(7   n         
Coutleilizoraryy Lvolulioil.
AN ESSAY
ON SOME RECENT SOCIAL CHANGES.
ST. GEORGE MIVART.
NEW YORK:
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY,
54~ AND 551 BROADWAY.
1876.
T3 v 
Vhb 
TO THE MOST HONOURABLE
THE MARQUIS OF RIPON, K.G.
MY DEAR LORD RIPON,
I am very sensible of the kindness which has so
readily accorded me permission to dedicate to your Lordship
this Essay on Contemporary Evolution.
I might indeed feel diffidence in thus attempting to point
out some unlooked-for results of those post-mediaeval social
.changes, in effecting which the English-speaking races have
borne so prominent a part, but for this encouraging permission from one whose enlarged and candid mind renders
him a most competent however indulgent a judge of my
endeavour.                                                    A
With much respect,
I am,
My dear Lord Ripon,
Yours most sincerely,
ST. GEORGE MIVART.
Mtrcii 25Slh, 1876.
WILMSHURST, TICKFI1ELD. 
A 
CONTENT S.
CHAPTER I.
INTRODUCTORY.
CHAPTER I I.
POLITICAL EVOLUTION...
CHAPTER II I.
THREE IDEALS.
CHAPTER IV.
SCIENTIFIC E VOL UTION...
CHAPTER V.
PHILOSOPHIC EVOLUTION..
CHAPTER VI.
ESTHETIC EVOLUTION...
I
. 45
. 79
. 131
. i64
. 2IS  
Cotem orary Evotl on.
CHAPTER I.
IZVTR OD UC TOR Y.
HE inexperienced traveller who, having been wearied
by the  repeated  slow  ascents and  drag-wheeled
descents of a tedious coach road, afterwards surveys from
a neighbouring mountain the route he has pursued, may
not improbably feel surprise at the inconspicuousness of
undulations which, while being traversed, seemed so considerable.
The survey of the path of human social evolution from
a stand-point as yet inaccessible to us, would no doubt
in most cases similarly affect that estimate of the importance of his own epoch which each observer, reflecting
on contemporary social phenomena, is apt to form.
Nevertheless, as in spite  of the relative evenness of
the world's surface as a whole, there are here and there
exceptional conditions - sheer precipices of both ascent
and descent; so history exhibits parallel phenomena which
exceptionally demarcate comparatively uneventful areas.
Amidst the grassy plains of North-western America,
4 4 08+ 
ContemfPorary Evolution.
one region has obtained the title of "Mauvaise Terre,"
from the numerous furrows and depressions by which
progression is again and again arrested. Farther south,
the great Rio Colorado has by the secular attrition of its
stream worn for itself a course here and there bounded
by parallel precipices descending vertically some five hundred feet or more from the level plain above, and forming
the celebrated cafions of California.
The slow, secular action of social change has resulted
here and there, under special conditions, in the production
of more or less sudden and abrupt manifestations, serving
for all future. time as sociological landmarks, canions on
the plain of history.
If a Greek who had watched the solemn procession of
the crocus-coloured Peplos to the Parthenon on the great
Panathenaic festival, or had laughed with Aristophanes
at the tiresome old sophist whose moral obstetrics wearied
his ears as his ugliness offended his Attic taste for
beauty;  or if one of the succeeding  generation who,
having listened in the Pnyx to a philippic from the
greatest orator who ever filled the bema, consoled himself
for existing political troubles with Herodotus or with
Homer,-if either of these Greeks, reflecting on his surroundings, deemed himself a witness of a social culmination in art, the drama, oratory, history, and poetry,
constituting his fellow-citizens the models and  he teachers
of mankind for thousands of years to come, he would
2 
Introdiuctory.
not have been in error, would not have over-estimated the
significance of his epoch.
A Roman who had just witnessed the decapitation of
a criminal for violating the laws and defying the majesty
of the state by refusing to burn incense to the gods and
to invoke the genius of the emperor, might have reflected
that the criminal was one of a class possessed by an
"exitiabilis superstitio"  and a certain  "odium  humani
generis," who met together at night amidst the dead to
sing "charms" and adore with magic rites a crucified
malefactor represented with an ass's head, and who were
so rapidly and mysteriously  increasing that no  citizen
could feel quite sure he might not even himself be
seized unwittingly by this degrading and insane superstition, -had  such a Roman, so reflecting, considered
his era to be one critical for the empire, and himself a
witness of the commencement of a social cataclysm, he
would not have exaggerated the importance of the phenomena surrounding him.
A refined Florentine, revelling in the brilliancy of a
reviving Platonism (which was beginning to replace what
he deemed "narrow scholasticism," as the noble classical
architecture was banishing the endlessly repeated details
of the latest Gothic), and hospitably entertaining a
Spanish Jew whom mendacious conformity had failed
to screen from the jealous scrutiny of the Inquisition of
I495, and who in turn regaled his host with strange
3 
Conitemporary Evoliuion.
details of the plants, animals, and men brought from
the lately discovered western lands to Castile,-such a
Florentine, if he (considering the coincidence of the disinterment of an old world with the discovery of a new)
consoled his Israelitish guest with the assurance that they
were the beholders of events destined to result in the
overthrow of the existing theocratic forms, would in no
way have overstated the consequence and meaning of the
period in which he lived.
That spectator who in I789-when witnessing the long
train of black-coated members of the "tiers tat" preceding the plumed nobles and brilliant court on their
way to the solemn mass of the Holy Ghost before the
opening of the States-General-exclaimed, "There goes
the funeral procession of the French monarchy," showed
a remarkably correct appreciation of the fatal significance
of the passing pageant. Not, of course, but that the conditions for the coming explosion had been slowly, almost
imperceptibly, accumulating for centuries before; yet the
fact of such accumulation in no way detracts from the
truth that the end of the eighteenth century in France
will be for ever memorable as the epoch of the actual
occurrence of those changes which had taken so long in
becoming proximately potential.
We in England (and, indeed, in Europe generally) may
not improbably be traversing an epoch destined to be
memorable for a long time to come, and one which
4 
Jn1ro$ic/;'y.                     5
many deem to be as critical as, even if not more so than,
either of the two periods last referred to; and this for two
reasons.
First, because it may prove to be the occasion for the
open and complete manifestation of latent tendencies
which those two periods but imperfectly revealed.
Secondly, because present changes are distinguished
from all that have gone before by their intense self-consciousness. As was well remarked by Mr. Tylor in the
Contemporary Review*:  "Our  social science has a new
character and power, inasmuch as we live near a turningpoint in the history of mankind.  The zunconscious evolution
of society is giving place to its conscious development."
To perceive that we are living in a critical epoch is
one thing, to appraise that epoch and estimate its tendencies correctly is another and a much more difficult one.
No one of course can withdraw himself completely from
the special influence of his age and country, however
vigorous may be his will or extensive his culture; yet to
estimate such phenomena correctly, and with as little bias
as possible, is about the most important task to which a
thinker can in these days apply his intellect.
It is so supremely important, because we are all called
upon to contribute to social evolution, and more or less
distinctly to take sides, and of course only by rare ac
* For June, I873, p. 72.
Initroditclor.
5 
Contem;porary Evolulzgio.
cident call beneficial action directly result from erroneous
judgments.
How easily erroneous sociological judgments may be
formed by the most able and generally best informed men
recent events make singularly plain to us.
Those who are old enough to recollect the passing of
the first Reform Bill, and have sympathetically followed
the train of political ideas thenceforward popular, can
hardly fail to view with amazement the more recent
acts or manifestoes of advocates of Liberalism.   Our
comic journals were never tired of ridiculing everything
military; free-trade and toleration were ideals, and in
I85I idyllic rhapsodies celebrated the speedy end of wars
and the apotheoses of Watt and Arkwright.
As to religious liberty, except that feeble persecution
might linger in the benighted peninsulas of South-western
Europe, it was treason to doubt its maintenance and
triumphant propagation. Lord Brougham-the eloquent
representative of the whole school-spoke of the "evil
spirits of tyranny and persecution which haunted the long
night now gone down the sky," while there were few of
his sympathisers but would have scouted the idea that
theological conceptions could again have force to involve
Europe in bloody struggles, or that the advocates of any
form of Christianity would be almost tempted to defend themselves sword in hand against the oppression of
their persecutors.
6 
Introductory.
This falsification of such benevolent hopes, as also of
the pontifical vaticinations of Auguste Comte, is a demonstration that the current Liberal conception of social
philosophy as applied to recent and contemporaneous
phenomena  was  inadequate,  just  as  the  philosophy
accepted at the period of the great French Revolution
was proved by the event to have been superficial and
delusory, and as the ideas which found expression in
that most fascinating period the early Renaissance,
gave no warning of dire events to come like the Thirty
Years' War and the bloody and prolonged struggle of
the League.
Social and political events being as they are the
ultimate outcome of the involved interaction of most
numerous, complex, and remote causes, it is evident that
such causes must be sought in conditions antedating by
many centuries the events we would seek to explain.
This truth has been perceived and acted on by all who
of late have occupied themselves with the Philosophy of
History, and have, like De Tocqueville, sought to trace
out such hidden connections. No writer would any longer
venture to explain the crisis of I789 exclusively by the
reigns of the fifteenth and sixteenth Louis, or that of
I688 only by the corruption and errors of the Restoration.
The great prominence which religious questions have
of late assumed is, as has just been remarked, strangely
7 
Conteinipoozry Evolulion.
in contrast with the expectations generally prevalent
before the outbreak of I848. Now our daily press seeks
again and again to impress on its readers that the fundamental questions and divisions amongst men are religious
ones, while every sort of journal remarks on, deplores,
or exults in, the widespread process of religious disintegration, and predicts or speculates about possible
reconstructions.
The very same character of religious excitation marks,
however, both the French revolutionary epoch and the
period of the Renaissance as well as that in which we
now live; nor would it be denied by many of our more
philosophical thinkers, that the most striking phenomena
of these three periods are but indications of different
stages of one prolonged movement, though such thinkers
would differ as to the nature and tendency of the movement itself.
Three questions then seem to demand our attention.
I. The first of these is, Whether in fact one spirit and
tendency has or has not really animated these great
movements which have marked the post-medieval epoch?
II. The second question is, If there has been one such
inspiration, what has been its true nature and character?
III. The third question is, What is likely to be the
further effect of such a spirit, and is it likely henceforward to increase or to diminish?
Complex and difficult as the first question may appear
8 
Inlroduclory.                   9
at the outset, it does not seem difficult to fix upon a
leading characteristic whereby to connect together, on the
one hand, the period of the Renaissance with that of the
Revolution; on the other, the latter event with contemporaneous phenomena.
That wide-spread break-up of definite religious systems,
accompanied by a more or less marked tendency to
democracy in politics, which exists to-day, is generally
allowed to be the expression of a spirit similar to, if not
identical with, that which predominantly influenced the
great French movement of the last century.
Similarly, the affected imitation of ancient Rome, the
studious reproduction of classical customs, which were
practised by so many of the "citizens" of France, as well
as by its "senators" and  "consuls,"  marks  a certain
similarity of spirit between the revolutionary movement
of the eighteenth century and the elegant and refined
period of the Renaissance.
Moreover, though the last-named period was not, except
more or less in Italy, avowedly anti-Christian (like the
French Revolution), it was, nevertheless, speedily followed
by religious disruptions, which are deemed by many who
heartily approve them as but the logical precursors of
that absolute negation of Christianity which has, in fact,
become so widespread in Switzerland, Germany, France,
and Holland, and is now openly avowed by many of those
who lineally represent the initiators of such disruptions.
Introduictory.
9 
Coizlemnporary Evov/lioiX.
One spirit then may, at least to a certain extent, be
said to have influenced the course of events from the
commencing disintegration of medieval civilisation down
to the present day. Such, at least appears at first sight,
to be the case. Further reflection may, or may not, confirm this view, and may indicate what is the true nature of
that spirit.
The persistence of national characteristics, and the
strange latent vitality of apparently extinct modes of
thought and feeling, frequently cause surprise.
In how many respects do not the Gauls of Caesar live
to-day under the presidency of the gallant marshal, Duke
of Magenta?
Who can fail to see in Prince Bismarck the representative
of one of those Teutons who gained baptism through the
sword of Charlemagne, and who in turn now seeks, consciously or unconsciously, to replace the symbol of the
Cross by the hammer of Thor, and the last relics of a
Christian polity by an avowed system of "blood and iron."
In the existing Spanish civil war between the Carlist
north and the passionately democratic south with its
strong infusion of Moorish blood, we see (whatever may
be its result) a certain resemblance to that struggle between the Mahometan hosts and those Christians who
in the fortresses of the Pyrenees turned the tide of the
Saracenic invasion.
In Belgium, the conflict of the sixteenth centuiry in a
IO 
Introdiuctory.
modified form still endures, and the very name of
"Gueux" is now  assumed by those who represent the
spirit of the original bearers of that appellation.
lVe all recollect Gibbon's vivid picture of the complete
restoration by Artaxerxes of the old religion of Persia,
which had lingered on in spite of an apparent interruption
dating back from the Alexandrian conquest-a noteworthy instance of persistence in ancient times.
To-day, French missionaries find to their amazement
that in  spite  of a persecution deemed  exterminating,
Christianity in Japan still flourishes, having been secretly
handed down for generations without the aid of a single
priest, and with no sacraments but baptism and matrimony.
If survival and revival may ensue under such circumstances, surely a system of unknown antiquity, universal
in extent and eminently congenial to most men as they
actually exist, may be confidently expected to possess a
life of extreme tenacity and to show an increasing tendency to revival as impediments and restrictions are successively removed.
Such a system was that essentially pantheistic paganism
and nature-worship which Christianity seemed for a time,
in Europe, to have so thoroughly succeeded in supplanting.
Even, however, at that period which has by common
consent been accepted as representing the culmination of
I I 
Contemporary Evolution.
the mediaeval theocracy and of the purely Christian
monarchy-the epoch, that is, of Innocent III. and of St.
Louis-the spirit of paganism was far enough from being
extinct, as is evidenced to us by a multitude of local
superstitions, by such institutions as the fete des fous,
and by the wide-spread belief in, and practice of, magic
rites. Nay, already it showed signs of returning strength
and activity in the poetry of Provence, the legend of
Heloise and Abelard, and various kindred phenomena,
constituting what has been well termed* the "Mediaeval
Renaissance."
To this very day, according to some writers, the Baal
fires of Phcenicia live in the Norwegian bonfires of St.
John's Eve.
The talismans against the evil eye, so common in
Naples, are almost as expressive of paganism as the forbidden emblems, sold as late as I790t in the neighbourhood of the rocky mound with its old round church
dedicated to SS. Cosmo e Damiano.
"Even recently an oak copse at Loch Siant, in the Isle
of Skye, was held so sacred that no person would venture
to cut the smallest branch from it." The pilgrims at St.
Fillan's well in I79I, "walked or were carried deasil
(sunwise) round the well. They also threw each a white
* By Walter H. Pater, Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford, in
his "Studies in the History of the Renaissance."
t To Sir Richard Colt Hoare.
1 2 
Inhductoiy.               I 3
stone on an adjacent cairn, and left behind a scrap of their
clothing as an offering."'
"'The Carinthian peasant will fodder the wind by setting
a dish of food in a tree before his house, and the fire by
casting in lard and dripping, in order that gale and conflagration may not hurt him. At least up to the end of the
last century, this most direct elemental sacrifice might be
seen in Germany at the midsummer festival in the most
perfect form; some of the porridge from the table was
thrown into the fire, and some into running water, some
was buried in the earth, and some smeared on leaves
and put on the chimney-top for the winds." In France,
at Andrieux in Dauphiny, "at the solstice the villagers
went out upon the bridge when the sun rose, and offered
him an omelet. The custom of burning alive the finest
calf to save a murrain-struck herd had its examples in
Cornwall in the present century."t
At the vintage festival of the Madonna del Arco,
signs of practices connected with the old Greek natureworship reappear in the leaf-wreathed poles brandished by
youths, themselves garnished with strings of filberts on
their necks and arms-their juice-smeared faces shaded by
wreaths of vine-leaves.
It is not, however, to such mere external practices that
* Quoted by Sir John Lubbock in his "Origin of Civilisation," pp.
192 and 198.
t See Edward B. Tylor's "Primitive Culture," vol. ii. pp. 369, 370.
/nlroduclocy.
13 
' Coizitempora' Evolu/iton.
it is here intended mainly to direct attention, but to a
deeper underlying spirit. Such phenomena are patent
survivals likely to long linger amidst an unlettered peasantry, the sons of the Pagani of earlier Christian times.
The movements of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries
sprang rather from above than below, and the anti-Christian developments of to-day are mainly due to men of
culture and education not generally intent upon a restoration of paganism, nor consciously imbued with its spirit.
Nevertheless, it is here maintained that the deeply
pantheistic and pagan spirit with which the Aryan mind
was once saturated (which shows itself superficially in the
modern  practices just referred to) profoundly  modifies
and actuates, not the minds of the poor only, but of the
rich and educated, who, from whatever cause, have either
failed to master or who  (in rare instances) having mastered have deliberately rejected Christian philosophy and
theology. The result is the assumption of no merely
negative attitude towards Christianity, but of a profound
and violent antagonism to it springing from a keen, often
passionate, attachment to an opposed system.
It is happily very possible to attribute this antagonism
in the case of many to a narrow zeal for truth partially
apprehended. The beauty, the truth, and the goodness
of nature when revealed to some men with a force and
vivacity new and strange seem to them to be incompatible
with the supernaturalism of Christianity.
14 
fntroductoi-y.'5
The extreme narrowness and want of flexibility of many
minds are nothing less than amazing, and the effects of
"bias" have been lately well illustrated by Mr. Herbert
Spencer. *
It is then little to be wondered at that when, after
centuries of comparative neglect, the study of nature was
resumed with energy and passion, an accompanying
depreciation of the Christian supernatural should have
manifested itself, and the wonder becomes even less when
it is recollected how such revived naturalistic tendencies
harmonised with one of the deepest chords in the composition of the Aryan race-the universal, ancient, and
persistent worship of the powers and forces of nature.
The chaos resulting from the break-up of the Western
Empire being reduced to order mainly by the action of
the Christian Church, at a period when the early germs of
natural science had withered under the influence of the
barbarian invasions, considerations relating to the next
world occupied all mental activity not directly employed
in ministering to the immediate and most pressing wants
of this.
The art of the Middle Ages exhibits, as it were, the
petrified embodiment of this spirit. Not only cathedral,
church, chapel, religious-house, and parsonage were
adorned with religious symbols and imagery, but such
* See "The Study of Sociology," chapters viii. to xii.
Introductory.
I 5 
Co.ii  niiorary Evod/tioz.
imagery all but as exclusively decorated the cottage, the
palace, and the market-place. The purity of Christian
morality had accidentally resulted in the banishment of
the nude, and the vigour and perseverance with which
the strongest natures and the acutest intellects devoted
themselves to philosophy bore an inverse ratio to the
energy with which traditional physics were almost unprofitably cultivated.
It is no difficult matter even now to realise the joyousness, the feeling of relief with which many minds
must have hailed the first blossoming of that sweet
artistic spring-the early Renaissance.   Soon  on  each
edifice, as if struck by a magic wand, every decorative
detail, every niche and pinnacle blossoms out with a new
life spreading over the architectural masses (the masses,
as in St. Eustache, of Paris, still continuing as before),
disguising them as some fair creeper may seem to replace the proper foliage of the tree it clasps.
To appreciate the delicacy and refinement, the full
charm of the great movement architecturally, we must
seek it in the land of its birth-in Italy, where the
Certosa of Pavia, that dream of beauty, presents us with
perhaps its most perfect expression-still essentially belonging to medieval Christian art, yet modified by the
movement to come,-a maiden with the blush of an approaching revelation, Margaret for the first time essaying Faust's fatal offering of pearls.
I6 
fn/roducto;.                   17
This artistic revolution, the changed aspect of church
and oratory, must have reacted on and intensified the
very movement which that change expressed. But if a
mere modification in the architecture of cities had a tendency to modify men's minds, how much stronger must
have been the effect of changed views as to the architecture of the universe (terrestrial and cosmical) induced
by geographical, physical, and astronomical discovery!
The discovery of the New World has already been
adverted to, and certainly no augmentation of knowledge
in our own day-not even the revelations of spectrum
analysis-can have had an effect nearly so startling.
Yet even the shock of this geographical revelation must
have been inferior in degree to that imparted by the
uplifting of the solid earth from its foundations, and the
casting of it forth from its proud physical supremacy to
wander through space, a globe relatively insignificant,effects which must have seemed to ensue in the minds
of men when they first accepted heliocentric astronomy.
Yet later, when the full current of physical discovery
had set in, and the disciples of Descartes and Bacon by
diligent investigations and happily devised experiments
were daily adding to the accumulated store of accurate
knowledge in biology, in chemistry, and physics, the passionate pursuit of natural science grew by what it fed
upon, and investigations which were begun, as alchemy
and astrology, with utilitarian views only, were con            2
Introductory.
t7 
Contemporary Evolution.
tinued from pure love of and devotion to sciences which
repaid persevering inquirers with responses definite, trustworthy, and capable of reiterated verification.
The transition which took place at the period of the
Renaissance was  a  change  from a social  condition in
which considerations relating to a future world still, at
least apparently, predominated, to one revelling and exulting in physical nature and in this world as it offers
itself spontaneously to our senses and our intellect. Such
a change must have been like that which would be
induced by passing from within some grand medieval
abbey church into a modern museum. Perhaps no man
could, for the first time, so pass without unjustly depreciating the merits and the beauties of the one or of the
other, so great seems at first the divergence between the
spirits respectively embodied in those two manifestations.
Let us enter an old English abbey-Catherine of Arragon  being  still queen!  The  massive  pillars of its
nave, in long drawn series, have for five hundred years
looked down on worshippers at the daily office. The
successive styles of different portions of the fabric speak
of the continued zeal for the beauty of God's house in
successive generations of its cloistered inmates.   Every
window glows with colours artistically blended, revealing
saintly forms. The light of day struggles in with difficulty, while here and there, in deeply shaded nooks,
twinkling lamps burn before sacred images, and the
I8 
Introductory.
shrine of the patron is brilliant with many tapers. On
the walls may be seen the legend of his life, his temptations, martyrdom, and miracles.   Above the rood, on
the spectator's left, he sees depicted the joyful resurrection to a better life, while on his right the torments of
the damned within the gaping "jaws of hell" are forcibly pourtrayed.   As the monks give forth the Mag,ificat with sonorous chant, the incense rises before the
lighted altar blazing with gold and jewels, and smell,
in addition to sight and hearing, ministers to devotion.
The daylight fades as, in the closing office of compline,
the choir-boys' voices sing: "In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiriturn  metourn," and  the sweet "Salve,  Regina,
Mater Misericordic " peacefully dismisses the religious to
their dormitory and the faithful to their homes.   This
world, its hopes and fears, its joys and sorrows, pale before
the mind of one who thoroughly sympathises with such
a scene; visions of holiness, of loving self-abnegation, of
celestial beauty and divine love, rise up before him. Well
may such a one, full of devout happiness, exclaim with
heart and soul, "Domine, dilexi decorerm donmus tue et
locurn habitatioizis gloria, tua."   A  mind  so influenced
may at first tend to appreciate but faintly the merely
natural creation, and feel but scanty reverence for its
forces, and a qualified admiration for its beauties.
Let us now enter a modern museum. When its multitudinous contents have been so mastered that the in
I9 
Contenporary Evolutzon.
tellect can grasp it as a whole, what a marvellous revelation of the physical universe it offers to the intellect
attuned to its contemplation!
