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Sir J. Lubbock on Intellectual Progress. [APP. from experience to theory, the same conclusion forces itself

upon us.

The great principle of natural selection, which in animals affects the body and seems to have little influence on the mind, in man affects the mind and has little influence on the body. In the first it tends mainly to the preservation of life; in the second to the improvement of the mind and consequently to the increase of happiness. It ensures, in the words of Mr. Herbert Spencer, a constant progress towards a higher degree of skill, intelligence, and self-regulation-a better coordination of actions-a more complete life.' Even those, however, who are dissatisfied with the reasoning of Mr. Darwin, who believe that neither our mental and material organisation are susceptible of any considerable change, may still look forward to the future with hope. The tendency of recent improvements and discoveries is less to effect any rapid change in man himself, than to bring him into harmony with nature; less to confer upon him new powers, than to teach him how to apply the old.

It will, I think, be admitted that of the evils under which we suffer nearly all may be attributed to ignorance or sin. That ignorance will be diminished by the progress of science is of course self-evident; that the same will be the case with sin, seems little less so. Thus, then, both theory and experience point to the same conclusion. The future happiness of our race, which prophets hardly ventured to hope for, science boldly predicts.

The manner in which a needless conflict grows up between Science and Religion is well illustrated by the following curious letter of Darwin, in which Science is taken in a far narrower sense than that in which it would be applied to the works of the great biologist, and Revelation is taken as implying some direct communication from Heaven of a different kind from that contained in the life of Christ.

A letter sent by Katharina Macmillan to the Pall Mall Gazette' of Saturday, Sept. 23, 1882, and reprinted in the 'Guardian' of Sept. 27, from Charles Darwin to a student at Jena. Sir, I am very busy, and am an old man in delicate health, and have not the time to answer your questions fully, even assuming that they are capable of being answered at all. Science and Christ have nothing to do with each other except in so far as the habit of scientific investigation makes a man cautious about accepting any proof. As far as I am concerned, I do not believe that any revelation has ever been made. With regard to a future life, every one must draw his own conclusions from vague and contradictory probabilities.

Wishing you well, I remain, your obedient servant,

DOWN, June 5, 1879.

CHARLES DARWIN.

NOTE XIII.

THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK PHILOSOPHY AND ROMAN LAW ON CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY, FROM SIR H. MAYNE'S ANCIENT LAW,' p. 257.

'Why is it that on the two sides of the line which divides the Greek-speaking from the Latin-speaking provinces there lie two classes of theological problems so strikingly different from one another? . . . I affirm without hesitation that the difference between the two theological systems is accounted for by the fact that, in passing from the East to the West, theological speculation had passed from a climate of Greek metaphysics to a climate of Roman law. . . . Almost everybody who has knowledge enough of Roman law to appreciate the Roman penal system, the Roman theory of its obligations established by Contract or Delict, the Roman view of Debts and of the modes of incurring, extinguishing and transmitting them, the Roman notion of the continuance of individual existence by Universal Succession, may be trusted to say whence arose the frame of mind to which the problems of Western theology proved so

congenial, whence came the phraseology in which those problems are stated, and whence the description of reasoning employed in their solution.'

NOTE XIV.

KESHUB CHUNDER SEN ON CHRISTIANITY FOR EUROPE AND

ASIA.

From Lectures and Tracts of the Brahmo-Somaj,' pp. 33, 34.

