Anthropomorphism [pp. 120-144]

A NTHROPOMORPHISM.
wonder at the Venus who rose from the foam? Is it not a fair
presumption, becoming to the modesty of scholarly thought,
that in theology, as in astronomy, in chemistry, in botany, in
biology, in psychology, the progress of evolution in future ages
will show the puerilities of the pseudo-science of to-day?
One of the grimmest jokes of warfare is the turning of a captured battery upon a retreating foe. Is not this argument from
analogy a very dangerous one for the evolutionist to handle?
We will grant, if he wishes, that his culture is One hundred years
ahead of ours, and that his stupendous system of dogmatic metaphysics is only a prophecy of the universal science of the twentieth century. But, then, what of the thirtieth century? Will
not the better-evolved man ridicule the law of the persistence of
force as we do to-day the eidola of Democritus? If we remember rightly, Mr. Spencer claims to give us a number of ultimate
truths. Is he really at the summit of the hill of science, or shall
we explain his system, too, by his environment, and, by analogy,
condemn all that is before the tribunal of that which is to come?
In this method of reasoning from analogy there is some truth
combined with much error. The greater part of the scholarly
world is already convinced of the fact of the historical evolution
of the race. Theology, to be sure, is the last of the sciences to
swing into line and to confess the possibility of its own growth.
But its confession has already become its claim and its boast,
and in the developed knowledge of futurity, in the discoveries
of the coming generations, it expects its full share.
After the dogmatism of the middle ages, modesty is a hard
lesson; but theology is learning it. As a science it is relative to our
day. Future ages will reject many an error now preached as true
from our pulpits,-just as they will reject many a mistake now
taught in our laboratories,-and will formulate whole realms of
new truths which, revealed to-day, would be incomprehensible
mysteries. So far as this goes, the agnostics are right in their
prophecies from analogy. We join heartily with them, and,
with them, hope and expect a grand development of religious
truth in the future of the race.
But this argument fails utterly when it is used to support
the denial of the possibility of any ultimate truth even in a
transitional stage of the development. There are sciences some
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