The organic and inorganic worlds combine to present
to the duly instructed mind a vision of majesty and harmony undreamed of only two centuries ago.
In.its geological section, even the tertiary fossiliferous
rocks speak of an antiquity compared with which the
pyramids  of  Egypt  are  but of yesterday.   Majestic
remains of vast creatures once living but now extinct exercise the mind in fruitful conjectures, which mentally bring
back forms passed away for ever to live again for the wonder and delight of the votaries of science. The crystalline
minerals reveal innate laws of symmetry and beauty, which,
as it were, lend a sort of life even to inorganic nature.
In the section devoted to the illustration of the organic
world as it lives around us now, we may note the
harmonious organisation (so fitted to its needs) of each
species of animal and plant, proclaiming a nature instinct
with intelligence as well as with beauty.   Here also we
may learn how slight differences of colour or form may
protect the individual life, and what fatal effects may
ensue from an apparently trifling defect of structure.
Teeming nature is seen to be the mother of myriads of
creatures of which but few can reach maturity, and seems
to proclaim trumpet-tongued a natural gospel of happiness
for the healthy, the beautiful, the strong.
20 
In/raductory.                  21
The loveliest tints displayed by birds as well as their
springtide melody, the blossom of all flowers as well as
their sweetest perfumes, all become known to us as but
subordinate agencies ministering to the great reproductive
function-spontaneous tributes of organic life to Alma
Venus.   Such phenomena  seem  to combine with  the
evidences of the destructive and apparently cruel processes of nature to inculcate the brief lesson of the grim
symbol at the Egyptian festival-" Enjoy."
But in our temple of nature it is not only the creatures
of this planet which offer themselves to our scrutiny, but
even portions of other spheres; and meteorolites prove
to us that similar substances and similar laws to those
existing on this earth pervade regions of space remote
from and inaccessible to us.
How strongly does a nature so replete with interest,
with wonder, with beauty, with pleasure, and with awe,
solicit the devotion of man's faculties! The courts of such
a scientific temple tend to produce in not a few minds
feelings of delight mingled with a quasi-religious sentiment; and when, instructed by such teaching, we wander
forth amidst the living products of nature, that feeling
becomes intensified indeed.
Tropical scenes full of exuberant organic life are, of
course, best calculated to call it forth; but even in our
own land there is ample material for evoking it.
When from some smooth-browed, chalky down we,
Introduclory.
2 1 
Contemporary Evoluaion.
reposing amidst fragrant wild flowers and the hum of
busy insect life, look down on the peaceful ocean rippling
in sun-lit splendour at our feet, as we mark the sea-fowl
sailing in circles with rarely flapping wing, or listen to the
lark rising blithely through the summer air, -how strong
with many will be the impulse towards a joyous cultus
of an underlying soul of which such visible beauty is
the living and palpitating garment! The great Pan lives
once more, nor is Aphrodite unlikely to receive a mute
and mental homage. This world is felt to be lovely and
sweet indeed, and visions of exclusively terrestrial joy pass
before the mind, and tend to produce in it scanty reverence
for the forms and but slight admiration for the beauties
of Christian supernaturalism.
It is in a sense which the foregoing comparison may
serve to illustrate that the whole modern movement dating
from the very first breath of the Renaissance may be
regarded as being essentially a return towards paganismnot of course (at least in the first instance) to the worship
of the old gods, but to much of the spirit which underlay
that worship.
The essence of the paganism in Europe and Aryan
Asia with which Christianity contended, did not consist
in any definite credo, or in any exclusive cultus, else how
could the strange gods of the East have found a home
in the capital of the Roman empire? The essence of
that paganism was, whatever may have been its remote
22 
Introductory.
origin, mainly pantheism, and consisted in a systematic
contemplation of this world as it is, with a certain
religiosity indeed, but without supernatural (as distinguished from preternatural) aspirations or the idea of
holiness. Its religious conceptions were drawn from physical nature, reposed on natural phenomena, and taking
such nature as she is, logically resulted in rites which
answered both to her joyous and to her gloomy aspects.
Moreover, the philosophy of the ancient pagan world was
in this respect in harmony with its religion.
"It was from a physical point of view of the world, and
a desire to reduce it to a physical unity, that Greek
philosophy took its start; and the confusion of God with
the world, as it was involved in its beginning, so remains
its great error during the course of nine hundred years,
from Thales to Plotinus. In the seventh century before
Christ, the wise men of Greece all proceeded from the
expressed or the tacit assumption of one world-forming
force, whether they considered this as bound up with
matter or as severed from it, whether they called it
nature or the divine, or by any other name. This conception forms the common basis of the mechanical
doctrine of nature on the one hand, and of the dynamical
doctrine of nature on the other. All the various schools
of materialistic pantheism, of which the Ionic is the first,
spring from the former; all the various schools of idealistic pantheism, of which the Eleatic is the first, spring
23 
Contemporary Evoituion.
from the  latter.   In the former the confusion of God
with the world consists in making Him its material cause;
in the latter it consists in making Him its formal cause:
in both, the relation of all existing things to Him is that
of the appearance to the essence, that of the part to the
whole." *
Before the advent of Christianity the worship of nature
had for untold ages entered into the very marrow of the
bones of our forefathers. The Christian Church, in spite
of its apparent mediaeval triumph, had on the masses but
an imperfect hold, and in some countries had but the
acceptance of a brief tradition from fathers on whom it
had been imposed by the sword a few centuries before.
What wonder then if, under the influences brought to
bear since the year I500, Christianity is becoming disintegrated over wide areas, and the old pagan sentiment
reappearing like some old classical poem on the surface
of a palimpsest from which the later medieval superscriptions are being removed!
As to the Renaissance, even its sympathetic historian,
Mr. W. H. Pater, observes:" One of the strongest characteristics of that outbreak... was its antinomianism, its spirit of rebellion and revolt against the moral
and religious ideas of the age. In their search after the
pleasures of the senses and the imagination, in their care
* T. W. Allies, "'Formation of Christendom," part iii., p. 363.
24 
Introductory.
for beauty, in their worship of the body, people were
impelled beyond the bounds of the primitive Christian
ideal; and their love became a strange idolatry, a strange
rival religion. It was the return of that ancient Venus,
not dead, but only hidden for a time in the caves of
the Venusberg, of those old pagan gods still going to
and fro on the earth, under all sorts of disguises."*
It is then here contended that the whole modern movement from the humanists of the Renaissance to the present day has been and is a pagan revival; the reappearance of a passionate love for and a desire to rest in and
thoroughly sympathise with mere nature, accompanied by
a more or less complete and sympathetic rejection of the
supernatural, its aspirations, its consolations, and its terrors.
But to this position at least two objections may  be
made.   First, it may be said that many  sincere  and
thorough Christians have been profoundly imbued with
a love of nature, as was especially the case with the
seraphic father, the great St. Francis. Secondly, it may
be objected that the modern period has been largely religious, and that the movement of the Reformation has
been here unjustly and unreasonably ignored.
To the first objection it may be replied, there are two
ways of loving and regarding nature.
St. Francis, the tenderly beloved and unspeakably
* "Studies in the History of the Renaissance." By Walter H.
Pater, Fellow of Brasenose College, Oxford.
25 
Contemnporary Evolu/oan.
revered father of so many saintly followers-he who was
deservedly called an alter Clhristus-was indeed a lover
of nature; and, as we read in his life, the creatures of
the forest recognised and responded to his love by
familiar approach and ready obedience: however, he
always loved the creature in and for the Creator; he
would address the insect as "brother fly," recognising in
it an inferior created image of the same personal God
whose chosen servant he was.   The  divinity he worshipped was no pantheistic soul in nature, but one who
was his king as well as He in whom all things had their
being. For whole days kneeling in devout contemplation,
with tears of love he would again and again repeat with
fond iteration the words, "Rex inmeus et Deus ineus," as
well as, "Deus iecus et oivnia."
Such love of nature is profoundly Christian, and
thoroughly  antagonistic to that love of it for its own
sake simply, which is as profoundly pagan. In so far as
our modern poets and other artists partake of this Franciscan spirit, in so far are they in harmony at once with
nature and with Christianity.   But there is little doubt
that the prevailing tone of sentiment has long been increasingly pagan, until its most hideous features reveal
themselves in a living English poet, by open revilings of
Christianity, amidst loathsome and revoltingly filthy
verses, which seem to invoke a combined worship of the
old deities of lust and cruelty.
26 
Introductory.
But even the most innocent and refined minds show,
as might be expected, the influence of the prevailing
spirit, and pantheism exhales from the pure lines of
Wordsworth, as from the endless painted repetitions of
wood and water, moor and sea, which line the walls of
our annual exhibitions.
As to the second supposed objection, it may be observed
in reply to it, that in the movement of the Reformation
two distinct currents are manifest.
One of these flowed in harmony with that previously
initiated by the humanists, as its effects on the Church
were simply disintegrating. In so far as it tended more
or less completely to the negation of Christianity, it certainly aided the great pagan revival, and may justly
claim a place of distinction amidst the agents of such
restoration.
But the other current is that with which good people
in this country associate the Reformation-that, namely,
by which certain remnants of dogma were drifted together
in definite but unstable aggregations, labelled "Lutheranism," "Calvinism," and what not.
But this second current was a mere "backwater," and
has  resulted  in  no  developments.    The  materials  it
stranded have remained stationary, or, as in Switzerland
and Prussia, have utterly disintegrated, falling into and
directly aiding to give impetus to the great stream of the
naturalistic pagan revival.   We  may  not unreasonably
27 
Contemfiorary _Gvolu/ion.
suspect that had Luther foreseen the ultimate outcome
of his Biblical criticisms he would have shrunk back
into his cloister and refused to aid a movement which
had in no way his sympathy.
A recent writer in the Timnes has graphically pourtrayed
the present state of Protestantism in Germany. He tells
us: "Young men decline to ascend the pulpit. Already
many parsonages are empty, and more are becoming so
every day. To illustrate this astonishing fact by a few
figures: the eight Prussian universities in I83I boasted
2203 theological students; by the winter of I873 this
figure  has dwindled down  to 740.   Nor does it look
more promising in western and southern Germany.    Of
the two Hessian universities of Marburg and Giessen,
the former had 124 theological students in I83I, against
46 in I873; the latter having 80 in I850, against Io0 in
I1873.   Even  in  Wirtemberg,  the  most  theologically
inclined region of Germany, the supply of young candidates for clerical honours has so steadily diminished, that
whereas 48 were examined in I823, only 32 were in I873.
But what is more significant than anything else is, that
of the Prussian students of theology who matriculated
in the Prussian universities between I85I and  I873, one
third abandoned theology before ordination."
Dogmatic  Protestantism, as such, is essentially antiscientific and profoundly anti-naturalistic, proclaiming as
it does, the utter depravity and helplessness of our human
28 
introductory.
nature, and M. de Candolle* has recently shown how
Geneva has gained its scientific eminence only since it
threw off its orthodox Protestant character.
It may be affirmed then that Protestantism, as Protestantism, has had no positive effect, and therefore has
no true place in the great humanistic naturalistic revival,
in spite of the vigorous self-reliance and generous nobility of character so widely prevalent in much of the
area it occupies.   Its direct effects have been but negative, and it has only aided that revival in so far as it
has accelerated the process of Christian disintegration.
We may now turn our attention to yet another aspect
in which the movement of the last three centuries may
be regarded; namely, its political effects.
In the pagan Roman Empire, as before in Greece, the
omnipotence of the State was a recognised as well as a
logical doctrine. Religion, though polytheistic, was pantheistic, as the philosophy was prevalently monistic. The
individual citizen had no sacred god-given rights to maintain, and the will or the welfare of the community rose
superior to every plea which any single citizen could put
forward.
It was  the Jews and Christians, with a  religion reposing on a dualistic philosophy, who, for the first time,
to the amazement of judges who Would fain have been
* "Histoire des Savants depuis deux Siecles," par A. de Candolle:
Geneve, I873.
29 
Contemporary Evolution.
merciful, maintained the sacred rights of conscience, and
by patient endurance, sufferings, and death, vindicated the
claim of each individual-not only citizen, but slave-to
the freedom of a rational and responsible nature.
As the medieval Christendom was slowly built up, not
only did the rights of conscience, under the shelter and
sanction of the Church, find constant recognition, but
civil privileges and immunities were gained from rude
feudal lords as consequences of such rights.
The Christian Church ever officially respected the
rights of conscience, and however much such rights were
practically  disregarded  in  Spain  or  elsewhere,  never
claimed jurisdiction over any but her own spiritual children; that is, the baptized.  Jews were ever protected at
Rome, and long met with a shelter there denied them in
almost the whole of Christendom besides. Unlike Mahometanism, the Church never sanctioned the use of the
sword for the propagation of the faith, though asserting
the legitimacy of its use for purposes of defence.
Especially was the Church watchful against the assertion of religious authority or control on the part of the
State. The religious authorities were the representatives
of the people who believed in and accepted their ministrations, and submitted to them their consciences, and
thus our own great and glorious martyr of Canterbury,
the pride of the English Church, died for liberty of conscience, for liberty in religion, of the people's chosen
30 
introduclory.
guides against the would-be autocracy of a king who
sought to lord it over the consciences as well as over the
bodies of his subjects.
Coincidentally with the first breath of the humanistic
spirit, and increasing with the movement of the Renaissance, appeared a revival of State claims over the individual consciences of subjects, and when the destructive
portion of the Reformation movement had done its work,
it left behind it, as a worthy monument, that monstrous
rule of German legislation, " Cocus regio ejus religio,"
and paganism reappeared in the political arena.
Religious indifferentism and the rapid multiplication of
sects in certain countries have for a time suspended the
practical development of this worst of tyrannies; but in
theory the evil has augmented, and is in our own day
beginning to bear bitter practical fruit in Germany and
Switzerland.
It has augmented theoretically, because the religious
tyranny of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries was
at least avowedly based on an assertion of religious truth
and a professed care for the souls of subjects. Now, however, we meet with an express negation of such motives,
and the naked assertion of the State's right, qua State,
to dictate to its subjects their religious practices and impose on them its own doctrines-the logical outcome of
the monistic philosophy in vogue.
Christians have again imposed upon them the glorious
31 
Contemporary Evolution.
task of maintaining by self-denial and suffering the common rights of all men and the most fundamental and
sacred of all liberties-the liberty to adhere with undeviating fidelity, in speech and action as well as in thought,
to what they believe to be truth revealed to them by their
Creator.
The supreme and indefeasible rights of conscience
have never perhaps been more admirably defended than
by the most widely venerated priest of our own time
and country, Father Newman.* He tells us:  "The rule and measure of duty is not utility, nor expedience, nor the happiness of the greatest number, nor
State convenience, nor fitness, order, and the pulcrrumn.
Conscience is not a long-sighted selfishness, nor a desire
to be consistent with oneself; but it is a message from
Him, who, both in nature and in grace, speaks to us
behind a veil, and teaches and rules us by His representatives. Conscience is the aboriginal vicar of Christ,
a prophet in its informations, a monarch in its peremptoriness, a priest in its blessings and anathemas, and,
even though the eternal priesthood throughout the
Church should cease to be, in it the sacerdotal principle
would remain and would have sway."
As to the necessary relation of the visible head of the
Church to the claims of conscience, and the certainty
* See his " Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," p. 57.
32 
Introd?ctlory.
that in him they must find a defender, he adds: "Did
the pope speak against conscience in the true sense
of the word, he would commit a suicidal act. He would
be cutting the ground from  under his feet.   His very
mission is to proclaim the moral law, and to protect
and strengthen that light which enlighteneth every man
that cometh into the world."
On the law of conscience and its sacredness are
founded both his authority in theory and his power
in fact: "The championship of the moral law and of
the  conscience is his raison d'are.   The fact of his
mission is the answer to the complaints of those who
feel the insufficiency of the natural light; and the insufficiency of that light is the justification of his mission."
That in his view as to the paramount claims of conscience he is but following the traditions and authorities
of the Church he makes plain by references and quotations. After quoting the judgment, "He who acts against
conscience loses his soul," adduced from the fourth
Lateran council by Cardinal Gousset, he adds: "This
dictum is brought out with singular fulness and force in
the moral treatises of theologians. The celebrated school
known as the Salmanticenses, or Carmelites of Salamanca,
lays down the broad proposition, that conscience is ever
to be obeyed, whether it tells us truly or erroneously,
and that, whether the error is the fault of the person
thus erring or not. They say that this opinion is cer
33 
Contemporary Evzolution.
tain, and refer, as agreeing with them, to St. Thomas,
St. Bonaventura, Cajetan, Vasquez, Durandus, Navarrus,
Corduba, Layman, Escobar, and fourteen others.  Two of
them even say this opinion is de fide."
He also quotes Busenbaum, of the Society of Jesus,
as saying: "A heretic, as long as he judges his sect to
be more or equally deserving of belief, has no obligation
to believe (in the Church);" and, "when men who have
been brought up in heresy are persuaded from boyhood
that we impugn and attack the word of God, that we
are idolaters, pestilent deceivers, and therefore are to be
shunned as pestilences, they cannot, while this persuasion lasts, with a safe conscience hear us."
Again, he cites Antonio Corduba, a Spanish Franciscan, as stating the doctrine yet more pointedly, and
saying: "In no manner is it lawful to act against conscience, even though a law, or a superior commands it."
-De Conscient., p. 138.
Finally, he quotes the French Dominican Natalis
Alexander, as declaring that "if in the judgment of
conscience, though a mistaken conscience, a man is persuaded that what his superior commands is displeasing
to God, he is bound not to obey." Thdol., tome ii., p. 32.
Such  a power  then as  the Christian Church  must
ever be the most efficient and unflinching upholder of
the greatest and the noblest of the rights of man.
We come now to the third question: What is likely
34 
Introductory.
to be the further effect of this revived pagan spirit, and
is it likely henceforward to advance or to recede?
It is manifest at once that no one should venture to
apply himself to the solution of this problem without
great diffidence and an exceptionally earnest desire and
determination to render scrupulous justice to views which
he does not share, and to assign full weight to forces
and tendencies, the actions of which conflict with his own
personal desires and inspirations.
Certain classes of persons also are plainly disqualified
from forming in this matter an opinion deserving any
serious attention.
Thus no one can estimate the action of the opposing
forces who has not entered into and more or less sympathetically made his own the spirit which animates
each.
For example, no one is qualified who does not really
understand Christianity, who does not comprehend what
developments are really congruous with it, or accepts
the crude and shallow views so widely prevalent on the
subject.
Similarly, no one is qualified who does not possess,
not only a certain scientific culture, but also a mind capable of feeling sympathy with, and pleasure at, every advance of physical discovery.
Such an inquirer should have both the theological
and the anti-theological bias reduced to a minimum de
35 
Contem.porary Evolutian.
gree, and be capable of taking a broad view of every
speculative question.
Thus no one nurtured in a narrow school of theology,
and persisting to mature life in that position, can hope to
attain an accurate view of the position; and the same may
be said of any one trained in a narrow physical school, or
who, with the naivete of Professor Huxley, thinks, apparently, to destroy Christianity from the platform of physical
science.
Mr. Herbert Spencer possesses qualities enabling him to
grapple such a problem with, vigour and success, and it is
matter of deep regret that he has not thought it worth
while to qualify himself for the congenial task by a preliminary knowledge of Christianity. It is not of course
meant to imply that he does not possess the ordinary information with regard to it common to all men of education in this country. Sutch information, however, is quite
insufficient for the purpose, and surely far more than this
might be expected from Mr. Herbert Spencer. As a fact,
however, he gives no evidence of having acquainted himself with Christian philosophy, or with the doctrines, precepts, and counsels of the Christian Church, and yet it
cannot be denied that that institution has occupied and
still occupies no inconsiderable or uninfluential place
amongst the factors of social evolution. But Mr. Spencer
has more or less distinctly declared himnself in this matter,
and the wide acceptance which his philosophy has attained
36 
Introduclo,y.
on both sides of the Atlantic renders it a matter of interest to inquire into the possible future of that philosophy,
in connection with the future course of the great pagan
revival.
It is by no means improbable that such revival may
be carried on to a far greater development than it has
yet attained, and assume a far more distinctly religious
aspect.
The human mind will never rest in the mere materialism
of Strauss, or in the inane worship of abstract humanity
devised by Comte.
Mr. Spencer himself well remarks* concerning religion,
that the belief that its "object-matter can be replaced by
another object-matter, as supposed by those who think
the'Religion of Humanity' will be the religion of the
future, is a belief countenanced neither by induction nor
by deduction. However dominant may become the moral
sentiment enlisted on behalf of humanity, it can never
exclude the sentiment, alone properly religious, awakened
by that which is behind humanity and behind all other
things.... No such thing as a'Religion of Humanity' can ever do more than temporarily shut out the
thought of a Power of which humanity is but a small and
fugitive product-which was in course of ever-changing
manifestation before humanity was, and will continue
* "The Study of Sociology," p. 31I.
37 
Contemfporary Evolution.
through other manifestations when humanity has ceased
to be."
In connection with workings of and self-devotion to
merely an abstract humanity, the following words of Mr.
Mott* may be quoted with advantage:  "The hope of progress, to have any powerful influence
upon us, must be the hope of something in which we
ourselves, or those who are really dear to us, can share;
not the hope that a higher race of beings will inhabit the
earth long after we have done with it. If I heard that the
Emperor of China was a much better and nobler being
than myself, I do not feel that I should be much elated by
the news. Even if I congratulated himself and his subjects, my personal feelings would be rather grim. In like
manner, the knowledge that my own lot, and the lot of
those I love, was a very miserable one  compared with
what my descendants would inherit a thousand years
hence, could not give me a very cheerful view of life in
general.  Nor is there any selfishness in this, for selfishness does not consist in highly valuing our own happiness
-this is surely what the angels do-but in being willing
to sacrifice the happiness of others in order to secure our
own.
"The hope of improving the condition of others in
whom our affections are interested is indeed one of the
* See "Origiii of Savage Life," p. 43.
38 
Introductory.
highest motives for exertion; but to suppose that we
can carry such affection forward to far distant generations
is to misinterpret human nature. The feeling which is mistaken for such transcendental love is a sentimental product of the imagination, which seeks to render the hope of
individual immortality unnecessary to our happiness, by
persuading us to forget the individual and to think only
of the race. The feeling is false to nature, and can never
be a real power in the world."
But if we may expect the evolution of a non-Christian
religiosity in harmony more or less with the wants and
nature of man as we find him, in what direction may we
look for such development? The deliberate invention of
a new religion has been experimentally demonstrated to
be a hopeless task, and the age of myth-spinning has
gone by in cultivated Europe and America.
It is not impossible, however, that a new pagan cultus
may, should its need be felt, be one day evolved in connection with the philosophy of Mr. Spencer himself.
It is evident that such an evolution is possible, since
Mr. Spencer is indeed essentially a Brahman, and his creed
Brahmanism, potentially containing a whole pantheon of
cosmical divinities, the worship of which is not incapable
of being justified to the reason and conscience of many of
such as really accept his philosophy. For Mr. Spencer is
never tired of telling us that everything is some form of
the Unknowable, while of this First Cause Itself we must
39 
Contemporary Evolution.
predicate nothing save bare existence; to attribute to it
even intelligence and will would be, according to him, to
speak derogatively of it.
Now, in Brahmanism, "Para-Brahm"  "is literally an
unknown God.   He  has no qualities, no attributes, no
activity. He is neither the object of hope, fear, love, nor
aversion." *
We  read in the Upanisliad as follows: "How can anyone teach concerning Brahma? He is neither the Known
nor the Unknown. That which cannot be expressed by
words, but through which all expression comes, this I
know to be Brahma. That which cannot be thought by
the mind, but by which all thinking comes, this I know
is Brahma. That which cannot be seen by the eye, but
by which the eye sees, is Brahma. If thou thinkest that
thou canst know it, then in truth thou knowest it very
little. To whom it is unknown he knows it; but to whom
it is known, he knows it not.... One cannot attain
to it through the word, through the mind, or through
the eye. It is only reached by him who says,'It is!'
