm's life, down as a piece of intolerable presump- truly told, may teach lessons of divine tion in the face of such a phalanx of ex- philosophy. perts, science would no more sanction such an assertion of authority than it sanctioned the burning of Giordano Bruno or the dogma of papal infallibility.

When, again, an eminent professor is quoted as saying, with reference to the hypothesis of organic evolution : "Choose your hypothesis; I have chosen mine; and I will not run the risk of insulting

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Protest, however, counts for little. may even do mischief, if it be misinterpreted as the refuge of those who have been silenced in argument, as beaten players are wont to accuse their antagonists of unfair play. It may be replied to the charge of profaning and degrading science, that to explode falsehood is to aid truth; and that since all truth is akin,

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'to get rid of religious superstition must | formation of each species, may have been
prove helpful to the progress of science. the actual creative process? This ques-
The science of the present is legitimately tion we shall have to ask presently. A
employed in the interest of the science of broader view of the whole field first in-
the future. It is needful, therefore, for vites our attention. No more woful mis-
the sake alike of science and of faith, conception of the fundamental idea of
seriously to examine the arguments by natural theology could be put into words
which it is sought to array the one against than is contained in the assertion that
the other. Have they any real claim to the facts supposed to prove supernatural
philosophic depth and scientific accuracy, design are "covered" by the theories of
or is their intrinsic weakness equal to organic evolution and natural selection.
their irreverent audacity?
It would be uncourteous to call it a dis-
The weapons mainly relied on in the play of stupendous ignorance; but the
present assault upon the foundations of cleverest man is practically ignorant on
natural theology are the theories of or any point on which he will not take the
ganic evolution and natural selection. trouble to think. Truth. disdains the fee-
Evolution is supposed to explain the de- ble grasp of self-confident nonchalance.
velopment of the existing state of things The word "adaptation" stands for one
from its physical antecedents, and those grand department of the evidence of de-
again from the chain of earlier antece- sign in nature; but only one. Choice,
dents, reaching back to the primordial and suiting of means to ends, are the
existence of matter and form. Natural most familiar and legible of all the marks
selection is supposed to explain how, in of the presence of mind and will. But
the organic world, evolution may have there are other marks as convincing
been spontaneous and automatic. The e. g., calculation, foresight, order, intelli-
two together, it is confidently asserted, gible law, beauty, benevolent purpose.
enable us to dispense with the hypothesis "Adaptation of organism to environ-
of a Creator. In the words of the ablement ""
writer before quoted, who states the case
very clearly, natural selection "offers to
our acceptance a scientific explanation of
the numberless cases of apparent design
which we everywhere meet in organic
nature. For as all these cases of appar-
ent design consist only in the adaptation|ity, cohesive attraction, chemical action,
which is shown by organisms to their en- change of seasons, and of day and night,
vironment, it is obvious that the facts are with numberless others), then one organ-
covered by the theory of natural selectionism is no more adapted to this environ-
no less completely than they are covered
by the theory of intelligent design.
The whole question, as between natural
selection and supernatural design resolves
itself into this were all the species of
plants and animals separately created, or
were they slowly evolved? For if they
were specially created, the evidence of
supernatural design remains unrefuted
and irrefutable; whereas, if they were
slowly evolved, that evidence has been
utterly and forever destroyed.'

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It is astonishing that a writer of keen intelligence could pen this last sentence without asking himself, Is it not possible that slow evolution, and not independent

is an ambiguous and cursory phrase, "covering the facts" in more senses than one-disguising rather than describing; because the adaptation is not single, but multifold. If "environment be taken in the wide sense of the universal conditions of life (as heat, light, grav

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46 en

ment than another. Without such adapta-
tion, common to all living beings, but
actually existent only in individuals, life
would not be possible. Clearly, of such
adaptation, natural selection neither takes
nor gives any account.
But if by
vironment" be meant the immediate sur-
roundings of each plant or animal (as
climate, soil, food, and facilities for pro-
curing it, presence or absence of noxious
influences, and so forth), we find a very
elastic scale of adaptation, from that
thorough health and vigor in which the
creature is perfectly developed, to that
stunted, sickly growth which may fitly be
called a "struggle for life." The fitness

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