The Collapse of the Faith [pp. 164-184]

THE PRINCE TON RE VIEW.
all being, whether living or dead, whether material or spiritual,
and crowned with all the glories which were once accorded to
a self-existent and intelligent person, but are now transferred
to the unknown and unknowable Absolute.
These wide-reaching conclusions, it should be observed, are
claimed by many to be severely and strictly scientific. There
are indeed many scientists-we trust they are very many-who
know that some are nothing more than simple hypotheses, and
as such belong to pure philosophy. They are none the worse
for this reason, if they are only recognized as mere speculations.
Their claims to acceptance or authority should be firmly resisted
whenever it is claimed that they have been demonstrated or
verified as scientific truth.
Historically considered, the theory of evolution can be shown
to have been not only speculative in its origin but theistic in its
assumptions and tendencies. The physics of the last century
knew nothing of organic interdependence, much less did it know
anything of organic evolution. It was the mechanical philosophy of Descartes and Newton which furnished the premises from
which the atheism of Von Holbach was reasoned. It is true
he insisted on the distinction between dead and living matter,
yet his living matter was only matter in motion. Our modern
creative evolution and the unknowable absolute would never
have been thought of had not Kant introduced the element of
organic relationship with its implied theism for the second time
into the arena of physics and metaphysics, and this just at the
moment when chemistry, physiology, and paleontology stood
ready to give to this more elevated medium of interpretation
the verification of their splendid and almost bewildering discoveries. It follows that the new atheism of Physicus and
Spencer builds on a philosophy which is essentially spiritual if
not theistic in its assumptions.
Leaving this point, as tempting us aside from the right line of
discussion, we proceed to inquire whether the science of to-day,
with its splendid discoveries and its magnificent generalizations,
and the philosophy of to-day, with its organic relationships and
evolutionary progress, are any more demonstrative of either atheism or agnosticism than were the science and philosophy of a
century ago, as represented in the "System of Nature." For
174