'It is!'"t
Surely if the doctrine of metempsychosis were true,
Mr. Spencer must be no other than the author of the
Upanishad himself reappearing in the nineteenth century!
* See James Freeman Clarke's "Ten Great Re]igions." Triibner:
I871, p. 84.
t Op. cit., p. 1.1i7.
4o 
Introductory.
The passage quoted harmonises remarkably with the
teaching of our English philosopher, who is no decrier of
religion, but as we have seen, postulates the necessity of
its existence, however modified its forms, as long as
humanity endures.
But if such views of the First Cause ever become
generally diffused and popular in a country in which the
instinct of worship is strong, and accompanied by a cultivated taste sure to develop itself in a more or less elaborate ritual, a strange result would not be far off.
All things, beauty, light, sound, morality, love, justice,
etc., are modes of the Unknowable-forms  of Brahma.
The Unknowable cannot be thought, but Its modes can,
and they are worthy of reverence, because they are ITS
modes.
Mr. Spencer complains that the reverence Christians
show to God is unworthy, does not properly express the
extreme awe and reverence due to the Unknowable.
But the Unknowable, though not an object of direct
worship, may  be-nay, should be-worshipped in and
through Its modes.
Thus we come to a God of beauty, a God of light,
a God of harmony, etc., each being a form of the Unknowable, and worthy of separate worship.
But this worship should be quite unlike that which
the Christian Church everywhere pays to its canonised
members, since the subordination of these latter is fully
3
4I 
Contemporary Evolution.
recognised and their intercession alone sought. But the
modes of the Unknowable would not be subordinate,
would not be mere creatures to intercede, but co-equal
and independent powers, one with that of which they
are modes, and therefore divine. In other words, we
have at once a restored polytheism. *
And indeed, in the absence of revelation, what more
worthy symbol of beneficent modes of the Unknowable
could be selected for an object of worship than the
sun?  Science teaches us that it is, in fact, not only
the agent by which the material world around us is
clothed in beauty and in joy, but even that by which
alone beauty, goodness, and truth themselves are mani
fested to us.
For its worship some revival of antique rites might be
gradually engrafted on existing forms-for the principle
of continuity must be recognised and acted on-while
* "Absolute unity admits into its capacious bosom all gods, for
the gods so admitted are simply parts of one universal power, which
is the substance of all things. Pantheism and polytheism share the
same error of giving this incommunicable Name to stocks and
stones; for if the being of God is the being of all things, it is as true
to say a stone is God, as to say a stone is a being. If God be at once
the matter and the soul of the world, and in both, in spite of His
eternity and unchangeableness, be subject to every change in time,
the idolaters were not to be blamed for honouring with divine worship
the air or the fire or irrational animals; rather, the only blaine they
deserved was that they did not worship everything."-Allies' "Formation of Christendom," part iii., p. 370.
42 
Introductlory.
glowing passages from the works of Professor Tyndall
may well supply antiphons and suggest hymns for its
ritual.
Hereafter, then, in the worship of the First Cause,
not as made known to us by His own act of voluntary
self revelation, but as manifested in the material world
alone, we may find a fuller development of that pagan
revival, which for more than three centuries has been
gathering life and energy. But we shall not yet have
reached its culmination.
To be logical, we must not ignore any side of nature,
which is equally in every aspect a mode of the Unknowable.   If acts  prompted  by  the  devotion  of  a
mother's love are to be reverently recognised as one
mode of that which alone Is, not one bit less is the
traffic of the courtesan another such mode; and if the
chastisement of the assassin may claim ITS sanction, so
the assassin may also equally claim it for the act on
account of which he is chastised.
The Christianity which yet remains diffused amongst
us, and the refinement of modern manners, render the
open practice of licentious and sanguinary rites as yet
impossible, but the spirit which prompted them finds
in this system its complete and logical justification, as
it has found in a contemporary poet its distinct lyrical
expression. The tendency of the movement is to approach little by little towards this worst phase of pagan
43 
Contemporary Evolution.
ism, as the corruption of morals gradually increases,
through the temporarily decreasing influence of Christianity upon the outer surface of society.
Already we hear openly advocated the murder of the
unborn, the sick, the suffering, and the old, as well as
self-murder.   Free  love  has not  only  its  advocates,
but its avowed votaries, and a hatred of marriage and
the family is one of the sentiments common to those
political enthusiasts who claim for themselves, par excellenzce, the title of "advanced."
When such views come to be mastered and accepted
by many of those who adopt the religious system here
sketched, they will doubtless powerfully reinforce, but
also strongly affect the religious system itself-possibly
even its ritualistic expression.   Thus the revived paganism of the future may be calculated to startle the rationalist of to-day fully as much as the revived paganism
of to-day would have startled a reformer of the time
of Luther.
It remains to consider the effect on Christianity of
the further development of the great movement we now
witness, and to endeavour to predict the result of the
renewed conflict between such a modified Christianity
and a so revived paganism.
44 
CHAPTER II.
POLITICAL E VOL UTION.
N  the first chapter of this essay an endeavour was
made to investigate the meaning and tendency of
that great process of social change which has been going
on since the thirteenth century, and which still con
tinues.
This process was explained as a prolonged struggle
between the medieval theocracy and a reviving paganism,* the latter succeeding in more and more thoroughly
rejecting the domination which at an early period the
* In the valuable and interesting essay by the Rev. A. M. Fairbairn, which appeared in the number of the Contemporary Review
for October, I873, views are put forward singularly harmonising with
those above referred to. The religious belief prevailing in Europe is
represented by him as being a synthesis of fiebraistic and Hellenistic
elements (p. 8o6), and it is shown how the old, pre-Christian "IndoEuropean mode of conceiving and expressing Deity is in almost every
respect a contrast to the Semitic.   The general terms" in  IndoEuropean religions "were primarily expressive of physical qualities"
(p. 797), and "all the Indo-European religions bear the stamp of this
primitive naturalism" (p. 799). By the pagan revival spoken of in the
first chapter was meant an increasing action expulsive of the Hebraistic elements, and the "paganism" referred to is equivalent to the
Indo-European "naturalism" of Mr. Fairbairn, with its degraded conceptions of God, its divorce between  religion and ethics, its state
absolutism, and the slavery of the individual conscience. 
Conlemporaiy Evolution.
former had obtained.  The anticipation was also expressed
that this repudiation would be carried to a much further
point than it has as yet reached.
The consideration of two questions was declared to be
a desideratum. These were  (I) The "effect on Christianity of the further developme'it
of the great mnove'nent."
(2) The probable "result of the renewed conflict between
such a modified Christianity and a so revivedpaganism."
It was, however, by anticipation, observed that it was
necessary to the successful consideration of these questions,
that the "inquirer should have both the theological and
the anti-theological bias reduced to a minimum degree,"
but that he should at the same time know "what developments are really congruous with Christianity," since
without such knowledge it must be manifestly impossible
for him to judge of the effects of Contemporary Evolution
upon it.
Before proceeding to attempt the solution of the two
grave problems which are here to occupy us, it may be
remarked that the question as to the truth of Christianity
is here left entirely on one side, the obvious or admitted
tendencies of known natural forces and laws being alone
taken into consideration.
Assuming that "paganism" or "Aryan naturalism" is
playing the great part here assigned to it, and is likely
to produce yet greater effects in the future, it is mani
46 
Political Evo'dtion.
fest that Christianity must be thus profoundly modified
or entirely destroyed, unless it contains latent powers and
capacities calculated to meet such attacks and provide
for such trials.  If, however,  Christianity does contain
such powers in a high degree, it is evident that resurging paganism may but be the occasion for the outward
manifestation of such latent capacities, and that to its
hostile action Christianity may be indebted for the most
startling and prodigious of its triumphs.
To investigate, then, the question whether Christianity
is likely to be utterly destroyed, or more or less enfeebled,
or slightly or greatly strengthened by the further development of the naturalistic movement, we must examine
that movement in its (I) POLITICAL, (2) SCIENTIFIC, and
(3) PHILOSOPHIC aspects. 
The questions of the effects of contemporary scientific
and philosophic evolution on Christianity may be deferred
to succeeding chapters. Here it is proposed to consider
CHRISTIANITY AND POLITICAL EVOLUTION only.
Some of the political effects of the further development,
in our own day and hereafter, of the humanistic Renaissance were briefly indicated in the first chapter,* but as
a necessary groundwork for estimating the future, it will
be well here to begin with a somewhat fuller though brief
survey of past and present socio-political changes.
* Page 29.
47 
Contemporary  Evolution.
At the period of Innocent III., the Christian theocracy
in Europe had proximately attained its greatest actual
development.
The social institutions and whole political fabric
avowedly reposed upon an all but universally accepted
divine authority, and upon a revelation the declarations
of which were interpreted and systematically applied to
all circumstances as they arose by spiritual authorities re cognised as the revealed system's God-appointed adminis trators, of whom one supreme pontiff was the acknow ledged head.
The Christian political system having thus temporarily
organised itself and grown up into this near approach
to a universal theocracy, began slowly to disintegrate.
Incipiently resurging paganism first showed itself
politically in a spirit of religious "nationalism" opposing
itself to the cosmopolitan religious conception embodied
in the papacy.   Paganism was especially national, and
the principle  of "nationalism" in religion when once
introduced into Christendom by legislative impediments to
the free exercise of the Christian central and controlling
power, rapidly developed itself and expanded fatally to
the Christian theocracy.
In France that "eldest son of the Church," Philip the
Fair, dealt the first great blow to the Christian political
system in the persons of Boniface VIII. and the Knight
Templars. Thenceforward the anti-theocratic spirit mani
48 
P icat Evo uon.                49
fested itself now and again in opposition to the Church,
and when this action was apparently reversed by the
royal protection extended to Christianity against the revolt of Luther and Calvin, it was in reality but intensified
by a surrender of control in spiritual things as a return
for such protection.
The cessation of the subsequent religious troubles
through the accession of the politic Henry IV. was the
occasion of the yet further domination of the Church by
the State, culminating in the despotism of Louis XIV.,
who avowed himself as not only resuming in his own
person the whole civil power of the State, but as the
God-giver and sacred Vicegerent of Deity, against whose
will no right, whether of privilege, property, or conscience,
should under any circumstances assert itself.
The wide divergence of such a social system from the
old medieval theocracy is patent enough, nevertheless
that system continued to exhibit a considerable deference
to older forms, and attempted to constitute a sort of
national theocracy of its own, founded on the king's
"divine right."
The leprous regency and the crowned infamy which
succeeded could not however but greatly weaken the
force of the alleged supernatural authority of the royal
autocracy, which authority was at the same time further
enfeebled by the advance of the "philosophic" spirit.
Thus, before  the unhappy  Louis  XVI. opened  the
PoliticaI Evoli/~ton. 
Contemjkorary Evolutioin.
States-General, he had come to be regarded by an influential part of the nation as merely its representative,
and "divine right," so far as recognised at all, had passed
to the nation as a whole.   Nevertheless, the old laws
continuing still, gave him power over the consciences of
his subjects in the form of State control of the French
Church.
When the sovereignty of the French people through
representatives-or those who asserted themselves to be
the representatives of such representatives-succeeded to
the royal power in the state, they not unnaturally
assumed and exaggerated that ecclesiastical supremacy
which had been conceded to the monarch, and the "civil
constitution of the clergy" was the result.   Thus the
singular anomaly presented itself of one section of citizens
claiming to dispose of the consciences of their fellowcitizens by imposing what was in fact a new State religion
in the name of liberty.
It is plain then that the diminution and destruction
of the royal power, instead of reversing the current
which had accompanied its augmentation, actually intensified it.
Still, as long as any profession of religion remained,
there was always at least a nominal and professed respect
for liberty and conscience; but it is interesting to note
that the extreme of intolerance and persecution attended
the proclaimed atheism of Hebert and the Commune.
50 
Political Evolution.
In the rise of what afterwards became "imperialism,"
that most cynical and unscrupulous of tyrants the first
Napoleon availed himself of the rising tide in favour
of freedom of conscience to legislate for the restoration
and support of the French Church, and here some historical students might suspect that we encounter a real
theocratic reaction.   Such a suspicion, however, would
be groundless. Not upon the old basis of "revelation,"
but on that of the common rights of different religions
to the support of an indifferent State, was the re-establishment effected, and while the lay power thus asserted
its supremacy and independence more than even under
the old kings, privileges conceded to the really Christian
monarchs were retained by the man whose treatment
of Pius VII. proclaimed at once his paganism and his
brutality.
The Restoration did, indeed, more or less ally itself
with the strong desire entertained by an influential portion
of the nation for a reversion in the theocratic direction,
especially under Charles X., with speedy loss of his
throne as a result. Nevertheless, that even this monarch
was animated by the prevailing anti-theocratic spirit is
shown by that expulsion of the Jesuits which so shortly
preceded his own exile.
During the reign of the "citizen king," theocratic
tendencies were notoriously in disfavour; while under
Napoleon III., and through his act, the mediaeval theo
5 I 
Conlem5poiary Evoltution.
cracy of Christendom has received its supreme blow in
the revolutionising of Italy, with loss to the pope of his
civil princedom as a result.
The last hopes of those in France or elsewhere who
sigh for the re-elevation of the tattered and disfigured
banner of the medieval Christian theocracy have long
centred in the Count de Chambord.   But the head of
that government which lately seemed so near accomplishing his elevation to the throne disclaimed in distinct and
memorable words, in the name of his party and of the
French clergy, any desire for medieval reaction, and the
Count de Chambord himself has accepted liberty of conscience, freedom of worship, and the other articles of
modern constitutionalism; so that his accession, if it were
even possible, could not have any other effect than that of
lending to modern civicism the halo of his legitimacy.
The medieval Christian theocracy, then, in France may
be said to be definitively at an end, and attacks on freedom and conscience are to be apprehended from the
friends and favourers of communistic fanaticism alone.
In England a parallel series of changes has been
differently effected.
Henry VIII. (that incarnation of the dominant English
spirit of his time) completed by his despotism a process
which had been gradually developing itself in preceding
reigns by the formal absorption of ecclesiastical authority
in the person of the king, made "Head of the Church."
52 
Polilical Evolution.
But the theocracy in England, though thus changed as to
its base, far from being overthrown, was for a time augmented, and it was not until after it had transformed itself
into the despotism of the Commonwealth, that its vigour
began slowly to relax. The very slowness was, however,
one cause of the continuity of its ebb, for the resistance
of the Protestant bishops to the tyranny of James II.
(itself sustained by the theocratic sentiment) powerfully
aided in bringing about the expulsion of one who, had
he unhappily remained, might have effected a strongly
reactionary transformation.
The government of the Dutchman, with its terrible
penal laws, was despotic enough; but its tendencies were
distinctly anti-theocratic, and such thenceforward has been
the general direction of our legislation.
Nevertheless, so conservative are we, that to this day the
Christian theocracy remains exceptionally erect in England. We have, not only a national Church still in possession of its territorial endowments, but a multitude of our
positive enactments (such as those respecting the observance of Sunday) repose on a more or less distinct theocratic
basis, as also do our conspicuous state ceremonials, from
the coronation of the chief magistrate downwards.
There can be little doubt, however, but that these last
relics will, more or less, gradually disappear.   In spite of
the apparent present strength of Conservatism, converging
efforts from most opposite sides threaten that last vener
53 
Contem,orary Evolution.
able medieval relic irreverently termed by the late Dr.
Wilberforce the "Squarson."
If we turn to Spain we find there is a very interest.ing and instructive example of the same process under
very different forms and with very different results. The
prolonged Moorish wars caused Christianity to entwine
itself so intimately with the Spanish social structure, that
the medieval theocracy remained in full force to the end
of the reign of the great Isabella. Nevertheless it was
taking a peculiar direction, not found in other countries
in Europe.
As elsewhere, so also in Spain, the monarch came to
share in that exaggerated authority and dignity which
kings acquired, in the sixteenth century, as the patrons
or as the vanquishers of the Church within their borders.
But in Spain the monarch had to share his power with
another for a time co-ordinate, independent, and invincible authority-the frightful Spanish Inquisition.
This institution, which originally, indeed, took its rise
in a development of the official Christian system, soon
became so powerful, owing to local conditions, as to be
able to defy and successfully resist that theocracy in
which it took its rise, and the singular spectacle presented
itself of a power professing to have for its one object the
complete and minute enforcement of Church authority
itself refusing to obey the supreme head of the very
Church it professed to serve.
54 
Po'tiical Evolution.
Overshadowing and obscuring both royal and papal
authority, this monstrous Christian parasite offered a
peculiar obstacle to overt manifestations of reviving
paganism, although itself hostile to the true theocratic
spirit. That it was not the true representative of the
latter was shown by the unerring instinct of resurging
paganism, which first expelled, not the inquisitors, but
their occasional victims the Jesuits-ever in closest and
most sympathetic union with the head of Christendom.
Again, the anti-theocratic changes in Spain were
mainly brought about by foreign influences.   So that
small tentative returns towards some of the old laws and
practices were, as being national, more or less popular
and practicable, down almost to I868.
The extremely radical measures which were for a time
adopted show that the forcible repression of the antitheocratic movement in Spain has in the end but intensified its action, and given rise to a spirit of antagonistic fanaticism akin to, if not in excess of, that of the
Parisian Commune.
But few fragments of the Christian theocracy remain in
the Madrid Government of Spain to-day, even under King
Alfonso; but many hope or fear that a return to that theocracy may be effected under the sovereignty of "Charles
VII."   Some of those, however, who are personally acquainted with "His Most Catholic Majesty," positively
affirm that nothing is farther from his thoughts or intentions
55 
Contem.orary Evolution.
than the re-introduction of mediaeval theocracy into Spain,
earnest as he is said to be in maintaining the freedom
of the consciences of his Catholic subjects and, as therein
necessarily involved, the freedom of the Spanish Church.
It seems, therefore, that in all cases, the end of the mediaval theocracy in Spain has come, and it only remains to
be seen whether the rights of conscience and the freedom
of the individual citizen will have to be gained through
suffering under a democratic tyranny through parliamentary contests under a constitutional government, or, as is
most unlikely, be allowed to grow and expand under the
shelter of a sovereignty which might claim obedience from
the most reactionary elements of Spanish society.
If we pass from the mountains where the more despotic
form of what is presumed to be Spanish monarchy is struggling to assert itself, through southern France, to the Alps,
we come to another nation which may seem to constitute
the very political antipodes of Spanish monarchism, namely, Switzerland.
Yet in Switzerland we find a singular fundamental
resemblance to Spain under a strangely different exterior.
The United States and Switzerland are republics, Spain
and  England  monarchies.   Thus  are they classed in
popular apprehension.   Really, however (as most of my
readers are doubtless aware), it is Switzerland and Old
Spain, the United States and England, which ought to
be classed together.
56 
Po'tical Evolutzion.
When, after the religious disruption of the sixteenth
century, the Swiss Confederation settled down into a
certain number of Catholic and a certain number of
Protestant communities, an intimate union of Church and
State became the rule in the respective cantons.   The
rigid theocracy of Geneva is well known to all, but in
the Catholic as in the Protestant cantons, Church laws
were enforced by secular authority, and thus much of
medieval theocracy has been preserved down to the
present day by these small communities.
Now, however, repudiation of the Christian theocracy
is making its way in Switzerland, but by a singular inversion it is the non-Christian part of the nation which
is seeking to prolong its forms, while those who are par
excellenece the very representatives of that theocracy are
being gradually driven to take up a position hostile to
them.   This inversion  has arisen through  changes by
which, owing to the union of Church and State, power
over the Church has come into the hands of those most
hostile to her, and we have as a result the grotesque
exhibition of ex-priests, who have violated all their own
vows in the name of liberty of conscience, becoming the
willing agents of an anti-Christian government in robbing
and oppressing Christians amongst whom that govern
ment has enabled them to intrude.
* In Berne we also find an anti-Christian government
taking upon itself to decide what doctrines its fellow
57 
Contenmporary Evoluion.
citizens are to accept, to whose guidance they are to
commit their consciences, and also to draw geographical
boundary lines, on one or the other side of which citizens
are or are not to be allowed to make use of each other's
religious ministrations.
There can be little doubt but that this tyranny will in
time so arouse consciences in opposition to it, that a separation between Church and State will have to be ultimately
effected, and thus in Switzerland, as in France, England,
and Spain, the Christian theocracy, on its old basis, will
have ceased to exist.
Descending the Alps and Apennines to Brindisi, we
traverse a country now undergoing changes peculiarly
interesting in reference to our present inquiry, since there
the Christian theocracy has its headquarters.
It may at first be thought singular that Italy, which
was the fons et origo of the modern humanistic spirit, and
which in physical science (as especially in anatomy and
geology) was so far ahead of more northern nations, should
have continued, from Turin to Naples, subject to a system
of government which appeared so decidedly theocratic.
But, in fact, it was much less so than it seemed. Thus
in Tuscany the revolution of I869 caused a dukedom
to disappear which nominally, indeed, supported Christianity, but which did so much more in the interest of
the dukedom than of the Church.   The profoundly antitheocratic Leopoldine laws were in full force, and now
58 
Political Evolih'on.
under Victor Emmanuel if there is no longer that State
support for the Church which formerly existed, the impediments to its action have also disappeared.
To the popular mind of England the penultimate King
of Naples was the very representative of priest-ridden
monarchy. Really, however, though glad to make use
of Church influence for the support of the throne, not
many Catholic monarchs have been more anti-theocratic
than the sovereign in question. Not only intolerant of
the Jesuits, he would not even listen to Pope Pius, when
as his guest at Gaeta he petitioned for a modicum of
freedom for the Sicilian Church.
The destruction, then, of such systems of government
in Italy was more the making apparent of what was before
latent than any really considerable advance in the antitheocratic direction.   The advance had been made long
before.
While the pope's civil princedom remained, and any
community, even that of a single city, continued subject
to his direct civil sway, the mediaeval Christian theocracy
might be said still to exist.   With its disappearance,
should it be final, disappears the logical- basis of that
system; then "Christendom" exists and can exist no
longer, however some shreds and patches of it may for a
time linger amidst the social phenomena of the succeeding period.
It is true that we see a curious and interesting example
59 
Contem,Aorary Evolution.
of "survival"  in the Russian Empire.   There a very
peculiar Christian theocracy still remains erect; perhaps
in full force, and destined to further development. Signs,
however, are not wanting that it is really a tottering
structure, deeply undermined and honeycombed as it is
by the efforts of religious dissidents.  Nevertheless  the
future of Russia is a subject full of uncertainty, and a
problem not less perplexing than abounding in interest,
about which a word or two may be said later.
We now come to the last region which need occupy
us in our brief survey of the leading features of the
action of social political evolution on Christianity from
the Middle Ages to the present day. This last region is
Germany. Under existing circumstances it is the most
interesting of all; for there before our eyes is being
played out on a magnificent scale a remarkably involved
struggle, in which mediaeval and modern, Christian and
pagan conceptions are entangling and disentangling themselves with singular complexity, and forming a labyrinth,
the clue to which seems to have been strangely missed
by most of the leaders of English public opinion.
Under the head of Germany must be included, not
only the new German Empire under Prussia, but Austria
also. Austria must be included on account of the important part played by Southern Germany in the national
evolution from the thirteenth century to the present day.
