duction of first truths be explained by evolution? If so, is their authority thereby undermined? I begin with answering the second question, and this will place us in a position candidly to consider the first.

If our intuitions have been developed, can we put trust in what they reveal? I answer that this depends on the nature of the development. We can conceive a development incapable of establishing truth. This would be the case if the evolution were merely mechanical, a mere material evolution. It would also be so if the evolution were merely one of nerves and their currents, as Mr. Spencer maintains.

But there may be a development, a development of soul, which carries truth with it and reveals it.

It has been shown again and again that the existence of evolution does not interfere with the argument for the existence of God. Professor Huxley declares that the doctrine of development does not undermine the doctrine of final cause. He allows that there is as clear and decisive proof of apparent design in these works of nature, on the supposition that they are evolved in the course of ages, as on the supposition that they may have been created immediately by God. Before the doctrine of development was published, people generally thought that there is proof of design in nature. This has not been weakened but rather strengthened by these late discoveries of the prevalence of evolution, as we can now discover fitness and wisdom not only in the objects themselves, say plants and animals, but in the way in which they have been evolved, and a connection thereby formed between the present and the past, between the children and their parents.

Because a thing has come into existence by evolution, this does not alter its true nature, nor the view which

Be

we take of it, nor the use to which we turn it. cause the bread on our table was evolved from the corn growing on the ground, and this from a cereal which appeared in the geological ages, we do not therefore decline to eat it. When a hungry man sees a piece of beef he will not turn away from it because it has been the flesh of a cow which has descended from an antediluvian ungulate. I believe in the reality of these mountains and stars even when it has been shown that they have been formed out of star-dust. I use the eye quite as readily as before, even when told by Darwin that it was formed thousands of ages ago from a sensitive spot in the brain. Aristotle's analysis of the reasoning process will remain true, even though it should be shown that his intellect was inherited from a savage or even from a brute an

cestor.

The fact is that among the gifts derived from development may be man's knowing powers, which are constantly enlarging. From inheritance he has got a power of intelligence which makes him know things and their wide relations. A man of fifty has gone through a longer process than a boy of five, and therefore has greater knowledge and a greater capacity of knowledge. The present civilized race of men is more enlightened than their remote ancestors, just because there has been a longer process of guided evolution.

We do not feel the less gratitude for gifts because they have come to us by a more or less lengthened passage. Carlyle did not value less the much-prized complimentary gift of Goethe because it came through a transporting medium. The son does not put a lower estimate on his patrimony because the father earned it for him by much toil and privation.

V.

We are now in a position, secondly, to inquire without fear or prejudice whether these fundamental principles have been evolved.

I have shown in another work that evolution is a manifestation of the deeper and wider law of cause and effect. It is an organized causation. A number of agencies combine; they act according to their properties, and evolution takes place, seen for instance in the plant growing from the seed, and the animal from the germ. But there are limits to the sphere both of causation and consequent development. A cause can give only what it has got. The stream of evolution cannot rise higher than its fountain. If the waters are raised higher, it must be by a power without and above the

stream.

It is a firmly established law that there is nothing in the effect which was not potentially in the cause. The organized powers develop according to the powers or properties which they possess. But it does look as if new powers have been produced in the ages, powers not in the original atoms or molecules from which it is supposed all things have come. It might be difficult to determine whether these new powers come in by direct creation, or by a providential arrangement of the previously created agencies. There were long geological ages in which there was no Life. But we have no proof that the inanimate can produce the animate. There was therefore a new power superinduced when life came forth. There were ages before Sensation was experienced, and there was a new epoch when the first pleasure and pain were felt. There may have been a long period before Instinct was added for the preserva

tion of the living creature, and when this was done we have a farther era. Instinct acts blindly, but at the fit time there is Intelligence which perceives the meaning of the act, and knowingly uses means to accomplish ends; and a new age has arrived. Morality comes in, it may be, at the same time, and consummates the work. It thus looks as if the history of our earth develops in epochs, corresponding to the days of Genesis. If so, we may reasonably conclude that these fundamental laws or powers of intuition, not found in the lower animals, appear in the last day or period when man comes on the stage, and are in his very nature and constitution.

Our subject does not require us to determine how far development extends. Enough has been advanced to show that evolution, be it in one continuous stream or with accessions from above, does not undermine or lower the authority of fundamental truths.

BOOK II.

GNOSIOLOGY.

CHAPTER I.

THE ORIGIN OF OUR KNOWLEDGE AND IDEAS.

WHAT is Science ('ETσTýμn)? is the question put by Socrates in Plato's subtle dialogue of Theatetus. But the word "science" has two meanings. In one sense it can be defined. It is knowledge arranged, correlated, or systematized. In this sense we speak of astronomy, geology, logic, and other sciences. But the word had, at least in Greek, another signification, and meant simply knowledge; and we may suppose the question to be put, What is Knowledge? To this the reply must be, that we cannot positively define knowledge, so as to make it intelligible to one who did not know it otherwise. Still we can, by analysis, separate it from other things with which it is associated, such as sensations, emotions, and fancies, and make it stand out distinctly to the view of those who are already conscious of it. The science which thus unfolds the nature of knowledge may be called Gnosiology, or Gnosilogy (from yvôois and λóyos). I prefer this to Epistemology, which would signify the science of arranged knowledge. This science should be prosecuted in the same method as every other which has to do with facts, that is, the Inductive.

We must now enter upon the inquiries in which Locke and five or six friends, who met in his chamber in Ox