'If, however, our Christian friends persist in traducing our nationality and national character, and in distrusting and hating Orientalism, let me assure them that I do not in the least feel dishonoured by such imputations. On the contrary, I rejoice, yea, I am proud that I am an Asiatic. And was not Jesus Christ an Asiatic? Yes, and his disciples were Asiatics, and all the agencies primarily employed for the propagation of the Gospel were Asiatic. In fact, Christianity was founded and developed by Asiatics, and in Asia. When I reflect on this, my love for Jesus becomes a hundredfold intensified; I feel him nearer my heart, and deeper in my national sympathies. Why should I then feel ashamed to acknowledge that nationality which He acknowledged? shall I not rather say, He is more congenial and akin to my Oriental nature, more agreeable to my Oriental habits of thought and feeling? and is it not true that an Asiatic can read the imageries and allegories of the Gospel, and its descriptions of natural sceneries, of customs and manners, with greater interest, and a fuller perception of their force and beauty, than Europeans? In Christ we see not only the exaltedness of humanity, but also the grandeur of which Asiatic nature is susceptible. To us Asiatics, therefore, Christ is doubly interesting, and his religion is entitled to our peculiar regard as an altogether Oriental affair. The more this great fact is pondered, the less I hope will be the antipathy and hatred of European Christians against Oriental nationalities, and the greater the interest of the

Asiatics in the teachings of Christ. And thus in Christ, Europe and Asia, the East and the West, may learn to find harmony and unity.'

NOTE XV.

AN EXTRACT FROM MILL'S LOGIC (VOL. II. PP. 16-18) ON THE USE OF HYPOTHESIS IN SCIENTIFIC INVESTIGATION.

'The function of hypothesis is one which must be reckoned absolutely indispensable in science. When Newton said, “ Hypotheses non fingo," he did not mean that he deprived himself of the facilities of investigation afforded by assuming in the first instance what he hoped afterwards to be able to prove. Without such assumptions science could never have attained its present state they are necessary steps in the progress to something more certain; and nearly everything which is now theory was once hypothesis. Even in purely experimental science, some inducement is necessary for trying one experiment rather than another.

"Neither induction nor deduction would enable us to understand even the simplest phenomena "if we did not often commence by anticipating on the results; by making a provisional supposition, at first essentially conjectural, as to some of the very notions which constitute the final object of the inquiry (Comte's Philosophie Positive, ii. 434, 437). Let any one watch the manner in which he unravels a complicated mass of evidence; let him observe how, for instance, he elicits the true history of any occurrence from the involved statements of one or of many witnesses: he will find that he does not take all the items of evidence into his mind at once and attempt to weave them together he extemporises, from a few of the particulars, a first rude theory of the mode in which the facts took place, and then looks at the other statements one by one, to try whether they can be reconciled with that provisional theory, or what alterations and additions it requires to make it square with them. In this way, which has been justly compared to the Methods of

Approximation of mathematicians, we arrive, by means of hypotheses, at conclusions not hypothetical.'

NOTE XVI.

AN EXCURSUS ON THE BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

AS A BASIS FOR HISTORY.

It is unsatisfactory to make any statements such as those contained in the Second Lecture on the Hebrew Commonwealth and Laws without forming a clear estimate of the sources whence our information is drawn. Putting aside the slight intimations which are found in Egyptian writings, especially those of Manetho which are not without value for the history of the Exodus, we have to consider solely the books of the Old Testament. Are we justified in basing history upon them? The answer to this question is that, though many things remain uncertain, the ground is sufficiently secure. It becomes more possible every year to fix the historical value of the books.

In the first place, the writings of the prophets, with the exception of Daniel, the later part of Isaiah, and the later part of Zachariah, are unchallenged. We have thus a mass of literature of the highest importance from the eighth to the sixth century B. C., blended in the most intimate way with the history of the contemporary period-a period when Greek and Latin history is still fabulous, when Greek literature only existed in the shape of the songs of the rhapsodists or of Hesiod, a period mostly before Buddha or Confucius. The Psalms, also, which make us understand the national life, though they are of various dates, are genuine productions, and the dates of the majority of them are not hard to fix. The historical books, again, from Judges on to Nehemiah, with the exception of the Books of Chronicles, form one uninterrupted narrative, embodying the writings of various prophets, in many cases on the events of their own times. We are thus on firm ground in the chief part of the Old Testament. and can accept the framework which it presents for our historical conceptions.

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