In Germany the Christian theocracy attained in one
60 
Politzical Evouliion.
respect a development which it reached nowhere else;
namely, in the number of its spiritual rulers who held
direct civil sway, -the various prince-bishops and archbishops, such as those of Cologne, Mayence, Salzburg,
etc., etc. Besides this, the kaisers had a certain sanctity
of authority recognised by the ecclesiastical power beyond
that of any  other temporal ruler.   According  to  the
generally received opinion of the Middle Ages there was
but one supreme temporal lord of Christendom - the
emperor, as there was but one supreme spiritual lord
-the pope; and it was in this widely diffused belief
that the emperors in their struggles with the pontiffs
found, perhaps, their main support.
With the weakening of the Christian theocracy waned
also the power of the Holy Roman  emperor, the independence of subordinate princes in Germany increasing,
while elsewhere the central powers were strengthening
themselves at the expense of the various subordinate
local authorities.
The movement of the Reformation, the subsequent
religious struggles, and the rise of Prussia, completed, as
every one knows, the real destruction of the old system.
Thus, when the Corsican despot finally put an end to
that venerable imperial dignity, he really caused to disappear but the shadow of a shade.   He little thought,
however, of the Nemesis he was conjuring up, and how
the chronic disease of Germany would be cured and its
6i 
Contenimorary Evolition.
feebleness invigorated by the sharp cautery of his merciless invasions..
The old historic Christian German sovereignty, with
its majestic hierarchical system, in the State as well as
in the Church, in the early part of the Middle Ages, as
powerful as it was magnificent, was indeed at an-end; but
with marvellous rapidity arose that strong instinct and
sentiment of unity, of which we see the result to-daya unity not based on Christianity (and now, indeed, in
deadly contest with it), but reposing on race and nature
only, and in perfect harmony with that reviving paganism
which in the first chapter of this essay it was endeavoured to describe. Of this latent power Napoleon I.'s
aggression elicited the manifestation, but the full force
of it was reserved for the overthrow of Napoleon  III.
The course of evolution in Germany, then, has been
substantially similar to that we have seen elsewhere out
of Prussia, though so complex, that an exposition of the
causes of local differences in its development would alone
form a work of the highest interest.   After the  final
religious effect of the Reformatory movement had subsided, the old imperial authority was, strange to say,
amongst the first to evolve and develop the further
growth of that spirit which was most fatal to its own
foundation.    The  profoundly  anti-Christian  policy  of
Joseph II. anticipated that of the French revolution
and of the pagan German government of to-day.
62 
Political Evolulion.
The spectre of sans-culottism at Paris frightened back
the European sovereigns into a temporary reversal of
previous action, and made them seek to revitalise the
rapidly decaying mediaeval theocracy in the selfish
interest of their own power. The experiment has been
short-lived; Austria has thoroughly changed her policy,
and Christianity, whatever its future may be, seems
likely to suffer but little from the incubus of so damaging a support. The equally selfish and essentially hypocritical system of Prussia has also ended, and given place
to an antagonism capable of putting the vitality of
German Christianity to the proof.   Even then, by these
two powers -Austria  and  Prussia, -which  in different
aspects may claim to be the nearest existing representatives of the old temporal head of Christendom, the
Christian theocracy is finally disavowed.   The northern
kaiser has been ostentatiously welcomed in the old imperial city as the avowed author of a letter to the supreme head of that theocracy, in which the claims of
that head are repudiated and his authority defied.
It is true that the southern emperor is the crowned
king of Hungary, and that his present conduct seems
only to have been forced on him by circumstances, after
years of fruitless efforts to found his empire on some
modification of the old theocratic basis, much of which,
indeed, still remains within the bounds of his empire.
His failure is but a still greater proof of the irresis
63 
Contemporary Evolution.
tible force of the adverse current he has in vain tried to
stem.
It is true, again, the northern emperor is the crowizcd
king of Prussia; he has repeatedly protested that his
power has a divine sanction, and he has been ever personally opposed to the anti-Christian policy in which he
is now engaged.   His crown, however (like that of Napoleon I.), was placed upon his head by his own hand
-an act in itself virtually amounting to repudiation of
a Christian theocratic basis, while the actions of his
government have rapidly become more and more profoundly anti-Christian.
To sum up, then, the results of our survey: it may be
asserted that since the days of St. Louis one movement
has in the main continued almost uninterruptedly, in
spite of actions of an apparently conflicting tendency.
This process has been one of continuous disintegration of the medieval Christian theocracy, proceeding with
varying degrees of rapidity over the whole area of what
was once Christendom.
This movement, since it first displayed itself, has been
aided and accelerated, not only by processes manifestly
in harmony with it, but also by others which were intended and seemed calculated to arrest, or even reverse
it.
The whole current of events became turned ill one
direction, and whether here or there princely power was
64 
Political Evolution.
augmented or diminished, whether popular liberties were
curtailed or increased, whether aristocracies arose or decayed, all has aided in diverse ways this, which seems
to have been the great dominant movement from mediaeval times to our own.
Every effort which has been made to stem the current
has failed; every power which raised itself in opposition
has been broken.
In vain the Pilgrimage of Grace, with its banner of the
five holy wounds, strove in fair fight to maintain the
established system; in vain the misguided efforts of the
Powder Plot sought by nefarious measures to restore it;
in vain the virtues and conscientious efforts of Mary of
England tried to retain the English crown to the Church;
in vain the winning graces of Mary of Scotland sought
similarly to retain the Scotch. Priests bled at Tyburn,
English and Irish citizens suffered confiscation, exile,
and death, in fruitless efforts to reverse or to impede the
anti-theocratic course of events.   The very atmosphere
which repelled the Armada favoured the Dutch invasion,
and blood flowed unavailingly at Culloden and the
Boyne.   The  efforts  of  the  French  league  were  as
resultless (in their intended direction) as the infamous
dragonnades of Louis XIV., or the heroism of La Vendee.
The white cockade of the Restoration but intensified
the anti-theocratic hatred of France; and the apparently
strong bands imposed by the Holy Alliance and Treaty of
4
65
I 
Contemnporary Evolution.
Vienna proved really but cobwebs to the expansive
efforts of advancing paganism, while the last Napoleon,
powerful in invoking it in Italy and Austria, proved
utterly impotent in his efforts to exorcise the spirit he
had raised. The loyal troops of Francis Joseph, though
momentarily all but triumphing against both France and
Prussia, nevertheless actually failed against both, and the
success of Germany in the recent war, instead of confirming and extending over the whole empire that mnodified theocracy which existed so peacefully and prosperously in Prussia, has had a directly opposite result.
It would seem that an action so wide-spread, so continuous, and so deep, proceeding as it is with accelerated
rapidity, cannot easily be arrested, but rather must continue to proceed much further.
Nevertheless, there are many who believe that a reversal will at length ensue, and some modification of the
old theocracy be again generally established.   At present the only power which seems to contain enough of
the old material is Russia.   It may be that, instead of
politically assimilating itself to western Europe (like the
manners of its highest class), it may come to exercise a
powerfully reactionary tendency.   It does not seem impossible that, availing itself of the mutually enfeebling
wars and revolutionary disintegrations of western powers,
it may hereafter come to play that part in Europe which
was played of old by Macedon in Greece.
66 
Political Evolution.
Such a western expansion might be greatly aided if,
carrying out the idea of a former sovereign, it united itself to the Roman Church, and made itself the agent of
the most powerful religious feelings and of all the theocratic reactionary tendencies latent in western Europe.
It does not even seem impossible that a Roman pontiff
effectively restored to his civil princedom by such Russian agency might inaugurate, by a papal consecration
in the eternal city, yet a fresh dynasty of "Holy Roman
emperors,'" a Sclavonic series succeeding to the suppressed
German line, as the Germans succeeded in the person of
Charlemagne to the first line of Caesars.
Nevertheless, such a transformation would be so great
a reversal of the course which history has now pursued
for six hundred years, that it can only be regarded as a
remotely possible solution of the problem offered to us
by the peculiar social and political divergence of Russia
from the rest of Europe.
Again: if the expectation of continued social evolution
in the path now so long followed be disappointed, and if
Christian theocracy, but slightly modified from what has
before existed, be restored, Christianity can of course have
nothing to fear from such a change from subordination
to supremacy. We may here, therefore, neglect all possibilities of reaction in a theocratic direction, since the
subject of our inquiry concerns the probable result of the
continued progress of resurging paganism, on the hy
67 
Contemp5orary Evolution.
pothesis that it continues to follow the same course as
heretofore.
It is difficult to believe but that further progress in the
course hitherto pursued can mean anything else than the
entire cessation of political support to Christianity, whether
in schools, the legislature, the head of the State, or the
formalities officially recognised as concerning the birth,
sexual relations, or death of citizens.   Each  man  will
then be everywhere free without political penalties of any
kind to live, marry, carry on all social relations, die, and
be buried in open rejection of the Church and her agency
if he be so minded; and no State recognition or favour
will tend to bribe individuals to simulate the acceptance
of a creed which in their hearts they reject.
What, then, must be the effect on the Christian Church
of such a universal repudiation of the Christian theocracy?
Clearly, if that Church be essentially bound up with
society as it has existed since medieval times, such repudiation must be simply fatal.
It is not wonderful that so very many Christians view
with alarm and dismay the progress of this great pagan
movement. In the first place the Christian Church has
intimately connected itself with the Christian State: in
the liturgy of royal coronations; in the past sanction
of and sympathy with aristocratic institutions; in the
tradition to the secular arm; in the Christian origin of
so many universities; in the congregations devoted to
68 
Political Evoluition.
instruction, to the sick, the aged, and the poor, through
the accepted intervention of the State; in the general
tendency of the altar to ally itself to the throne, as in the
France of to-day, in Spain, and in Austria.
Secondly, the enemies of the theocracy are the avowed
enemies of Christianity itself, as in Spain, as with the
French red republicans, as in Austria and Germany, and
as with the most free-spoken democrats here in England.
Thirdly, in the past the destruction of the theocracy
has undeniably been often the precursor of the destruction
of religion itself, by the expulsion of citizens who have
taken religious vows, the sequestration of their property,
the restraint of their persons, occasionally by their actual
slaughter.
Fourthly, vast religious changes have so often been due
to political passion, as in England and  Germany in the
sixteenth century, and in Germany now; while sometimes
national prejudice, as in Prussia and the United States
in the present day, acts powerfully to render minds
hostile to particular creeds.   These  considerations may
well cause Christians to dread the further advance of
modern political change. But the question then arises,
Is. there any compensating and restorative action which,
not being obvious, escapes the notice of these alarmists?
It may be that the existing social fabric is but one of
several or of many political modes, with each of which
Christianity can co-exist, and that the disintegrating
69 
Contem.oraiy Evol/ztlion.
changes are harmless to it, since they will but occasion
the evolution of a new power.
If we regard the Church as a complex organism, it
must, like every other organism, live by a series of actions
responsive to the effects produced on it by the environment.
The action of the environment may be either to disintegrate and destroy, or to consolidate and perfect it,
and such action will destroy the Church if it is not able
to effect internal modifications adequately responding to
external changes.
It is manifest that a great process of external disintegration has taken place as regards the Church's social
relations-a process crippling its power of action on its
old basis. The question then is, Has this action been or
not been accompanied by a process of internal integration
which has more and more perfected and strengthened the
Church's power of action on a new basis, and fitted it
better than ever before for the struggles of the future?
To ascertain the probable efficacy of such integrating
action, if it exists, we must first endeavour to find out what
is the social system likely to replace that which seems
to be passing away, and nmust pass away if the existing
anti-theocratic movement continues to augment and develop itself. We must thus inquire, in order to see whether
the integrations arising in the Christian Church are or
are not calculated so to meet the effects of the disintegra
70 
Political Evolutlion.
tions as to place the ecclesiastical organism of the future
in harmony with its new  environment.    Every social
fabric, every considerable aggregation of mankind, must
since men are rational animals, repose upon some reasonable principles resolvable ultimately into one of two
ideas, "expediency" or "right," or into some combination
of them.
A community of savages may perhaps continue to
exist on the simple principle that infringement of the
accepted tribal customs is equivalent to a broken head
or a spear in the thigh. But this is a form of expediency.
More highly organized social states may be conceived,
under certain circumstances, to indefinitely cohere from
force of habit and a perception of utility essentially like
the preceding.   On  the other  hand, such  a persistent
condition may be largely indebted for its persistence
to a respect for ancient custom which, if explicitly or
implicitly enjoined on citizens, becomes essentially the
acceptance of some such moral aphorism as, "It is proper
to maintain ancient customs;" and "This is a form of
right."
As soon, however, as civilization has in any community
attained a considerable development, the question of the
basis of the social fabric will be sure to address itself
to an increasing number of its component units.
A highly complex social system like that of England
to-day reposes partly on perceptions of utility, but far
7 I 
Conlepaforary Evolution.
more on moral ideas of two kinds-one being that of a
divine appointment, the other that of absolute right.
The idea of utility or expediency may frequently be
much more prominent and obtrusive, both in explanation
and precept, than the moral conceptions.   But it would
nevertheless be difficult to deny that a belief in "divine
appointment" widely prevails, at least in our agricultural
districts, and that the conception of "absolute right" is
a considerable, if not a main agent, in the diffusion of
democratic ideas among our artisans.
Though it is manifest that our social system is largely
maintained through a belief that things "work well,"
yet much that is put down to "expediency" will, when
fully analysed, be found really to repose on a "moral"
basis. Thus, Mr. Mill's so-called "Utilitarianism," aiming,
as it professes to do, at the greatest happiness of all
sentieit bcihzgs, is really a distorted and exaggerated form
of "absolute morality."
It seems indeed, to say the least, very doubtful whether
any social fabric could enduringly repose upon simple
and naked expediency and real utilitarianism; that is,
that the temporal welfare of the individual should be to
him his only end, and that he should recognise no obligation on any citizen or section of a community to regard
the welfare or desires of others in the smallest degree
beyond what self-interest may dictate. The moment any
one asserts that a citizen ought to restrain his actions
72 
Polilical Evohliton.7
within such bounds that they do not impede the purely
self-regarding actions of his fellows, he steps beyond
utilitarianism into the region of "absolute morality." All
he can consistently urge is that it is expedient for each
man to seek to establish and maintain a social system
in which all actions are free to every citizen which do
not directly izfrinfge the similar freedom of his fellows.
This may be asserted to be expedient, since thus alone
can each man best secure the steady and least impeded
exercise of his own volition.
But whether or not a social fabric could be maintained
in which it could not be proclaimed that to disregard
others is wrong, as well as izexpedient, certain is it that
if maintained it might become the most fearful of tyrannies.   In such a social system the extermination of a
harmless minority could only be opposed on the ground
that it might be prejudicial to the majority.  Turning then to the other idea, that of "Right," it
is manifest that it may repose upon either of two bases.
(I) A  sipernzatiral revelation, if a belief in that revelation be all but universal in any given society.
(2) A common belief as to natural absolute right, if any
sufficient ethical proposition can be found which will
command the assent of the overwhelming majority.
Social systems based on an asserted divine revelationi.e., theocracies-have played a most important part in
social evolution up to this day; and no theocracy has
73 
Contemporary Evolt/tion.
played so great a one as that, the disintegration of which
we are engaged in considering.
It is evident that naked self-assertion is a relatively
feeble base for a national theocracy, and that some
objective testimony is requisite to sustain, for any prolonged period, the claim of any man or body of men to
supernatural authority.
This testimony did exist in medieval Christendom.
The government of each nation could appeal to a venerated external witness, namely, to the Church, as existing
in other nations, and to the supreme head of that Church,
whose decisions were accepted as final. No such testimony exists for any of the competing systems which claim
a divine authority to-day-such as that of the Russian
czar or of the Prussian monarchy, as understood by its
king. It is also difficult to conceive that any similar
testimony can come to be made use of by any nonChristian theocracy hereafter to arise.
It would thus seem that the social systems of the future
must come to repose merely upon natural and intuitive
right, unless mankind should revert to some form of
Christian theocracy.
But what basis of natural right can be devised which
the different races will agree to regard as of unquestionable
solidity?
Those who agree in affirming that mani's intellect has
a power of apprehending "right" and "wrong" as dis
74 
Political Evolution.7
tinct from "pleasurable" and "painful," may for all that
differ widely as to what are and what are not the dictates of conscience in matters of even little complication.
Nevertheless, however great may be such divergence,
there is one dictum which they will generally recognise as
indisputable; viz., that no citizen has the right to deny to
another a liberty which he, as a citizen, claims for himself
This is the converse of that principle which we have
seen may be based upon a utilitarian foundation, and it
is essentially the same as the fundamental principle of
social ethics enunciated by Mr. Herbert Spencer in his
"Social Statics "-the right of each man to do all save
that which limits the similar rights of others.
If Mr. Herbert Spencer had no other merit, deep gratitude and great honour would be due to him for having
with such vigour and efficiency vindicated this fundamental principle of natural sociology.
The utilitarian maxim, when impregnated with the
moral aphorism, becomes a sure ground whereon the
rights of minorities and of the individual may repose.
Without that aphorism, however, they have no security.
The absolute distinction between the "right"  and the
".pleasurable" being denied, inconvenient minorities cease
to have any shelter from the absolute dominion of the
majority-a frightful doctrine long latent and now become
apparent in modern "Liberalism."
Such sentiments are, strange to say, the logical out
75 
Contemporary Evolution.
come of that philosophical system favoured by the London
University and so popular in this eminently free country
-a system which denies all absolute truth and all distinctions of kind between " right" and "pleasure."
Such a system-the monistic philosophy-recognising
no distinction of kind between God and nature, the
natural and the supernatural, man and brute, the good
and the pleasant, naturally and logically asserts the
absolzte right of the state to control all and everything
in the life of every individual citizen, and necessarily
denies all rights to individuals or minorities. In principle
it warrants the performance of acts incomparably more
atrocious than the massacre of St. Bartholomew or the
burnings of the Spanish Inquisition.
The perpetrators of those crimes, however bloody their
acts, never put forth a theory which denied all rights to
their victims. But there is no principle on the view advocated by Professor Huxley's school to which a minority
might appeal in bar of utter extermination by a majority,
if unable to convince the majority that it would injure
itself by that minority's destruction.
Such is the natural political development of the monistic
philosophy. It was so in the old pagan days, and it is
tending to reappear with the revival of paganism as was
before asserted* in the first chapter of this essay.
* See p. 29.
76 
Political Evo/lui/on.
But if a freer social system results merely from the
addition of the idea of "absolute morality" to that of
"expediency," all those who go yet farther and assert
the existence of a personal God, whose essence is absolutely moral, have a yet securer and wider basis for
freedom. All such must also assert that each man has
a right freely to perform all such actions as God through
his conscience has enjoined him to perform, provided they
do not deprive other men of similar freedom to fulfil
what they believe to be their duty.
Thus the greatest amount of personal freedom comes
to rest on a basis of "divine right," since, in the absence
or non-recognition of a divine revelation limiting its
exercise, such personal freedom becomes God-given and
absolute.
Similarly all who hold such belief must assert that all
the citizens of a state combined together save one, are
morally incompetent by their joint authority as citizens to
compel that one to perform an act against his conscience
such as would be an outward act of adoration to a Deity
in whom he disbelieved, or of insult to Him whom he
conceives to be his Creator and his Lord.
Similarly they must allow that if two citizens agree ill
believing that one of them has a God-given jurisdiction
over the other, the one must be free to yield voluntary
obedience to the other in all that does not affect the equal
rights of other citizens.
77 
Contemporary Evolution.
They must also admit that those citizens who agree in
holding similar views as to their relations to God must be
free to exert such combined actions as do not interfere
with the analogous rights of combination of other citizens.
Again, they cannot logically deny to citizens freedom
to declare their belief to those who ask them, and
especially to teach their children themselves or to select
other citizens to whom they may choose to delegate that
office.
78 
CHAPTER III.
THR~EE IDEALS.
HERE  are thus, as we have seen, now struggling
for supremacy THREE DISTINCT IDEALS, three distinct socio-political systems, and two are mixed up and
blended in the great movement which has been described
as reviving paganism.
That great modern movement has been and is so powerful because it is invigorated by the temporary union of
these two essentially divergent and conflicting tendencies
of ideals.
(I.) The first of these is the mainly unconscious and
partly conscious real pagan revival and revolt against
God,-PAGANISM.
(2.) The other is the spirit of freedom, the assertion of
natural right, and revolt against the domination of man
(merely as man) over his fellow,-CIVICISM.
Besides these there is also that with which the pagan
revival has conflicted and conflicts, namely:
(3.) The tendency to preserve, or more or less bring
back, the medieval Christian theocracy,-MEDI2EVALISM.
These three tendencies are actually mixed up in the
most complex manner in modern, social, and political
struggles, as we shall shortly see. 
Conlemporary Evolution.
The efforts of those who strive for the third ideal need
not here occupy us, since our subject is the action upon
Christianity of the modern movement-on the supposition that it continues.
The first tendency, that towards true conscious paganism, may indeed, as was said in the first part of this
essay, present us with some startling developments in
the future.
Nevertheless, when once completely dissociated from
the spirit of civicism, its force must greatly diminish, and
if the re-appearance of a Spanish grand inquisitor in the
flesh is about as likely as that of a plesiosaurus, a general
enduring return to the old paganism must be still more
unlikely, though the spread of pantheism at the present
time is portentous.
There is then reason to believe that the second tendency and ideal, that of freedom reposing both upon expediency and absolute God-given right is the consummation towards which society is, on the whole and in general,
tending, widely divergent as may be really or apparently
its direction here and there.
In England, its colonies, this tendency is now triumphant.  The same may still be said of the United States,
though greed of power on the part of an unscrupulous
president now threatens to stir up religious strife by a
wanton invasion of religious equality. Few sights could
be more grievous and depressing than would be that
80 
T/z ee Idea Is.
of a great nation led into a reactionary policy of religious oppression in the miserable interest of a "third
term," or even the spectacle of a large number of citizens
of a really free country persuaded to barter liberty and
conscience for the indulgence of sectarian animosity by
legislation directly counter to the whole process of social
evolution, as displayed in the history of the last six
centuries. Such a course of conduct would be the more
deplorable, seeing that the United States have reaped
the advantage of that evolutionary process without having
had to uproot or destroy systems previously established;
so that the throwing away of the advantages they have
so peacefully gained would be a peculiarly gratuitous and
wanton act. The example of England, however, is telling
powerfully upon other nations, and happily the rapidity
with which the English-speaking races are multiplying
will tell yet more, since in a few centuries "English" will
be tlze language of the world.
Nevertheless the action of the first (pagan or monistic)
tendency is to be feared as a powerful agent hostile
to freedom, existing concealed amongst those who are
now active in the destruction of the last relics of the
medieval theocracy in the name of liberty. Such agents
are seeking to destroy them, not in the interest of natural
freedom, but for the establishment of a revived paganism
and dominant and intolerant "naturalism" to which they
are passionately attached. They therefore seek to bind in
8I 
Contenporary Evolulion.
fetters the opponents of their unchristian anti-theocracy,
the establishment and endowment of which they desire
to effect. Hence those justifications and laudations of
active persecution to which Professor Huxley and others*
have given utterance.
Our empire, by a happy combination of circumstances,
and by the merits of the races which inhabit it, has long
been the conspicuous assertor of freedom. The sentiment
in favour of wide liberty to the individual citizen-in
speech, in writing, in locomotion and association-has not
only taken deep hold of our own people, but also of the
population of that magnificent transatlantic republic, the
greatest glory of which is the perfect freedom of its
citizens.
By a series of happily devised measures perseveringly
perfected through more than a century, this civic liberty
has been defined and ever more efficiently guarded,-the
tyrannical measures of Stuart as of Tudor being repudiated in principle no less than practically.
It is to be hoped that the force of this traditional current in favour of individual liberty in England is too
strong to be reversed or turned aside. Nevertheless there
is a certain danger that the "No Popery" prejudice may
* E.g., "In the judgment of history the tyrannisms of free thoutght
may be justified."-Wesntminster Review, October, i873, p. 413.   On
this subject see "Lessons from Nature" (Murray, I876), chapter
xiii., p. 396.
82 
Th ree Idea s.
to such an extent favour the efforts of the anti-Christian
fanatics as to prejudice the conservatism of our civic
freedom.
At the least it has influenced public opinion with regard to continental politics, so far that the leaders of
that opinion condone or even applaud measures which are
directly opposed to all our traditional Liberal legislation.
This no doubt is partly owing to the complexity of
the struggle going on between Church and State in
Germany, and a failure to distinguish between two very
different sets of actions which are respectively the expression of the two different tendencies which have been
above distinguished as civicism and paganism.
One of these, civicism, is the continuance of the
general movement hostile to Christian theocracy, the
tendency of which movement is to break off religion
from connection with the State, and to withdraw from
those citizens who choose to devote themselves to religion all exceptional privileges, and all power or control
over the civil acts of those who do not voluntarily seek
their ministry.   With  this  movement  the  traditional
Liberals of England may well enough sympathise.
The  other-the pagan, or  monistic-tendency,  is to
convey to the numerical majority of the nation an absolute power over all the external manifestations of
internal belief, an absolute power over their persons and
their property; in a word, to erect a more thorough and
83 
Contemfiorary Evohttion.
degrading despotism than Europe has seen since the
downfall of the pagan Caesars.
No doubt many honest men favour the Prussian Church
Laws because they see that they favour the first tendency, and because they do not perceive how they are
really inspired by the second or pagan spirit.
This confusion is favoured by those who (however
justly they may assert their legal or their treaty rights)
o)ppose the laws by protests in favour of the "liberty of
the Church," "Christian marriage," the "rights of the
bishops," etc. An opposition necessarily futile (unless the
whole modern movement can be reversed or arrested),
because "civicism" knows nothing of "the Church," or
"Christianity," or "bishops," as such (only recognising
individual citizens and their rights against reciprocal
encroachment), while "paganism" hates all three.
On the other hand, many of those who advocate the
new laws out of a spirit of opposition to mediaevalism,
forget, or do not understand, that they are trampling on
the most fundamental rights of their fellow-citizens, and
erecting a tyranny which has much less to say in its defence, and is indefinitely more autocratic in its principles
than the old system they, in the spirit of their age, oppose.
According to the spirit of modern freedom, individuals are perfectly free - with the limitations before
mentioned to form themselves into associations in which
their mutual relations are regulated by mutual consent,
84 
Tzhre IdeaIs.
and free to exclude from their voluntary society individuals who do not conform to the rules they have
freely chosen for their own regulation;-no one citizen
having the right to intrude himself upon the society of
others who do not approve of him.
But the new laws, in fact, deny to citizens the right
to group and associate themselves in voluntary associations, to select freely from their fellow-citizens those to
whom they will confide the education of their children,
or to obey the dictates of their conscience by acts which
are innocent of encroaching on the similar rights of other
citizens.
To deny the right of an episcopally nominated Roman
Catholic priest to officiate in a parish, the Roman
Catholic parishioners of which desire him, is to infringe,
not so much his rights, as the rights of election of those
citizens who by the fact that they call themselves Roman
Catholics show that they have delegated that power to
their bishop, and that they elect as their minister that
citizen who  is selected by such  bishop.   To  exile or
imprison such Roman Catholic bishop is to outrage the
rights of a yet greater number-the Roman Catholics
of the diocese, who show by their calling themselves
Romian  Catholics that they, in fact, voluntarily elect as
the citizen to whom they will stand in a certain voluntary
relation-that one who is indicated to them by, and who
is in communion with the Roman pontiff.
85 
Contemporary Evolutlion.
To attempt to impede excommunication, is to deny
to citizens the right to exclude from a voluntary society
members who do not conform to freely chosen rules.
To violate the freedom of person and property of
citizens without trial, without even one distinct definite
accusation-even though such citizens call themselves
Jesuits-is a glaring injustice; but greater, though less
glaring, is the tyranny thereby inflicted on thousands of
citizens whose rights of choice and election are violated
by such acts, and whose most earnest desires and wishes
as to themselves, and their children and friends, are
thereby trampled on.
The citizens calling themselves Jesuits have gross
wrong done them; their parents, brothers, sisters, and
personal friends suffer hardships hardly less patent; but
unnoticed and apparently unthought of are the wrongs
of the thousands who have been deprived of their
greatest comfort - thousands of the most innocent and
most helpless citizens of the State. Who can tell the
hundreds of fond mothers, faithful wives, and tender
sisters who have bitterly wept the forced departure of
the guardians and supporters in virtue of wayward sons,
errant husbands, and erring brothers. These and cognate
considerations will reveal a mass of silent suffering,
suffering perhaps greater than that produced by many a
bloody battlefield.
The  effect of bias, so strongly put forward by  Mr.
86 
Tlree Idea ls.
Herbert  Spencer  in the "Study of Sociology" could
hardly find a better exemplification than the dispositions
felt by so many Englishmen to these acts.   This may
be made clear if we suppose similar acts under other
circumstances.   Let us suppose that a law was passed
that no one might assume, or change, an office in any
Freemasons' lodge without the expressed assent of the
Government; also, that no member of the Freemasons'
body, whatever secrets he might have violated or rules
transgressed, might be officially blamed in or be excluded
from masonic society without the permission of the
Government being first asked and obtained. It is hardly
likely but that even non-masonic Englishmen would
deem such legislation a daring infringement of the liberties
of the subject.
But if another law were passed summarily expelling
from England all Freemasons and confiscating Masonic
property, what would be the outcry! This, however, is
by no means all.  We must further suppose, that a law
was passed giving the police authorities power at their
discretion, to declare, without proof, any man or woman
whatever, belonging to any voluntary association, to be,
in spite of their denials, affiliated masons, and to expel
them  accordingly.   The iniquity of the measure is so
monstrous as to impair the force of the supposition by
its very monstrosity, and the impossibility of really conceiving it to be done in England.
87 
Conittenorary Evolt/ioin.
Yet this is literally what has taken place in Prussia with
the applause, mirabile dictIu, of "LIBERALS."   It is of
the A, B, C of our system, that no man should be punished without a trial. Yet in Germany, because citizens
happen voluntarily to belong to a private society which
has not a fragment of power over its members beyond
what such members voluntarily concede-nay, even
because police authorities choose, without evidence produced, to say that any citizens are affiliated to such a
society-they have, not only been held up to public
ignominy by official utterances, but have actually been
torn away from friends and relations and their locomotion
restricted within narrow limits, or they have been expelled
the country, and their very persons, in some instances,
treated with cruel violence.
These citizens are meantime accused of no definite
crime; in spite of demands, they are brought to no
trial and have no opportunity given them of self-justification.
As we said just now, the effect of bias could. hardly
go further than to make Englishmen, who blame the
expulsion of the Moors and Jews from Spain, applaud
such acts.
And what is the authority that dares thus to outrage
and  trample on the primary rights of citizens?  The
German government is a modern one; it is based on the
modern basis-popular will, not on an asserted and
88 
Th ree Ideals.
externally recognised God-given power like that of the
thrice-crowned kaisers of mediaeval times.
It is true that the emperor in his not very wise and
not very truthful * letter to the pope, talks about his
"responsibility to God"  for his sovereign acts, and  it is
generally supposed he asserts for himself a divine right.
But for this assertion he has nothing to show, no external
witness, as before said, or objective testimony. If Kaiser
Wilhelm can raise the dead, he may resuscitate in his
Berlin subjects a belief in his own supernatural authority.
But the acts of his Government lead more and more in
the anti-theocratic direction, and its true basis will thus
be more and more plainly avowed to be the will and
consent of the majority of his subjects. It comes then
* "Not very wise," because his reply as to what Protestants believe concerning "One Mediator," has nothing whatever to do with
the pope's remark respecting the necessary consequences of baptism.
"Not very truthful," for two reasons: first, because he therein implies
an accusation of treason against citizens who in vain ask for an opportunity of showing their innocence by a public trial, the laws of Prussia
not enabling the bishops to BRING AN ACTION FOR LIBEL AGAINST
THE MINISTER by whom the letter is countersigned; secondly, because he replies to what every one knows was not the pope's meaning.
The pope, of course, knew well enough that according to constitutional fictions, the emnberor must officially approve of all his minister's
acts, but La Marmora's book has shown us how in the past he was led
by his minister in opposition to his real private wishes. The pope, of
course, hoped and thought that in the recent Church laws he was also
being led in opposition to his private wishes, and some who know the
Berlin court well still believe that in so thinking the pope was right.
3
89 
Coiziemporary Evohitt/ion.
to this, that the actual or apparent majority of Germans
claim the power to dispose absolutely and without appeal
of the minority; to dictate to them their mutual voluntary
relations, determine the amount of their locomotion, or
even their very residence within the land-to fix for them
the dogmas of their creed and their mode of worship, and
to enforce the education of their children in a belief
directly contradicting that of their parents.
Yet the Times has gone the length of asserting that
Prussia has the right to do this now, because of what we
did three hundred years ago in England, as if no progress
had taken place within that period, even were the circumstances the same, which they manifestly are not.
Yet the Times would hardly venture to approve of the
passing of a "bill of attainder" against a political opponent of the English sovereign of to-day, or the summary
decapitation of any illustrious lady whose existence might
be personally inconvenient to some future chief ruler.
But the circumstances are manifestly not the same.
They are not so, because the bishops and clergy generally
may, in the absence of conspicuous protests to the contrary, be fairly taken as the representative of the religious
opinions of those to whom they minister. Now in England
the great majority of the clergy submitted to the change
which Henry VIII. introduced. The act of his legislature
which abolished State recognition of papal supremacy in
England did not violate the rights of citizens in anything
90 
Three Idea s.
like the degree in which the recently made Church laws
of Germany violate them. Again, the English Church of
the sixteenth century was that of the entire people; but
in Prussia the persecuted Church is that of but a portion,
and its legal rights and the claims of its members on the
State are different in different regions, according to the
date and the terms of the acquisition of such regions by
the Prussian kings. There is yet another contrast in our
favour. What we did we did openly and above-board,
but the German Government has by its agents added the
meanness of mendacity to brutal outrage; since it has
now and again been asserted that the Roman Catholic
religion is not persecuted, and while papal supremacy
is not in express terms abolished, it is virtually and
effectively set aside and practically annulled. A new
State religion is, in fact, set up and sought to be forced
upon citizens by the May laws. To ask Roman Catholic
citizens to acquiesce in such laws is to ask them to
lie-to apostatise from their religion, and at the same
time to pretend to adhere to it.  In principle there is
no difference whatever between asking a Roman Catholic
of to-day to perform some outward act of assent to the
recent Church legislation of Germany and asking a
primitive Christian to burn incense to the genius of the
emperor.
A demand on Roman Catholics to admit that Dr.
Reinkens is a Catholic bishop is a grotesque insult to
9I 
Contemporary Evolutzon.
their reason as well as an outrage to their conscience.* It
amounts to a demand that they should recognise the
majority of their fellow-citizens as having the power to
determine for them what they shall deem to be essential
characters of their own spiritual chiefs. On this principle
the emperor's government might require that the title of
"Catholic bishop" should be given to Baron Rothschild,
and hardly less absurd would be the requisition that
Bismarck should be everywhere in Germany received and
treated as a "pricess."
It is a matter of deep regret that religious antipathy
should cause many in England to sympathise with acts so
entirely opposed to English social and political principles,
but the outcome will probably bring about a juster view.
* The complete abandonment of the Christian standpoint by those
who advocate new State religions, even when such advocates are
disguised as ecclesiastics, is curiously illustrated by the declaration of
Dr. Reinkens (when taking his oath to the State). He then declared
that if the State should hereafter require of him acts inconsistent with
his duty as a Christian bishop, he would resign his office rather than
oppose it. Now the universally received ideal of a Christian bishop
is that of a shepherd who feeds his flock with sound doctrine and
protects it from the attacks of mundane wolves. What Dr. Reinkens
asserts as incumbent upon him he, of course, by implication asserts
to be also the duty of other bishops. Thus, according to him, the
duty of bishops in the presence of a Government which has become
hostile to Christianity is to desert their charges and to leave their
starving flocks to the mercy of the wolves, as this eminent pastor
professes beforehand his readiness to do: "The hireling fleeth,
because he is an hireling, and careth not for the sheep."
92 
Three Ideals.
That such acts should be applauded by many and
tolerated by more in Germany is not surprising, for two
reasons: first, because of the grinding tyranny under
which that country has so long lain, it is not wonderful
that freedom is not really prized when it is not experimentally known. It is not surprising, secondly, because
of the prodigious extent to which Hegelianism, or some
cognate form of pantheism, has filtered down through society in all directions. Hence, a willing idolatry of "the
State" as of some all potent fetish.   It seems hardly
to occur to any one, then, to ask the single question,
"What  is the State?" and to recognise the truth that
this much  venerated "State" is but  a name  for the
governing majority of the citizens.   When  this simple
fact becomes generally known, the sacred right of any
score of men to regulate the actions, words, and thoughts
of any dozen, will in all probability cease to be acquiesced
in with so much reverential and unquestioning awe, and
citizens will be less ready to prostrate themselves before
the car of such a Juggernath as the military despotism
which calls itself "the State " in Prussia.
Fortunately, however, in such action as is now going on
in Prussia and Switzerland, an effect is being produced
exactly contrary to that which the actors desire.
That such a contrary effect should be produced is quite
in accordance with Mr. Herbert Spencer's whole teaching.
He tells us: "Feelings called into play... will
93 
ContenmPorary Evouiion.
strengthen, while those which have diminished demands
on them will dwindle."*
Under the sway of a benevolent government there is
a certain natural tendency amongst Christians to feeble
volitions in support of their religion, from the small
opportunities offered for the energetic exercise of such
volitions. On the other hand, a persecution such as is
now going on tends, as so many of the elections prove
(more even by the increase in the number of opposition
voters than by the number of Christian members returned),
to elicit acts which by their very exercise strengthen the
feelings and stimulate the volitions which gave them birth.
Moreover, as the persecution increases in intensity, the
reaction in favour of civic freedom (already evinced by no
inconsiderable support) will also increase, and these effects
must continue till the cause is removed. More and more
respect and sympathy for the  Roman  Catholic clergy
will be felt and manifested by an increasing number of
Protestants who see that the former are fighting their
battle also, and who admire their courage and constancy.
Thus a great strengthening of the Roman Catholic Church
in Prussia cannot but be the final result of these hostile
efforts, since the times do not admit, as yet, of a bloody
war of extermination.
Nevertheless, the anti-theocratic tendency will probably
remain too powerful to allow of a simple reversal of the
* "Study of Sociology," p. 372.
94 
Three fdea!s.                  95
recent legislation, and thus a tertimn quid will be arrived
at by the consent of the Roman Catholics, and of those
who, being in favour of civic freedom, do not (like the
Reinkenists and fanatical pagans) desire the State establishment of a rival system.
This tertiuar quid must be the severance of Church
and State-another important step in that great process
of six centuries' growth which it has been here endeavoured to depict.
To return from this digression: it seems that social
evolution, if it continues to advance along the same path
as hitherto, must mean the entire destruction of the
medieval Christian theocracy.
If this destruction should be accompanied by the universal enforcement of a rival pagan system, an antitheocratic establishment, the effect would no doubt be
most disastrous for Christianity. It may, however, be
confidently affirmed that, whatever be the extravagances
of the paganism to come, no attempt to erect a universal
pagan anti-theocratic and pantheistic despotism could
resist the hostile coalition of Christians with all those
who desire the natural liberty of the individual citizen.
The monstrous claim of men, as nmere mene, to control
and direct the consciences of their fellows, could never
succeed in justifying itself to the human reason.
With a rgimne of true freedom, that is, where there is
liberty and order, experience shows us that Christianity
can grow and thrive.
Th ree Idea Is.
95 
Contemporary Evohitton.
If, instead of paganism, civicism gains the day (the
second of the three systems now struggling for sway),
it is difficult to see how the latter can have any positive
religious effect whatever. The merely negative action of
depriving all religions of any State support is but the
forming of "a fair field and no favour," where success
must depend on quite other than political causes.
Such, at least, is the conclusion which seems forced
on us at a first glance, but a satisfactory conclusion cannot be arrived at without some further examination.
There are, however, not a few persons who apprehend
that instead of our soon seeing an orderly system of
civic freedom, European society is simply tending to
disintegration and anarchy. Now, of course, a lapse into
utter barbarism would necessarily carry with it a destruction of Christianity, since Christianity supposes the existence of a certain degree of natural social evolution; such,
e.g., as that of "the family"-an institution at which
the  hostile efforts  of the most  "advanced" reformers
are directly aimed.
It is certainly conceivable that at least such anarchy
as lately arose in parts of Spain, and as prevailed for a
short time in Paris, might extend itself over a much wider
area. Not many of those who enjoyed the most refined
salons of the French capital under Louis XV. would
have believed it possible that all France before the century ended could have presented the spectacle that it
96 
Three Ideals.                 97
did during the worst moments  of the "Terror."   Men
may have similar blindness to-day.
We have seen how that support of our European
social organisation, which consisted in a widely diffused
belief in its divine ordination, has been gradually withdrawn, and naturally and necessarily the support derived
from a simple acceptance of Christian morality is concomitantly weakened-that morality being replaced by
other systems, and ultimately by the teaching which
now issues from our nationally supreme sources of culture. (I) That right is but another name for pleasure;
(2) that temporal good is the only good to be sought
after or desired; and (3) that no man has control over or
is responsible for his actions.
It is difficult to think that the wide reception of these
doctrines amongst the lowest classes will not be attended
with very considerable  transformations,  and  those are
certainly not altogether devoid of rational grounds of
apprehension, who fear that as the Grzeco-Roman civilisation was ruined through the invasion of barbarians from
without, so existing civilisation may be destroyed through
an eruption of barbarians from below. And when we
consider the  intimate relations  existing  between that
civilisation and Christianity, there can be little cause for
wonder either that Christianity itself should for a time
share in such  unpopularity as  our social system may
have acquired, or that that system itself should vanish
Thzree Idea Is.
97 
Contemnporary Evoiution.
simultaneously with a wide-spread, avowed, and open
renunciation of the religion which gave birth  to, and
was so intimately blended with it.
Can  Christian  monarchy rationally survive for many
centuries the dethronement of the power that consecrated
it?  Nobles, the descendants of those who  robbed  the
Church-that is, the whole of their poorer fellow-citizens
-for their own selfish aggrandisement, should hardly be
surprised if fresh injustice again plunders them. A plutocracy of merchants, manufacturers, and wealthy professional men offers little to impress the masses with a sense
of its inviolable sanctity.
The highest triumphs of art, magnificent decorations,
the richest products of the loom, profusion of gold and
jewels,-these things as used by the Church were at least
for the enjoyment of the multitude. There will be little
cause for astonishment if that multitude ultimately objects
to the withdrawal of these things into the palaces of
kings and of princes, whether feudal or mercantile; or to
the exclusive appropriation of some of them for the private use of rich women, however virtuous, or of beauties
however vile.
Wrong has been destroyed to give way to other wrong,
injustice has been displaced by fresh injustice, till much
honest indignation reinforces that spirit of revolt against
our existing social system which so widely pervades the
masses in the great European cities, producing an accu
98 
Three Ideals.
mulated aversion from a civilisation which has cast off
almost all the grace, with much of the material, and still
more of the moral alleviations, which attended the earlier
condition of the Christian theocracy.
It would be unjust to our species to deny the mitigating circumstances attending the surging of democratic
passion to-day. Careworn toilers may view with complacency the glittering splendour of barons whose rank
they view as God-ordained and yet evanescent, they being
essentially and for eternity but the equals of themselves,
whose humble path is no less God-appointed, and on that
account no less worthy of esteem-both being actors for
a little time upon the same stage, and to be judged
not by their accidental trappings, but by their due fulfilment of their respective parts!
But this belief has been, and is being sedulously destroyed. Can we wonder that with its disappearance the
same phenomena come to be viewed in a very different
aspect?
Nevertheless, there are grounds for thinking that the
violences of social antagonisms are on the whole likely to
diminish, however noisily or brutally they may upon
occasions here and there assert themselves. Even if
Europe should become the scene of disorder which some
fear, it is impossible that the whole world can simultaneously be the theatre of the most extreme and bloody
red-revolutionary tyranny.
.
...
99 
Co1nleTzporary Evoltutiot.
Those imbued with the doctrine of evolution can hardly
accept a belief that the process of social development
has culminated in Europe, considering how distant from
attainable perfection is the stage already reached; and the
assertion that it has done so in the whole world would
probably be considered by them a manifest absurdity.
Going then to the extreme of what can be deemed
possible, however wildly improbable, let us imagine that
private freehold property in land has been universally
abolished, that complicated regulations are in force tending everywhere to depress the capitalist at the expense
of the artisan, that throughout Europe a persecution has
raged which has resulted in the slaughter of every bishop
and the majority of the clergy, as well as the abolition
of every religious order, and the destruction of every
single church. Let us suppose, also, that purely secular
instruction is everywhere compulsorily given, and that
relations between the sexes of the extremest degree of
laxity become recognised by law.   What would be the
effect of so profound and extensive a revolution on the
Christian Church?   In the first place, the universality
of that Church would manifestly enable its supreme head
ever to find a shelter, and in the supposed condition of
Europe that refuge might well be found in the great
republic of the west. Similarly, institutions for the carrying on of the traditional culture of the clergy would for a
time become extra-European.
.,.... "'...
IO0 
Thzree Ideals.
The Church has no absolute necessity for property in
land, as past persecutions have abundantly demonstrated.
The slaughter of bishops would but lead to the consecration of others desirous of shedding their blood for
the faith, while the monarchal constitution of the Church,
made still more marked since the Vatican Council, would
enable the government of the European missionary Church
to be carried on, if needful, without bishops, under the
direct episcopal jurisdiction of the pope. The Church of
Japan has survived through the rage of persecution without the aid even of a single priest, native or foreign.
The elevation of the artisan class, when once effected,
would put an end to their hostility to the Church, since
that hostility has mainly arisen from a belief that the
action of the Church was prejudicial to their elevation.
No inevitable antagonism divides the clergy as such from
the humblest classes, and the illustrious head of the English
Church has publicly shown in his own person how warm
are His Eminence's sympathies for the depressed agricultural labourer.
Unless, again, we hereafter find reason  to think that
scientific and philosophical evolution will be fatal to the
Church, the action of compulsory secular instruction must
also ultimately result in such disappointment, since Christians would be forced once more, as of old, to give at
home that intelligent and emotional training in doctrine
and practice, the effect of which no public teaching can
IOI
0 
Conternzorary Evouition.
rival, and by which the influence of pagan schools was
successfully combated in former times.
With the revoluntary changes here supposed once introduced, all the causes of the present popular antipathy to
Christianity would be removed, except those resulting
from fear of the attractive influences of its moralit)-, and
from the possible prevalence of an anti-Christian philosophy, the action of which will be considered in the next
chapter.
The disorders springing from a general relaxation of
sexual morality can hardly fail to give rise to a reaction
in favour of Christian ethics on the part of an increasing
portion of the population, if only through the gradual
extinction by natural decay of the families of the most
sexually vicious.
The abolition of religious orders must cease when once
individual liberty for citizens begins to assert itself, since
citizens cannot be free if they are not permitted by their
fellow-citizens to live peaceably together in voluntary
associations, eating, dressing, and reading according to
their pleasure, as long as they limit not the similar rights
of others.
But even before the introduction of such common individual freedom, it is almost impossible for the most
tyrannical State to interfere with the practice of the
evangelical counsels-voluntary poverty, chastity, and
obedience. Each successive great epoch of the Church
102 
Three Ideals.
has been fruitful of fresh modes of their manifestation,
and some new embodiment of the ascetic spirit has appeared for a time on the crest of the advancing wave of
Christian aggression on the world. After the martyrs
came the Fathers of the Desert, then the Benedictines, to
be succeeded by the white-robed Cistercians, themselves
to give way to the friars, whose influence was afterwards
overshadowed by the valiant soldiers of Loyola. Arguing
simply from analogy, it is not likely but that the same
cause may produce again effects similarly appropriate to
time and place. The old religious orders did not adopt
picturesque or fantastic costumes, but slight modifications
of fashions in vogue in their day amongst the poorest
class, so that each at its origin appeared far less peculiar
than at present.
Hlard work and charity under one form or another were
universally obligatory, and to this day the Trappist works
like a day-labourer. It may well be then that manual
toil in other forms, and a fresh modification of fraternal
charity, will cause religious congregations to be as heartily
welcomed and beloved by a socially democratic republican
community as ever they were in the ninth, thirteenth, or
sixteenth centuries.
Even  under  a communistic  roimne, presided over by
some "Albert ouvrier," a body of workmen who were
only distinguished from their fellows by a larger spirit of
fraternity, and a disposition to take a greater share of
I03 
Contemporary Evo/uioiz.
work than others, while at the same time they appropriated a less portion of its fruit, would speedily be
popular; and a love for God might soon come to be
pardoned, when it was seen to be accompanied by an
earnest and self-sacrificing love for man.
Sisters of Charity have met with. respect even from
the roughest of French "Reds," and all hostility to them
would disappear when they ceased to be ideally connected
with a political system which kept democracy in check,
or sought so to keep it.
It, seems, then, that no necessarily fatal result to
Christianity may be expected from the wildest political
changes;  but rather that an  extreme advance of the
modern spirit may give rise to fresh Christian developments. But such disorders as are here spoken of, such
rapid and sudden destruction of the existing European
social fabric, are really in the highest degree unlikely.
It seems far more probable that a system of freedom on
the English and American models, more and more approximating to what has been called civicism-that is, the
ideal of Mr. Herbert Spencer-will be gradually, and in the
majority of cases peacefully attained, although with much
vexatious, though not violent, persecution from devotees
of paganism.   (See note, p. I22.)  Should such be the
real future, experience already shows us how disappointed
will be those who expect the destruction of Christianity
from political changes favourable to democracy.
104 
Three Ideats. 
In America we see before us undeniable evidence that
the Church can not only exist, but grow and thrive, in the
freest political atmosphere-shown more by the multiplication and spread of religious orders and the up-growth
of a native-born clergy, than even by the augmentation
of the episcopate. There (in New York) has arisen a new
religious congregation-the Paulists —the founder and
head of which, Father Hecker, is a typical example of
the Church of the United States; not less conspicuous
for love of his country and admiration of its politico-social
system than for unhesitating and unquestioning obedience
and loyalty to the head of his Church.
The United States have also supplied us with a crucial
test of the power of the Church to resist the strongest
secular influences hostile to its integrity.
During the late memorable war almost every uncatholic
form of Christianity became split and divided into a
northern and a southern, an anti-slavery and a pro-slavery
body. The Church alone maintained its unity perfectly
unbroken, and was thus enabled more efficiently to aid in
healing the moral disunion, and allaying the heartburnings which remained after the victory, by which unbroken
unity many earnest minds in the great republic have been
deeply impressed.
In Belgium, again, we see how the Church can not only
prosper under free institutions, but have so energetic and
vigorous a life as to provoke a violent, though groundless
I05 
Conteiz,borary Evotz/ion.
dread of the re-establishment of mediaevalism. IHow it
lives in England and Ireland we see.
Again: the fact that complete civic freedom favours
the Church's growth may be gathered from those who
clamour for a retention of the last remnants of the old
theocratic system as barriers to "ultramontanism." It is
on this very ground that the separation between Church
and State in Bavaria and South Germany is opposed by
"Liberal Catholics," and that such a union is sought by
Dr. Reinkens, while M. Loyson has proclaimed it an honour
to Christianity to obtain State recognition and support.
Even in England the disestablishment of the Anglican
Church is opposed by those who dread the growth of
definite "dogma "  and  "ecclesiastical  tyranny,"  and
clamour for "spiritual freedom," as understood by Dean
Stanley and his school.
It seems, then, that the completion of the great modern
anti-theocratic movement (if developed in the direction,
not of a State-supported paganism, but in that of civicism
-that system of mutual respect and individual freedom
which expedience and natural morality agree to justify),
by no means necessarily implies a weakening, still less a
destruction of the Church; whilst facts are not wanting
which seem to indicate a thence resulting increase in its
vigour and efficiency. It is not sluggish majorities, but
active, concentrated, and aggressive minorities which influence the world's course most effectually.
io6 
Th ree Ideals. 
But a process of internal integration has been spoken of
as possibly accompanying the external disintegration of
that great complex organism, the Church. To make this
manifest would require little less than a history of the
development of Church doctrine and discipline from the
thirteenth century to the present day. It will, however,
hardly be contested that the whole course of such development has tended to give more and more precision and
distinctness to the Church's dogmas, and efficiency to the
action of its governing power. If the number of regular
clergy has relatively diminished, the whole mass of the
secular clergy (as it is often reproachfully said) has become
more and more approximated to a great body of regulars.   The perfection of the Church's organisation, the
definiteness and clearness of doctrine it has attained,
could not well have been made more manifest than by
the acquiescence of the whole episcopate, without one
solitary dissentient voice, in the recent Vatican Decrees.
Thus, it cannot be denied that, pari passu with the disintegration arising from the increasing disability or disinclination  of kings (or other  and  subordinate  social
authorities) to enforce the decisions and behests of the
Church, the Church herself has simultaneously developed,
by a process of integration, a vastly increased power of
herself, promulgating, applying, and giving effect to them
over all those who voluntarily accept her spiritual sway.
The downfall of the chief pontiff's spiritual princedom,
IO, 
Conteniaorary Evolulion.
which marks the formal end of Christendom, was almost
immediately preceded by the culmination of his spiritual
power through the universal acceptance by the whole
Church of his official infallibility, than which no step
could be more calculated to give vigour, precision, and
unanimity to the action of the whole body.
Moreover, even material inventions and improvements
have strikingly co-operated in the same direction. The
facilities afforded to locomotion, anc the transmission of
intelligence by railways and the electric telegraph, set at
defiance the old restrictions as to the publication of bulls
and other machinery of Church government.
It is also undeniable that outside the Church's organisation there has gone on a movement, parallel with
the latter phases of the movement distinctive of the
Christian  theocracy.   In  England,  besides  the  great
tractarian and ritualistic development of Anglicanism, a
movement towards increased orthodoxy or towards ecclesiasticism (e.g., as evidenced architecturally), has gone on
even in nonconformist bodies. In Germany, while on the
one hand rationalism is increasing, on the other an upward
reaction is setting in amongst evangelical Christians which
the Bismarckian persecution cannot but aid in developing.
Even in Holland there has been, and is,* a powerful and
extensive movement in an upward direction.
* See Conte,torary Review, November, i873, p. 955.
1o8 
Three Ideats.                 109
Moreover, one important effect of the great modern
movement will be to let in upon the Christian Church the
full action of the destructive agencies of nature, commonly termed collectively "natural selection."
During the period in which the Church had full
temporal support and sheltered within its fold whole
nations, with hardly an avowed dissentient, the following
merely natural effects must have inclined to mar its
efficiency:
I. Want of the stimulus of opposition, tending to
diminish the vigour of efforts for its support and extension.
2. A similarly diminished need for the diffusion of a
keen, intelligent, and reasoned apprehension of its doctrines and teachings.
3. A lowered moral tone from the influence of the
indifferent majority-resulting in diminished efforts after
a life in accordance with Christian precepts and counsels.
This is owing to a diffusion over the whole body of the
spirit governing the majority, which spirit in almost every
large community is otiose and indifferent.  In the days
of the Church's temporal prosperity the indifferent were
included within the Church, instead of being visibly
external to it, and so tended to lower the tone of the
whole.
Thus an unenergetic, tepid, unintelligently apprehensive,
and morally inconsistent spirit, may but too naturally tend
Th ree IdeaIs.
lo9 
Co/ite150orary  Evolztiil'ot.
to diffuse itself over a temporally-supported, honoured
and wealthy Church, which has no declared dissidents in
the area in which it exists.
When such a theocratically organised Christian community becomes, by revolution, exposed to the free
assaults of enemies the most varied, with disestablishment
and disendowment as a result, the first effect must be
the falling away from the Church of those who either
morally or intellectually, or both, are out of harmony
with her.
Freedom of inquiry, with  all other freedom, as  it
becomes more and more a settled institution, will more
and more incline to diminish the effects of mere traditional
adherence to family creed, and the passage to and fro
will become more and more easy. Thus those with proclivities towards the Church, but who have been brought
up from childhood external to her, will more readily find
their true level, while those brought up within her pale,
but who in spirit have revolted from her sway, will, by
becoming manifestly external to her, cease to disgrace her
or to lower the moral tone of her community.
Freedom of marriage, amongst other freedoms, will
tend to produce strong hereditary predispositions, both for
and in opposition to Christianity, but there'will also be
a most important action tending to favour the increase
in number of those Christianly predisposed. This action
is the stringent religious obligation' imposed on married
I10 
Three Iccats.                   I I I
Christians in no way to impede their natural multiplication, whilst the opposite practice is being widely urged
outside the Church, and is likely to act as an increasing
check on pagan propagation.
Moreover, as-the two tendencies which have been here
distinguished as "civicism " and "paganism" become disentangled and distinguished, an immense twofold gain
must accrue to Christianity, if the modern movement
continues so successfully and irresistibly that the tendency
to revive the medieval system becomes extinct. On the
one hand, that activity which is now directed to a revival
of mediavalism will be set free and applied to the protection of freedom against pagan despotism.   On  the other
hand, nine tenths of the present hostility to the Church
will have ceased when it is clearly and generally seen that
no desire or intention of reviving mediavalism exists in it
Then those who are anti-theists, and fanatically opposed
to Christianity in the interest of paganism, will stand alone
against the combined opposition of Christians and advocates of freedom-that is, against those who can heartily
combine on a basis of God-given natural right, whether
that right be or be not supplemented and further enforced
by divine revelation.
Thus it seems that when perfect free play is allowed,
the Church must come to be more and more composed
of naturally-selected citizens whose intellect fully approves
her doctrines, and whose modes of life more or less fully
Thiree dcals. 
Coitemiporary Evohliton.
harmonise with her precepts and counsels.   Moreover,
such citizens will naturally have their emotions more and
more strongly excited, and their volitions rendered more
and more vigorous, by those very actions which the
struggle for existence renders needful in support and extension of that system to which they adhere, and which
the fact of their adhesion under varying circumstances
tends more and more to elicit.
Such, then, seems to be the answer afforded by the facts
to the calm judicial inquirer who seeks to ascertain what
must be the effect (through the operation of merely natural
laws, upon the Christian Church) of the further continuance
of the political portion of the great modern movement in
the direction it has so long followed.
(I.) Thle effect on Christianity will be to give increased
coherence and strength to its organisation, and efficiency to its
action.
(2.) The result of the conflict will depend, not on political
changes, but on those matters which must occupy us hereafter
-science and phzilosophy.
He, however, who wishes to judge fully of the matter
here treated should endeavour to place himself in imagination at the Churchman's standpoint, and consider how he
might express himself as to the course of modern political
evolution in relation to Christianity.
The Churchman might express his sentiments somewhat
thus:
I I2 
Tlzree Ideals.
"The Church as a whole has never known retrogression
or defeat since she first stepped forth from the upper
chamber in Jerusalem, conquering and to conquer. The
Church's progress is to be estimated not by the number of
souls who externally profess belief in her, but by the number who obey her laws in a sufficient degree to obtain
their salvation.
"When the Church, in mounting the throne with
Constantine, obtained what in the eyes of the world was a
startling triumph, she made no doubt a true and proper
step in advance, but one attended with many concomitant
disadvantages and dangers. In condescending to allow
her sacred monogram to adorn imperial standards, and in
permitting kings to sanctify their diadems with the sign of
the Cross, gratitude was due from powers so favoured to
the Church which granted them, not subservience from
the mother and queen to the children she nourished and
protected. In the words of the head of the Church in
England,'It is not the State which establishes the Church,
it is the Church which establishes the State.'
"The barbaric tribes successively led under the Church's
sway were providential agents in bringing about that glorious dawn of Church supremacy, the medieval theocracy.
But unavoidable defects attended that development. Vast
numbers of the indifferent, the gross, the merely credulous,
and the worldly, were led within the Church's fold by
circumstances, accepted its doctrines unhesitatingly but
6
I13 
Contemporary Evolution.
unprofitably, since in them'works' did not accompany
'faith,' and belief without charity, as Dr. Newman has so
well shown, leads directly to superstition.
"The Christian medieval system culminated in as near
an approach to a universal theocracy as was then possible;
but the world was manifestly quite unripe for a more
perfectly developed condition, with (as we now know) its
far larger area unchristianised, more than half undiscovered, and with a vast mass of latent paganism in the
part which was externally Christianised.
"A great process of differentation and division of labour
had necessarily to be gone through. For the perfection
of society, philosophy, politics, science, and art, had to
become the exclusive occupation of different minds, instead
of remaining in the hands of the clergy, whose proper
study is theology. These fields of activity could not be
adequately cultivated without the devotion of many minds
entirely and exclusively to one or other of them. Had
Christians, especially those highly placed, been thoroughly
imbued with the spirit of their religion, no doubt the necessary transformations might have taken place peacefully
and without religious disruption, but the essentially papal
character of the Church was not fully recognised, nor was
it then experimentally known how by separation from the
centre of spiritual life the supply of vital force is thereby  necessarily cut off.  The  pagan principle of State
supremacy, once effectually introduced, ran its logical aind
II4 
Three Ideals.
inevitable course fatally to the medieval theocracy and the
social system therewith connected. Providentially accompanying this movement has gone on a gradual perfecting
of the Church's independent organism, and a greater and
greater detachment of it from the State.
"The Church has willingly lent its support to the
secular power, which, in return, has either sought perfidiously to bind it in golden chains, or has brutally
spurned it, as now in Germany. This fortunate perfidy
will enable the Church to escape the popular enmity
which the State is sure, sooner or later, to incur, while
its perfect organisation will enable it to survive and
flourish the better for the pseudo-Christian State's downfall and replacement by a system of natural freedom for
each individual citizen.
"This process of reinvigoration is already becoming
patent.  Since the clearly logical and Christian declarations of Boniface VIII., no pontiff has so uncompromisingly asserted.the Church's claims as Pius IX.
"The completion of the anti-mediaeval movement will
only bring out yet more clearly what is but in effect and
in other terms the proclamation and assertion of the
supreme rights of conscience. But while the extent of the
Church's success in the thirteenth century should not be
over-stated, so also there is no cause for discouragement
in the apparent reverses it has since undergone. W7hether
under the anti-papal revolts of the sixteenth century, or
Ix5 
Contemporary Evolution.
the anti-Christian revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the same unvarying process of steadily
increasing conquest has been, is, and will be incessantly
going on, and this in spite of superficial appearances to
the contrary. As to the first of these events (the sixteenth
century revolt), the spread of the faith in the new world
compensated for its restriction in the old, while its very
restriction was the occasion of the more complete development of the faith in the area which retained it, where it
became more intensely and consciously held. As to the
second event, its wonderfully invigorating actions on those
who remain Christians in France, Italy, Switzerland, and
Germany, is before our eyes to-day.
"The manifest religious changes of the sixteenth century
will ultimately turn out to have been really to the
Church's advantage.   Before then, the Church contained
a mass of latent heresy and infidelity, while now the
religious bodies external to the Church contain a mass of
latent orthodoxy.
"This is especially the case amongst English-speaking
Christians. The noble anti-Erastian passion of the sturdy
Puritans, and their honest zeal against what they believed
to be idolatry, were essentially most Catholic, as was also
the heartfelt piety of the evangelican protest against the
cold formalism of the established clergy of that time.
The marvellous growth of high church views has resulted in a forest of new spires, in schools, convents, and
I i6 
Tl,ree Ideals.
pious institutions, far and wide in our land-proclaiming
the deep and earnest nature of our religious progress.
Even the very fanaticisms of'sabbath observance' and
'bibliolatry' are replete with Catholic ascetic and devotional instincts, however misdirected.
"In the Protestant masses of to-day is contained an
immense body of latent Catholicism, like some chemical
substance in solution, which but requires a sudden change
of temperature or the introduction of some foreign body
to precipitate itself, or become manifest in a conspicuous
crystallisation. The number of those who have really
understood the Church and rejected her is infinitesimal,
and article after article, and book after book, again and
again show how profoundly she is misapprehended, and
how the mass of the hostility directed against her is really
directed not against her, but against that to which she also
is no less opposed.
"Even the anarchic spirit of the'Internationalists' is
in one respect really vivified by a profound  Christian
spirit-the spirit of cosmopolitanism.   They clearly see
that a man who would sacrifice the welfare of the world
to that of his country is only one degree less selfish
than the man who would sacrifice his country to aggrandise his family.   What  was the very first step in the
destruction of the Christian theocracy becomes thus condemned and reprobated by the logical descendants of such
destroyers as Philip the Fair and Henry the Eighth.
117 
Contemborary Evolution.
"Of course that destructive action cannot be approved
and can still less be aided by any sincere Christian. So
to approve would be to repeat the error of De Lamennais.
A separation of Church and State cannot be good save
relatively through  human  perverseness.   A   union of
Church and State is the natural and true ideal, and will
spontaneously reappear (when once the world has been
reconverted) through common consent. But Christianity
is forbidden to propagate  itself by the sword.    The
children of those who have thrown off her yoke and
who are becoming more and more literally pagans cannot,
upon Czhurch princizples, be  religiously coerced or called
on to accept that which, on account of honest prejudice,
their reason is really unable to embrace.   The Church
absolutely condemns * the use of force when a nation has
either not received or has once lost the faith.
"But although the crew of Bismarcks, Garibaldis, and
Victor Emmanuels may be regarded as obscene creatures
of rapine, nevertheless, hymnas and vultures have, after all,
a useful and salutary function to execute, without their
having any good intention in the acts they perform, or
being a bit less unclean vultures and hywnas on account of
the salutary nature of that function.
"A continuous action of six hundred years has not been
permitted without good cause, and the changes effected,
* "Ad ccelumn homines trahendos esse, nion cogendos."-Breviary
Office for St. Aufgustine of Canterbury.
I Is 
Three Idie(ls.
however iniquitously brought about, have been providentially allowed and overruled for the full development
of the Church in all its glory through the manifestation
of its action in a world of full civic freedom.
"The pagan movement, which made its way by asserting and proclaiming freedom, is ending in an attempt at
the most extreme and debasing of despotisms.
"The Christian movement, which progressed through
strong assertion of authority, is ending, as it logically
should do from its principles, in being the great supporter
of individual freedom reposing upon conscience-'rights'
answering to'duties.'
"The long process of Christian integration having, in
the Vatican Council, culminated in the complete organisation of supreme authority, the liberty of the individual
regains full play-the restraint of conscientious fears as
to possible ill effects of his utterances being removed by
the recognition of a ready and infallible authority capable
of rendering his well-meant but mistaken efforts harmless.
Similarly, the whole hierarchical system of subordinate
authority, down to the private confessor, being fully established, and the whole controlling agency necessary for the
Church's stability having been completed, a freer play may
be given to individual energies than for the centuries past
during which that agency was developing and perfecting.
If before, the energies and activities of Churchmen were
unequal to those of their opponents, this relation will
I19 
Contein.orary Evo/ltion.
speedily be reversed, as Switzerland and Germany are
beginning to show us. The missions of the Greeks and
Latins with regard to the Church being mainly fulfilled,
the vigorous Teutonic race has now to promote its peaceful
triumph through individual energy in the arena of civic
freedom.
"Judging then of the future by the past, changes to
come will but bring out more and more the Church's true
nature by gathering in the latent Catholicity of separated
bodies, and by sloughing off such unworthy members as
have, in the past, been retained in it by sloth, ignorance,
or interest. It will thus necessarily become more and
more conspicuous for the holiness of its members as compared with such of the population as is avowedly pagan
and unbelieving. As the process of evolution has gone
on from the inorganic world to the organic, from the
vegetable to the animal, and from the simplest form of
sentient life, through constantly increasing complexity,
till the hour struck for the introduction of a rational
animal into the world, so the evolution of humanity has
proceeded, and is proceeding, from  direct and simple
conscious apprehensions to more and more reflex, selfconscious, and complex comprehensions. And this applies
fully to the acceptance of the Christian Church. As it
has been, so it will be. Of time there is no stint. The
next glacial epoch is sufficiently remote.  By the continuance, then, of this evolutionary process there is to be
I120 
Tl,ree Ic(eals.
plainly discerned in the distant future a triumph of the
Church compared with which that of medieval Christendom was but a transient adumbration. A triumph brought
about by moral means alone-by the slow process of exhortation, example, and individual conviction, after every
error has been freely propagated, every denial freely made,
and every rival system provided with a free field for its
display.   A  triumph infinitely more glorious than any
brought about by the sword, and fulfilling at last the old
pre-Christian prophecies of the kingdom of God upon
earth."
Such, perhaps, might be the Churchman's reply as to
the position and prospects of Christianity, to those
who oppose to him the phenomena of the last six centuries' change. Here it has been endeavoured dispassionately to estimate what, at the very utmost, must be the
destructive effects on Christianity of the greatest amount
of anti-theocratic change which can possibly be anticipated, and the answer has been that there is no reason to
apprehend even its enfeeblement, still less its annihilation.
Nevertheless, we have yet but considered the political
aspect of the great modern anti-medieval movement.
The scientific and, most important of all, the philosophic
aspects of that movement remain to be considered. \Ve
may conclude that the-political changes will be harmless
121 
Coi,ttemn.orary Evolu/tz'on.
to the Church, but it will manifestly be quite otherwise
if either science or philosophy contradicts its dogmas.
Whatever the effect, however, one thing is certain-that
science will address itself with greater and greater power
to a constantly increasing circle of auditors, and will
command an increasing number of cultivators and experts;
and it is to be hoped that the same may be said also of
philosophy.
If, then, either scientific and philosophic evolution is
hostile to Christianity, the progress of such evolution must
be fatal to it, and political evolution, by giving them
increased liberty, must hasten their fatal effect. To these
aspects of evolution then we must next address ourselves.
NOTE.
Some months after the above passage was first published, the
views and  expectations expressed in it were remarkably confirmed
by three articles which appeared in the Pall Mall Gazette, in the
numbers for December the 24th and 29th, i874, and January I4th,
I875, respectively. From these articles the following passages may
be cited:
"DEMOCRACY AND THE ROMAN CATHOLIC  CHURCH."
"Whether Monsignor Meglia did or did not say that, except in
America, Belgium, and England, the Revolution was the only means
by which the Roman Catholic Church could hope to recover her
lost liberties, the idea is one which must at times present itself to
the minds of the younger school of ecclesiastics. A new pope may
acquiesce in, if he does not originate, a radical change of policy,
and the next vacancy in the chair of Peter may hereafter be looked
back to as the starting-point of a new fight for spiritual supremacy
122 
Tl ree Ideal Is.
on the part of the Roman Catholic Church. It is plain to outside
observers, whatever it may be to the Roman curia, that the old
allies of the Church are no longer of any use to her. Kings and
aristocracies are now only accidentally powerful.  They succeed in
so far as they interpret and adopt the great currents of popular
sentiment. They fail whenever they try to maintain or bring back
the system which since the French Revolution has everywhere been
struck with incurable decay.   Kingly support and  court influence
can now do but little even for those who can command them. Nor
is it by any means certain that even if their hold upon the world
were restored to them they would be disposed to exert it in favour
of the Church. Courts and aristocracies naturally embody the ideas
of the educated classes for the time being, and one great cause of
the recent defeats of the Romran Catholic Church has been the
general spread of irreligion, using the word in its most general
sense, among the educated classes throughout Europe. The number
of persons who disbelieve the Christian dogmas is probably greater
than at any former time, and what is even more important to the
matter in hand, it is becoming less and less fashionable to conceal
their disbelief. Kings and nobles are no more proof against this
tendency than other educated men, and in so far as they are influenced by it they would not be disposed to help the Church to
regain her lost empire, even if they had power to do so.  Indeed,
in the improbable contingency of this power returning to them, they
would almost certainly shrink from exercising it from their desire
not to share in the unpopularity of the Church. If the Comte de
Chambord were to become kiing of France, the first request his lay
advisers would address to him would be to shake himself free from
the priests. When the Roman Catholic Church awakes to the fact
that those on whom it has so long leaned have neither their old
strength nor their old willingness to use it for ecclesiastical objects,
it cannot fail to see that it has only two alternatives to choose
between. It must throw up the battle altogether, or it must seek
for new alliances among those who have solid support to give.
"At first sight it must be admitted the prospect appears gloomy
enough.   All over Europe'the Revolution' and  hatred of  the
1 23 
Co)nzernPoiary Evoluzion.
Church  are almost convertible terms.   In  France and  Italy the
democracy is only kept from slaughtering the clergy in cold blood
by the fear of legal or military consequences. There are thousands
of workmen in Paris to whom the murder of the Archbishop of
Paris only suggests a regret that he was not shot for being a
priest instead of being shot as a hostage, and this feeling is reproduced with more or less accuracy in every large town on the Continent. There is very little of this sort of fanaticism in England
but even here, if Mr. Bradlaugh had his will, the priests might
have a bad time.  It is to a democracy largely subject to these
influences that the Church must make its appeal. But this hatred
of the Church in the minds of the working classes is only partially
due to the cause which has generated a modified form of the same
feeling in the minds of the educated classes. Disbelief in its coarser
shapes no doubt prevails among them to a very great extent, but
even this disbelief has probably a political rather than an intellectual
origin. They disbelieve because they hate, rather than hate because
they disbelieve. The main cause of democratic antagonism to the
Roman Catholic Church has been its alliance for so many centuries
with those whom the democracy regards as its oppressors. In every
struggle the Church has been on the side of the powers that be. It has
not only become associated by this means with the unpopularity which
attaches to these powers, it has even attracted the largest share of
it to its own shoulders. The Church was hated in the first instance
because it supported the privileged classes, and one of the principal
reasons why the privileged classes are now hated is that they are
suspected of wishing well to the Church.
"Now the change of policy foreshadowed in the speech attributed
to Monsignor Meglia would strike at the root of the hatred felt by
democrats  towards the Church.   The  accumulated detestation of
centuries would remain, but no fresh additions would be made to
the store. And when the source of supply is cut off, it is remarkable how soon a feeling of this tind begins to decay. The recollections of past wrongs grow faint in the light of present services.
The political tendencies now in action will help on this process of
oblivion. The French noblesse under Louis XVI. had for the most
124 
Three Ideals.
part ceased to oppress the poor, but they retained the property
which had been the visible symbol of oppression, and they suffered
not so much for what they did as for what they had. The drift of
contemporary legislation promises to set the Church entirely free
from a similar danger.   She will no longer wear the livery of the
secular powers from whom she has parted company, There will be
nothing in her aspect to remind her enemies of her ancient wealth
or of her ancient grandeur.   Besides this, the foe from whom she
has most to fear is certain to make itself many adversaries, and
every one of these adversaries will be a possible ally of the Church.
The form of despotism which is most in favour at present, and
most likely to become stronger in the immediate future, is the
despotism of a highly centralised State.   Communities  surrender
their freedom in return for unity and strength at home, and prestige abroad.   For a time all goes on smoothly, and the subjects of
the State are never tired of contemplating the system which they
have themselves helped to build up.   By-and-by these very same
people begin to feel oppressed by their own creation. Resisting
minorities start up in all directions; and the more resolutely they
are put down, the more disposed they are to make common cause
with all who share their slavery and their desire for emancipation.
The Roman Catholic Church will have singular advantages in dealing with this temper.   Its soldiers will have nothing to lose.  If
they die in the conflict, they leave no children to suffer from the
loss of a father. Wherever their services are needed a subsistence
is secured to them, and the enthusiasm which springs up in the
field soon learns to desire nothing more. Under changed names
and new conditions the Church will once more appear on the side
of the weak against the strong, of the poor against the rich, of
individual liberty against a tyrannical system. These are strong
titles to democratic  support, and though  the  sympathies of the
democracy are at present on the side of the State, which they hope,
hereafter to mould at their pleasure, against the Church, which they
cannot mould at all, the situation may undergo a radical change if
the State becomes the inflexible and the Church the most flexible
clement in modern society..
125 
Cottenmporary Evoluziion.
"It has always been found that causes which have an emotional
basis attract a far greater number of supporters and exercise a
much firmer hold over them than causes which have only a basis
of reason. So long as slavery in the United States was combated
on economical or political grounds, its defenders had no reason to
fear the attack.   If they were unable to answer the arguments
brought against them, they could comfort themselves by thinking
that it did not matter whether they were answered or not. But
when the abolitionist party lifted the question into the sphere of
emotion, and denounced slavery and the constitution which permitted slavery on the plea of owing obedience to a higher law than
any of man's making, the whole character of the controversy was
altered, and slavery was doomed just when its strength seemed
greatest. There is no organisation which can command emotion
with so much certainty of evoking it as the Roman Catholic Church,
and of all emotions the religious emotion is the strongest when
thoroughly aroused.
"We have already indicated one or two of the grounds which make
it probable that the present attitude of the Roman Catholic Church
towards democracy will hereafter be completely changed.   Some
others still remain to be mentioned. In modern times-ever since,
that is, the existing State system of Europe began to grow up-the
Roman Catholic Church has been the most conservative of all
institutions. But to suppose that it must remain what it is when
the reasons for being what it is are at an end would be to underrate
the ability which ecclesiastics have at various times displayed, and
may very possibly display again.
"Supposing the Roman Catholic clergy to be convinced that their
best if not their only chance of regaining their spiritual influence
lies in an appeal to the democracy, their organisation and position
would give them many advantages in making it. Their singular
detachment from those family ties which make men fearful of running
great risks has already been referred to.  Their detachment from
local ties would enable them to pursue a uniform policy in different
countries and under different circumstances.   In some  cases they
would be connected by birth with the classes whose temper they
126 
Three Ideals.
would have to study, and whose interests they would have to further.
The example of Ireland may serve to show how intensely popular a
clergy sprung from the people can become under favourable conditions. It seems probable that the Roman Catholic clergy will be
more and more recruited from two sources-the lower classes, among
whom traditional belief is still strong, and those of the upper classes
who dislike the political system under which they live, and will consequently take orders with the desire to injure it in every way that
presents itself. An appeal to the democracy will commend itself on
different grounds to both these groups.   With the first it will be
instinctive; with the second it will be the result of calculation. It
will not be enough, however, for the clergy to be convinced that the
interest of the Church suggests an appeal to the democracy. The
fact that you have an obvious motive for offering your services to a
man with whom you have hitherto been on bad terms is apt to make
him the less inclined to listen. Nor will it be enough for the clergy
to be  possessed of an  organisation which  will give them  many
advantages in making such an appeal. This, too, may only serve
to put the democracy on their guard.  Besides both these qualifications, there is wanted an enthusiasm on the part of the clergy which
shall carry them over the hostility, the coldness, the suspicions with
which their overtures are certain to be received in the first instance.
Is there anything in the character or history of the Roman Catholic
Church which is calculated to arouse this enthusiasm in its members?
"To answer this question fully would be to survey the whole field
of ecclesiastical history. But, to note one or two only of the many
points which suggest themselves, there is in the first place the
essentially de:mocratic origin of the Church. Whenever a Roman
Catholic priest stands before the altar or mounts the pulpit, there
hangs oppositz to him the crucified form of One who was born in a
stable, who f-ew to manhood in a carpenter's shed, whose chosen
associates w.-e poor men gaining a precarious livelihood by fishing,
who  wande'  d about without a roof to shelter  Him, who was in
constant conflict with all the traditional and accepted authorities of
'-Ii,'. ~.ta  and who finally suffered death at their hands.  What
I 27 
Cotinlicporary Evo'lzion.
associations can be more likely to suggest democratic ideas to
enthusiastic minds sprung, it may be, from poor parents, and themselves waging a continual warfare with the secular powers? The
religion thus founded was the heir of an older faith which in its
noblest development was an eminent protest against arrogance and
oppression.'Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl,' though it
occurs in an apostolic epistle, reproduces exactly the spirit of the
Hebrew  prophets.   St. Paul's teaching lends  itself to a similar
application.   A great orator who had persuaded himself that the
success of his preaching depended on his carrying the multitude
with him would hardly desire a better text than'God hath chosen the
weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty;
and base things of the world, and things which are despised, yea,
and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are.' At
present he would be hampered in handling his subject. He is not on
the whole desirous of disturbing the existing order of secular affairs,
and he would therefore have to explain that St. Paul's words were to
be taken in a strictly spiritual sense.   But assume  him  to have
become a declared enemy of the existing order of secular affairs, and
so to be emancipated from the restrictions which now fetter his
eloquence, and he will have a vantage-ground from which to move
democratic passion such as no merely secularist preacher is likely to
share. The clergy need not even go so far back as the origin of their
religion. The history of its youth and manhood is full of associations
which  point in the same direction.   The glory of the mediaeval
Church is the resistance which it offered to tyranny of every kind.
The typical bishop of those times is always  upholding a righteous
cause against kings and emperors, or exhorting masters to let their
slaves go free, or giving sanctuary to harassed fugitives, or protecting
the infant town against some neighbouring feudal lord, or inspiring
the villagers whom their lord has deserted to make head against
a piratical inroad, or joining with the better disposed barons in setting
bounds to kingly aggression. What is true of the bishops is true in
a still more eminent degree of the religious orders. Whether they
aimed at guiding men by putting wealth to noble uses, or by
neglecting it altogether, their object was equally to identify them
I 2 8 
TAree Ideats.                129
selves with the poor. They are not likely soon to have another
opportunity of playing the former part, but the occasions for the
latter can never be denied them. If to belong to a religious order
were made a capital offence in every country in Europe, it would
not prevent the formation of secret societies, whose  sole external
symbol would be the greater readiness of their members to spend
their substance upon others rather than upon themselves. There is
enough in these considerations to excite enthusiasm, provided that
other conditions are favourable. In appealing to the democracy, the
Roman Catholic clergy would, in form at least, be reviving the best
traditions of the Church. There will be nothing strange in their
persuading themselves that power may be best recovered by boldly
resorting to the methods which originally gained it.
"We certainly do not look forward to any incongruous alliance
between the Roman Catholic Church and the Reds. To the extreme
revolutionary party on the continent politics have become a religion,
and- the cardinal articles of that religion are probably held with as
much fanaticism as can be commanded by the Roman Catholic
Church itself. Supposing the Church to take the line we have indicated, we should rather regard it as a rival power bidding against
the Reds for the friendship of the poorer classes of society.   The
Church would offer them equal sympathy, alloyed with less of that
desire for personal aggrandisement which the poor are so ready to
attribute to leaders of their own class. It would be quite as little
hampered by any stereotyped reverence for economical laws. Ordinary
politicians are disturbed if they become convinced that a particular
line of action is opposed to the growth of capital.   They  are so
accustomed to associate the well-being of a nation with its material
progress, that a state of things which does not further the latter can
hardly in their eyes tend to further the former. The Red Republican
has emancipated himself from this tendency to link together the two
ideas, and the genuine ecclesiastic has never been subject to it. For
different reasons capital is scarcely less hateful to the one than to
the other, and we are not at all sure that the doctrine that property
is a trust held for the benefit of the poor may not prove as attractive
to the cestuique trust as the rival doctrine that property is only
Three Ideaps.
I29 
Contemporary Evolution.
legitimate when it has been distributed among the poor. Be this as
it may, this is the attitude which we have supposed the Roman
Catholic Church to take up-not striving to win over, or fancying
that it can win over, the Reds, but offering to that great mass of poor
men and women who are as yet neither Reds nor Catholics in any
very definite sense, a creed as full of sympathy for their sufferings and
on the whole less tied down to promises which those who make them
cannot perform. We do not deny that the view which says,'Why
should we resign ourselves to the endurance of evils for which we
shall never get any compensation?' has many attractions for energetic
spirits, and at times when resignation is not the only course open.
But in the long run it has always been found that sufferings and injustices are not removed by a resolution not to submit to them; and
whenever this discovery is made, there will always be a chance for
the view which preaches submission to inevitable evils in the belief
that they will be redressed hereafter."
13o 
CHAPTER IV.
SCI~ENTItIC ~ VOL UTION.
N  the second chapter of this essay, an attempt was
made to investigate the probable effect on Christianity
of the further development of the great modern process of
social evolution. It was therein stated that a trustworthy
result could be arrived at only after considering (I) the
political, (2) the scientific, and (3) the philosophic aspects of
the question.  As yet our inquiry has been limited to the
political aspect alone, the others being deferred for subsequent consideration. The result so far arrived at has
been that the political evolutionary process tends to
increase the coherence and strength of the Christian
organism, and to give greater efficiency to its action, by
occasioning a series of internal integrating processes responsive to external disintegrating influences. Nevertheless a reservation was made as to the possible effects of
scientific and philosophic evolution, to the effect that if
contradiction thence arose such evolution must be fatal,
while political change (by giving increased liberty of
action) must hasten the final catastrophe. It remains
then to consider the scientific and philosophic aspects of
contemporary evolution in their relationship to Christianity, the subject being treated now, as in the preceding 
Contemporary Evolutlion.
chapters, altogether without reference to the truth of that
religion, and from the standpoint of natural science
only.
The accelerated advance of physical science is the
"commonplace"' of our day. That it will address itself
with augmenting power to increasing audiences is certain.
Not less certain is it that, as before pointed out, theological questions are more and more calling forth zeal
and energy in regions where a quarter of a century ago
apathy and stagnation largely prevailed.  Manifest, again,
to the most cursory observer is the wide divergence of
views and sentiments between large numbers of those
more especially devoted to one or the other of these fields
of activity. In the first chapter it was sought to pourtray
and symbolise this divergence as concretely embodied in
a mediaeval abbey and a modern museum. How marked
such divergence appears to the average middle-class mind
in England to-day is evidenced by the contrast drawn
by the Times between the British pilgrimage to Paray-leMonial and the succeeding British Association meeting.
It was evident that, in the writer's opinion, there would
be more or less inconsistency in any one taking part
with full sympathy in both those gatherings.
To those who think that such divergence of sentiment
has its foundation in the intellect and is the expression of
a real and necessary rational divergence, the effect of the
further progress of evolution cannot be- doubtful.  Those
132 
Scienlzftic Evol/uilion.
thinkers will also naturally desire the complete and final
overthrow of a superstition clogging the wheels of scientific
progress, and will justly be moved to discourage (in all
ways not conflicting with the equal rights of their fellowcitizens to liberty of conscience) a system they deem to be
in contradiction with reason. On the other hand, there
are those who are convinced that this divergence is not
fundamentally a rational one at all, but, except where
volition intervenes, the result of feebleness of imagination,
absence of due mental flexibility, or simply of ignorance or
prejudice. The author of this essay can at least testify
that he has met with several, in many respects highlygifted minds, who have had personal experience of this
relative impotency, and who have only after many efforts,
and sometimes wide oscillations, succeeded in effecting the
mental synthesis referred to.
Yet the conflict at present existing between the two
schools of thought is, as was earlier pointed out, the result
of a gradual and steady growth through preceding" centuries, and is, whatever be the result, likely for a time yet
further to become intensified, from two special causes. One
of these (I) is the action of the principle of the division of
labour.  The other (2) is the special character of some
physical science teaching.  The principle of the division of
labour renders necessary the application of one  man's
almost entire energy to a more and more restricted field
of scientific labour.   Only intellectual giants can  now
I33 
Conlemporary Evolulion.
hope for eminence in widely remote areas of study and
research. To take an example from one science, men
have not only almost ceased to be general zoologists, and
become ornithologists, entomologists, &c., as the case may
be; but we hear now of lives being devoted to the study
of small sections of natural orders, and that this naturalist
is a Carabidist,* and that a Curculionist,t while a German
naturalist has even published a quarto volume, with large
plates and numerous tables, the whole being devoted to
the anatomy of the lower part of the hindmost bone of
the skull of the carp!
Now physical science must continue, not only to grow
in complexity as well as mass, but also to diffuse itself
over  an  increasing  area.    The  general  diffusion  of
modern instruction will hereafter render a certain acquaintance with the facts and most approved theories
of science the common property of all who have the
least pretension to be deemed "educated," and influences as yet active, but in a very limited field, must
sooner or later become all but universal. At the same
time the clergy, diminished in relative number through
the consequences of the Renaissance movement, will come
to have less and less time to spare for any special acquisitions in physical science, and far from monopolising the
physical knowledge of their time (as was the case in the
* i.e., devoted to that family of beetles termed Carabid.
t ie., devoted to the long-snouted beetles termed Cuircuzlionid.
134 
Scieittic Evolution.
early part of the Middle Ages), they must have even less
and less chance of often occupying distinguished positions
in the scientific arena, such as those filled by numerous
continental abbes before the epoch of the great French
Revolution.   Besides relative numerical decrease in the
clergy and the increasing sub-division of the field of
physical science labour just spoken of, a simultaneous
growth in theological science must render the attainment
of eminence in any one of the more and more restricted
branches of physical science still more difficult, and all but
a matter of impossibility to a clergy devoted to a theology
which, whether true or false, is also ever increasing in complexity as well as mass by a development responsive to the
actions of surrounding influences. Thus it appears to be
inevitable that as time goes on we shall come to have a
population more and more imbued with physical science,
and at the same time a clergy less and less raised above the
mass of the laity as regards a knowledge of such science.
These conditions, accompanying as they will a growing
appreciation of physical science, must favour the already
wide-spread belief in a real antagonism of reason between
science and Christianity. The mere existence of such a
belief (coinciding as it does, with anti-Christian tendencies
which it helps to intensify) cannot but produce results,
temporarily, at least, very hurtful to the Christian organism, since it tends altogether to divert from the
examination of the Church's claims inquiring minds
135 
Con temporary Evolutizol.
which otherwise might perhaps find her acceptable to
their mental states, and to destroy the belief of others
who, from a very distinct cause, may be specially susceptible to such influence. Hence there seems but little
reason to expect that the existing wide-spread connection
between familiarity with physical science and disbelief in
Christianity will, for a considerable period, diminish-to
anticipate, that is, that a movement which has been
gradually growing in strength for six hundred years is
likely soon to be arrested. So far, then, the scientific
aspect of contemporary evolution appears hostile to the
growth and influence of the Church. Yet we may find
hereafter (when we have considered the second cause)
compensating actions leading to results quite opposite to
those which have as yet appeared.
The second cause of hostility was stated to be "the
special character of some physical science leachzing."
Physical science occupies itself with the phenomenal
universe as far as accessible to our senses, the collocations
of causes in the visible world, together with the laws of
their action-in short, with the co-existences and successions of phenomena, from mathematics and sidereal
astronomy to biology and sociology.*
* Mr. G. H. Lewes ("Problems of Life and Mind") professes to
embrace "metaphysics" within the range of science.  He does so,
however, merely by calling "metaphysical" certain physical conceptions by which phenomena are mentally connected in scientific minds,
I 36 
Scieniljic EvouItion.
Theology occupies itself with an asserted noumenal
universe, inaccessible to our senses, the collocation of
causes in such an invisible world, together with the laws
of their action-in short, with the relations of spiritual
entities from God down to the human soul.
Such being the case-the two domains being so distinct
-it seems difficult to conceive how any development of
physical science can possibly conflict with natural
theology, and yet the fact is patent that it is very
often supposed to do  so.   It is true, of course, that
Christian theology does make a limited number of
assertions with respect to certain facts (such, e.g., as those
contained in the Church's creed), which were at one
time  subjects  of  sensible experience.   It is manifest,
therefore, that if science, e.g., history, could demonstrate
any one of these assertions to be false, such science
must be not merely hostile but deadly in its action
on Christianity.   No  writer, however, as yet has even
claimed to have established a demonstration of the kind.
Indeed, all competent minds have recognised the fact
that physical science, apart from a priori philosophical
conceptions, must be alike incapable of disproving them
or of establishing their impossibility.   Nevertheless, there
are always more or less widely diffused among Christians
various "pious opinions" (as they are  termed), which
and by bestowing the new name "metempirics" on that which has
been hitherto universally called " metaphysics."
7
I37 
ConzlciiPorary Evolttion.
are often held with great tenacity, although forming no
part of what the Church affirms as divinely revealed.
This it is which is the region of conflict, and it is strewn
over with weapons more or less hastily caught up by
assailants as possessing a fatal efficiency and afterwards
abandoned in disappointment.   Not that  the weapons
were pointless or their wielders unskilful, but that by
the destruction of an encumbering delusion they conferred
benefits on the cause which was the real object of their
attack.  In England, both the assailants and the supporters of popular Christianity are peculiarly liable to
become involved in such contests.  They are thus liable
because of the often startling ignorance of Christian
dogma  amongst  the  former, and  the prevalence of a
certain peculiar superstition amongst  the latter.   This
superstition is the somewhat grotesque belief that the ever
freshly surging questions of theology-presenting themselves in new aspects in each succeeding age-are to be
answered by revelation indeed, but through a printed
book, and not through some living authority capable of
addressing to each succeeding epoch its specially fitting
response.   Nevertheless,  not  in  England  alone,  but
throughout the civilised world, such conflicts have raged
from time to time, and two noteworthy ones may be here
suitably adverted to.
It is not probable that physical science will again be
the occasion of so great a disturbance to prevalent "pious
I 38 
Scienhzlfc Evoltlz'on.
beliefs"  as when  it first introduced  heliocentric  as
tronomy to the Christian world.* The primitive cosmo
* On this subject Dr. Newman observes:-" When the Copernican
system first made progress, what religious man would not have been
tempted to uneasiness, or at least fear of scandal, from the seeming
contradiction which it involved to some authoritative tradition of the
Church and the declaration of Scripture? It was generally received,
as if the apostles had expressly delivered it, both orally and in writing,
that the earth was stationary, and that the sun was fixed in a solid
firmament which whirled round the earth. After a little time, how ever, and on full consideration, it was found that the Church had
decided next to nothing on questions such as these, and that physical
science might range in this sphere of thought almost at will, without
fear of encountering the decisions of ecclesiastical authority.  Now,
besides the relief which it afforded to Catholics to find that they were
to be spared this addition, on the side of cosmology, to their many
controversies already existing, there is something of an argument in
this circumstance in behalf of the divinity of their religion.  For it
surely is a very remarkable fact, considering how widely and how
long one certain interpretation of these physical statements in Scripture had been received by Catholics, that the Church should not have
formally acknowledged it. Looking at the matter in a human point
of view, it was inevitable that she should have made that opinion her
own. But now we find, on ascertaining where we stand, in the face
of the new sciences of these latter times, that, in spite of the bountiful
comments, which from the first she has ever been making on the
sacred text, as it is her duty and her right to do, nevertheless she has
never been led formally to explain the texts in question, or to give
them an authoritative sense which modern science may question. Nor
was this escape a mere accident, or what will more religiously be
called a providential event, as is shown by a passage of history in the
Dark Age itself. When the glorious St. Boniface, Apostle of Germany,
great in sanctity, though not in secular knowledge, complained to the
Holy See that St. Virgilius taught the existence of the antipodes, the
139 
Contemfiorary Evoiz'ion.
logical conception had in its favour alike the convictions
of the majority of the learned, the language of books
revered as sacred, and the enormous force of a habit of
mind unbroken for untold ages. Yet the result of the
universal acceptance of the new astronomy, so far from
destroying the Christian Church (as it is asserted it would
have destroyed Hindooism), has been to show that it
was in fact prepared beforehand for the greatest change
of cosmological conception which the world has yet
seen.
The second instance is that of the apparent conflict
between evolutionary biology and Christian dogma, and
indeed, no better test question as to the effect of scientific
progress on Christianity could well  be devised.   The
general acceptance, till modern times, of one special view
of creative action, together with the unhesitating consent
of almost all men of science as to the indefinite durability
of specific characters, made it in the highest degree unlikely that authoritative Christian teaching, in early
medieval times, should have laid down principles rendering the assimilation of evolutionary natural history by
Holy See apparently evaded the question, not indeed siding with the
Irish philosopher, which would have been going out of its place, but
passing over in a manner not revealed a philosophical opinion"
(Lectures on University Subjects, p. 279). With how much even
greater force do not these remarks apply to the Church's action
respecting belief as to the mode of creation of animal and vegetable
forms.
140 
Scieiz/ifc Evohition.
theology not only possible but easy anrid natural. Nevertheless, it has been shown* that such assimilation is
thus easy and natural, and so far as the present writer is
aware, not even an attempt at a reply has yet been made
to the statements and reasonings there brought forward.
Christians may surely be pardoned if they consider this
a proof case, and assert that the religion that has borne
this strain will bear any that physical science can bring
to bear upon it. It might also be similarly shown that
various other scientific questions (by some supposed to
have a tendency conflicting with Christian dogma)-such
as the antiquity of man, the phenomena of savage life,
the necessity of nervous action to human thought, etc.are beside the question, are indifferent matters in this
relation, and necessarily futile as a basis of attack on the
Church, and that, of course, whether the Church's claims
be well or ill founded. On the other hand, it would not
be difficult to show that there is a tendency in modern
science-notably in biology-to direct men's minds in
the opposite direction.   That is to say, to direct them
towards conceptions once generally current,t but which
have, during the last three centuries, gradually passed
* Co/emroiraiy Review, January, I872, and the last chapter of
" Lessons from Nature" (Murray, I 876).
t This is particularly striking in Mr. Lewes's "Problems of Life
and Mind," although reference thereto will come  better under the
head of philosophic than of scientific evolution.
I4I 
Contemzporary Evoluilon.
out of general consciousness and become  "forgotten"
rather than "rejected."
Such being the relations existing between Christianity
and physical science, What it may be asked, can be the
peculiar character of science teaching which tends to
prolong the hostility which has so long occupied us?
Shortly: then, it is not the science teaching itself, it is
the metaphysics which consciously or unconsciously happen
so often to have been propagated with it. In considering
the teaching of physical science, two very different things
require to be well distinguished: (I) the facts as to the
co-existences and sequences of phenomena; and (2) the
special system of philosophy which such facts may be
made use of to inculcate.
Physical science, being by its very nature occupied exclusively with phenomenal conceptions, must plainly be
capable of adaptation to, or explanation by, more than
one system of philosophy; and that it is so experience
proves. The Berkeleyan, the Kantist, the peripatetic, and
the materialist find no difficulty in presenting the facts of
science in harmony with their respective views.  We have
seen that physical science itself must be simply indifferent
as regards Christianity, but the very reverse is of course
the case with the materialistic or pantheistic philosophical
systems so often associated with it. The existence of such
association is notorious, and the names of Vogt and Buichner may well be quoted as prominent inculcators of such
142 
Scienzic Evolztulion.
teaching. With loud professions of man's necessary ignorance is often joined a confident assertion as to the details
of that course which would certainly be followed by a
being of infinite power, wisdom, and goodness, did such a
being exist.
For one of the latest examples of the spirit of this
teaching we are indebted to Dr. Struther, who propounded at Bradford an argument which has been* thus
summarised:-" Because one or two individuals have died
from the impactation of cherry-stones in the appendix
vermiformis, therefore there is no  God."   We  have no
evidence of the possibility having occurred to that gentleman that an indefinite number of final causes for the
structure in question may (though unthought of by him)
have preceded the existence of matter at all, and that
amongst them might be the intellectual and moral effects
of its contemplation on the minds of different men.
The specimen cited is typical, because the religious
doctrines directly and openly, or obliquely and covertly
attacked in connection with the teaching referred to, are
not those of Christianity specially, but of theism generally.
The direction of attack has indeed greatly changed since
the epoch of the "deists." It is now pretty generally
admitted, with regard to "Christianity" and "theism"
that arguments really telling against the first are in their
* In Nature, Oct. j6, I873, vol. viii., No. 207, p. 509.
143 
ContemiPorary Evolution.
logical consequences fatal also to the second, and that a
Dens unus et remunerator once admitted, an antecedent
probability for a revelation must be conceded.
Examples of popular materialistic science teaching have
been elsewhere given by the present writer, * and their
tendencies pointed out.
The teaching cited appeared capable of being summed
up as follows:
"I. Temporal happiness is the one rational aim of life.
"II.. A postive belief in God and a future life is an
unwarrantable superstition.
"III. Virtue and pleasure are synonymous, for in root
and origin they are identical.
"IV. Men are essentially but brutes, no differences of
kind dividing them.
"V. The Cause of all things has not personality, and
consequently neither feeling, nor intelligence, nor will.
"VI. All who pretend to teach religion are impostors
or dupes.
"VII. Our physical science teachers are the supreme
exponents of truth, and the ultimate arbiters of all actions.
"VIII. There is no such thing as real merit or demerit,
as all our actions are absolutely determined for us, and free
will is the most baseless of delusions."
Amongst the most recent manifestations of scientific
* See " Lessons from Nature" (Murray, i876), chap. xiii., pp. 386
403.
I44 
Sceezitc Evolulion.
materialism may be cited Professor Haeckel's H istory
of Creation.
Professor Haeckel is a very instructive writer, because
his zeal for materialistic pantheism is so fiery that it
hurries him sometimes into antitheistic deductions from supposed facts which later investigations prove to have been
fictions (e.g., the supposed organism Bathybius Haeckeii,
too probably but a sea mare's-nest, discovered by Professor
Huxley, and appropriately named by him after his German
alter ego), sometimes into a ludicrously exaggerated estimate of the philosophical or theological consequences of
elementary. truths; e.g., those of development.
This writer tells us (vol. i., p. I79): "The soul of man,
just as the soul of animals, is a purely mechanical activity,
the sum of molecular phenomena of motion in the particles
of the brain." Again he is translated as saying (p. 237):
"The widely spread dogma of the freedom of the will is
from a scientific point of view altogether untenable; every
physiologist who scientifically investigates the activity of
the will, must of necessity arrive at the conviction that
in reality thle will is never free, but is always determined
by external or internal influences."
The  animus  of the  author and  his  freedom  from
prejudice in judging is made manifest by the praise
he gives to Mr. Darwin's hypothesis for its antitheistic
tendency, and by mentioning (p. II5) "as a special merit
of Lamarck, that he endeavoured to prove the development
I45 
Contempborary Evoitlion.
of the human race from other primitive ape-like mammals."
He speaks (p. 75) of the time "when man, first developing out of the monkey state, began for the first time
to think MORE closely (!) about himself, and about the
origin of the world around him"!  It would be  interesting to catch one of our monkeys in the Regent's
Park thinking "loosely" about the origin of the world,
and to photograph its aspect while so occupied.
Very amusing, however, are Haeckel's remarks as to
the wonderful results which are to follow a general acquaintance with the simple facts of human embryonic
development, with which mysteries he naively imagines
speculative  philosophers " and  " theologians" are  not
acquainted. He tells us (p. 295), "These facts are not
calculated to excite approval among those who assume
a thorough difference between man and the rest of
nature"! Surely it is time that a man like'Haeckel,
who has done good service with respect to anatomical
and zoological facts, should cease to give utterance to
such mere entfantillage.
The wonderful manner, however, in which his mental
vision is, not so much obscured as inverted, by prejudice
(which we may hope is due rather to defective education
than to bad will), is made unmistakably plain by the following  passage  from  his  "Generelle Morphologie der
Organismen," vol. ii., p. 436, in which he declares that
146 
Scieitzic Evoition.
some brutes are the intellectual superiors of many men,
in  that they (the brutes) are not cramped  in their
mental action by dogmatic religious beliefs. His words
are, speaking of Darwinian controversies:  "In dieser Frage stossen wir wiederum auf die heftigste
Opposition gerade bei denjenigen Menschen, welche
durch ihre unvollkommnere Verstandes-Entwickelung oft
selbst hinter den ho6heren Thieren zuriickbleiben. Dies
gilt nicht allein von den niederen Menschen-Rassen,
sondern auch von vielen Individuen der h6chsten Rassen,
und selbst von solchen, bei denen Man vermuthen sollte,
dass die Masse erworbener Kenntnisse ihr Denkvermo6gen
gescharft habe.   Besonders interessant sind gerade in
dieser Beziehung zahlreiche Aeusserungen von Gegnern
der Descendenz-Theorie, welche oft in wahrhaft erstaunlicher Weise einen Mangel an nattirlicher, klarer und
scharfer Gedanken-Bildung und Gedanken-Verbindung
bezeugen, der sie entschieden unter die verstandigeren
Hunde, Pferde und Elephanten stellt.  Da diese Thiere
meistens nicht durch die alpenhohen Gebirgsketten von
Dogmen und Vorurtheilen beschrankt werden, welche
das Denken der meisten Menschen von Jugend an in
schiefe Bahnen lenken, so finden wir bei ihnen nicht
selten richtigere und nattirlichere Urtheile, als sie namentlich bei den'Gelehrten' anzutreffen sind."
"As to this question, we have to contend against the
most vehement opposition of those men  who, by their
I47 
Conte;;zlorary Evotlzoin.
imperfect intellectual development, often remain behind
even the higher brutes. This is the case, not only with
the lower, but also with many individuals of the highest
order of human beings, and even with men whose wits we
might have expected to find sharpened by the mass of
their acquired knowledge. Especially interesting, in this
relation, are the numerous utterances of anti-evolutionists,
which often display in an astounding manner a want of
aptitude for the clear and sharp formation and association
of ideas; by which want they come to rank decidedly
beneath the more intelligent dogs, horses, and elephants.
For these animals, for tie most part, are not hemmed in
by Alpine summits of dogmas and prejudices, which lead
the thought of most men, from youth upwards, into devious
bye-paths. Thus we not unfrequently find in such animals
more just and natural judgments than we find in many
men, especially in men of letters."
This (temporary and accidental) association of certain
metaphysical teaching with physics,* must naturally tend
* An instructive instance occurred not long ago, on the part of one of
our leading thinkers, of the assumption that a protest against such
association must necessarily be unscientific. Mr. Gladstone, in an
address given at Liverpool, had remarked: "Upon the ground of what
is termed evolution, God is relieved of the labour of creation; in
the name of unchangeable laws, He is discharged from governing
the world." Upon this he was taxed by Mr. Herbert Spencer
(" S/ldy of SocioIo,"y," p. 393) as "conspicuously making  himself
the exponent of the anti-scientific view," as regarding as "irreligious any explanation of nature which dispenses with immediate
148 
Scizenitlc Evoliuoit.
to make Christian ministers assume a jealous if not hostile
attitude towards physical science, and also to alienate a
certain number of their disciples from them. Surely there
divine superintendence," and as overlooking "the fact that the doctrine
of gravitation, with the entire science of physical astronomy, is open to
the same charge" as the doctrine of evolution. Mr. Spencer is one of
the last men to make an ill-considered charge, least of all against a
thinker of a school opposed to his own, and it is therefore interesting
to find that he does not appear to contenmplate even the possibility of
right being on Mr. Gladstone's side. That gentleman has written to
vindicate himself from the charge of hostility to science, and to say
(Contemfiorary Review, December, I873, p. I63) that his complaint
is that the functions of the Almighty as Creator and Governor of the
world are denied upon grounds, which...  "appear to" him
"utterly and manifestly insufficient to warrant such denial."  But in
fact what Mr. Gladstone said was most true and just-not in opposition
to Mr. Spencer (who is open to criticism of another kind), but in opposition to the general tendency and effects on men's minds of the teaching in vogue-an effect boastingly announced by outspoken adherents.
Caro ("L'Id6e de Dieu," p. 47) observes:  " Science conducts God
with honour to its frontiers, thanking Him for His provisional services."
Mr. Gladstone said no more than this! But there is a further misunderstanding.  To explain the conditions of the solar system, considered
with reference to physical science alone, the laws of astronomy are of
course sufficient; but to adequately explain such conditions as parts of
a great whole of which our own intellectual faculties form a portion,
astronomical laws are not sufficient, according to the teaching of a
definite school of philosophy which claims Aristotle for its founder.
Therefore, according to that philosophy, to say that a full recognition
of the "doctrine of evolution" dispenses with "immediate divine
superintendence," whether in the moon's motion or in the fall of a projectile, would be absurd. But this is the very error into which the
unlearned are apt to fall, and this is the absurdity against which Mr.
Gladstone meant, no doubt, to protest-the absurdity, that is, of sup
I49 
Conlemporary Evohliton.
is not merely much excuse for, but merit in such hostility, when the nature, in their eyes, of two conflicting
interests is considered. For any one who accepts not a
revelation, but only natural religion, must regard religiouzs and phzysical truth as possessing no common measure,
just as the grandeur and beauty of Saturn's rings and the
grandeur and beauty of an heroic act of generous self
denial cannot be compared together. To such acceptors
of revelation, questions as to "the age of the world" or
the "law of new specific origins" must appear trivial
details when weighed in the balance with such questions
as, "Is the human will really free?" "Are our efforts
after virtue lovingly responded to by an Infinite Being,
who knows every secret of our hearts so intimately, that
the closest human scrutiny is but an utterly inadequate
posing that "gravitation" or "evolution" if accepted are not "utterly
and manifestly insufficient" to account for the phenomena, apart from
Divine action, when such phenomena are considered as part of a universe made up of spiritual as well as of material existences. It seems
then, evident, that Mr. Gladstone, in the passage first cited, speaks
as the adherent of one school of philosophy, while Mr. Spencer speaks
as the adherent of another. The claims of these rival philosophies
cannot be stated in this note, but whether the peripatetic be true or
false, all who hold it have a perfect right to speak as Mr. Gladstone
spoke, without on that account having one fraction the less of love for
physical science or of desire for knowledge of the laws of the phenomenal universe, from "gravitation" to the sociological value of the art
of music and the true teleological relations of the "locomotive" and
the "fiddle" respectively.
150 
Sczen/tific Evolziion.
symbol of it?" "Has a revelation been made; and if
so, what are its contents?"
If we before thought it just that those convinced of
scientific truths should be moved to discourage a system
they deem to be in contradiction with reason "from the
scientific point of view, we must surely also think it just
that those convinced of philosophic truths should be moved
to discourage a system they deem to be in contradiction
with reason," from the philosophic point of view. So
long, therefore, and in so far as pantheism or materialism
are associated with physical science, those who uphold
theism will be more or less opposed to such science
while so associated. Thus it seems that the two special
causes considered act together to prolong the already
long-standing antagonism between physics and theology.
Yet of any real antagonism between them we have
found no- trace, even in such a proof case as the application of the evolutionary hypothesis to the appearance
of new species of animals. Physical science should then
be considered, alike by the philosophic Christian and
anti-Christian, as neutral and indifferent. The question
whether the philosophies in vogue accept and collocate
the facts of science better than any other philosophy,
cannot be considered till we come to the question of
philosophic evolution. Meanwhile, it appears that it is
only possible for the advance of science to influence
Christianity through such philosophy as may be incor
I5 I 
1Contzlporary Evolution.
porated with it. Philosophy affords, then, the real battleground for the contending forces, and it is on that allimportant field that the future of Europe, the endurance
of an existing social system, and the fate of Christianity
must be decided.
But we may ask, Has not the advance of science itself
an indirect effect upon the struggle? Does this advance
tend to hinder or promote the study of philosophy? If
it does do either, then, of course, it indirectly aids in the
conflict, though itself inoperative directly. Now every
physical science is, when once its study has been fairly
begun, intensely interesting.  Most popular sciences, such
as zoology, botany, geology, etc., are followed with comparative facility, and are, to most minds, far easier than
philosophical study, where the intellect has so constantly
to be turned in upon itself.  Yet from the limitations
imposed by their very nature on the physical sciences,
they tend to leave the minds of the more inquiring (and
as education becomes diffused, of a greater number)
with an unsatisfied craving after deeper explanationsin fact, with a desire for consistent philosophical conceptions to serve as a support for the laws and phenomena,
and to embrace in one whole all that such sciences make
known. Yet within the last century there has been an
increasing inclination to direct minds more and more
exclusively to phenomena, and philosophy (especially in
this country) has been more and more discredited and
152 
Sciezlzefc Evoziion.          ~
neglected, till the very name "metaphysics" has become
a bye-word of reproach. As might have been expected,
however, a reaction has set in, and for the last five and
twenty years the importance of philosophy and its actual
necessity as a basis for science has been more and more
obtaining recognition, and the reaction is well exemplified
by the declarations of our most esteemed teachers of
natural science. On the continent the same spectacle
meets our view, and Strauss, Buichner, Vogt, and Hartmann aid powerfully, even by their destructive efforts, in
directing popular attention to fundamental questions of
philosophy which underlie all physical science.
There can be little doubt but that the further advance
of science must aid indirectly in furthering that philosophic evolution which has next to occupy us. Nay, it
is probable that the great philosophic reaction, towards
which we seem to be rapidly approaching, would not be
possible did not physical science attain a great development and wide popularity-so many minds being driven
into philosophy through science. Thus through the science
of matter, an increasing number of thinkers will come
to have their attention directed to the science of mind.
Recognising that "the proper study of mankind is man,"
and the all-importance of the old Delphic I'vOt c'eavrov,
they will necessarily be led to "psychology" (the portal
of "metaphysics"), and thence to those questions which
have occupied the noblest minds in all ages.
153 
Contemzporary Evoliution.
But leaving for the present the question of philosophy,
let us seek the best answer we can get to our special
question here-the effect of scientific evolution on the
Church and her ministers.
We have seen that physical science must go on increasing and diffusing itself while the disconnection of
the clergy from the pursuit and attainment of distinction
in the field of such science is likely to widen. At the
same time we have seen that the assertions of Christian
theology are not of a nature to be capable of disproof
by any  science of the kind.   If physics could demonstrate that there is no knowable or personal First Cause;
O
that no prototypal design in eternity preceded the orderly
evolution of the physical universe in time; if it could
show that death, which necessitates the cessation of
intellectual action as we experience it, necessarily or
certainly renders all intellectual action impossible; if
it could demonstrate that Christ never lived or never
rose, the blessed Virgin was not immaculately conceived,
or that there is no Divine presence in the eucharist,then indeed the triumph of such science would but be
another phrase to denote the annihilation of Christianity;
but to all such questions physical science can have
necessarily nothing to say. But it is here contended,
not only that the growth of physical science cannot in
itself have an ultimately detrimental effect on the Church,
but that its very growth is accidentally calculated to
I54 
Scienzifc Evolution.
indirectly bring about results of an opposite character.
If when we come to consider philosophic evolution, we
find reason to believe that such evolution will not be
prejudicial to Christianity, then the number of Christians
(and of the adherents of that natural religion of reason
which Christianity takes for its basis) must continue
to be large. In that case both its teachers and disciples
must come to share in, and be more or less thoroughly
imbued with, that physical science culture which it has
been supposed will hereafter be so generally diffused.
They will thus be guarded from simply accepting-as
so many (through ignorance) now accept-the dogmatic
assertions of some physical experts that a real incompatibility  exists between  science  and  religion.   Also,
many adherents of natural theology will as surely become convinced that arguments which they have discovered to be futile as directed against natural religion
have neither more nor less weight as directed against
Christianity.* On the other hand, the very arguments
* The late Mr. John Stuart Mill in his "Autobiography" (p. 70)
laments that "those who reject revelation very generally take refuge
in an optimistic deism, a worship of the order of nature and the
supposed course of providence, at least as full of contradictions
and perverting to the moral sentiments as any of the forms of
Christianity, if only it is completely  realised."  At pp. 38, 39, he
tells us that his father held Butler's "Analogy" in esteem, and that
it "kept him, as he said, for some considerable time, a believer in
the divine authority of Christianity, by proving to him that whatever
I55 
Contem.oriary Evolutlion.
which they have to adduce in favour of natural theology
will by many be seen to apply further, and plainly
serve as supports to the foundations of Christianity while
harmonising with its whole genius and structure.
Again, physical science being almost universally diffused, will have lost its aspect of novelty, and also
"aggressiveness" will be clearly seen to be no proper
attribute of science, but only of certain definite philosophical systems previously associated with it.
The laity will not find many amongst their clergy
distinguished in physical science; but this result will not
be altogether unwelcome to them, because, however proper
they may deem it for priests, under peculiar social conditions, or now and again through some special vocation,
to devote themselves to physical science, yet they must
abstractedly consider "Pegasus harnessed to the plough,"
as a symbol quite inadequate to represent the incongruity
between such an employment and the ecclesiastical state.
are the difficulties in believing that the Old and New Testaments
proceed from, or record the acts of, a perfectly wise and good Being,
the same and still greater difficulties stand in the way of the belief
that a Being of such a character can have been the maker of the
universe.   He  considered  Butler's argument as conclusive against
the only opponents for whom it was intended. Those who admit an
omnipotent as well as perfectly just and benevolent maker and ruler
of such a world as this, can say little against Christianity, but what
can, with at least equal force, be retorted against themselves "!  On
this subject consult the Dublin Review for January, 1874, Art. I.,
"Mr. Mill's Philosophical Position."
156 
Scienlzflc Evoltulion.
Yet though they will not find their clergy distinguished,
they will find them universally as well acquainted with
physical science as will be the bulk of cultivated men not
specially devoted to it. They will thus be naturally encouraged to an increased confidence and trust in their
religious teachers, whilst the latter will demonstrate to the
laity (by the mere fact of the mode of life they have
chosen, for all their physically scientific culture) the really
neutral character of all physical science in its relations
with religion. Finally the clergy, having been compelled
by circumstances to make this closer acquaintance with
physical science, will know and be able to point out readily
and exactly what they may deem to have been the inferential errors of the preceding period as well as to combat more effectively such venerable conservatives as may
continue to reiterate arguments analogous to some of the
dysteleological * arguments of to-day.
If the foregoing views are correct, it seems to follow
that, together with the changes anticipated, the Church's
ministers may not improbably regain much of that social
and political influence which they have at present lost.
Not that such influence will be exercised directly, as was
the case in the Middle Ages-the process of division of
* Dysteleology is a term which Professor Haeckel has devised
to denote the study of the "fiiuroselessness" of organs. An argument
founded on such a conception, and relating to the apfifiendix vermzjormiis, has already been noticed.
157 
Conteniborary Evolution.
labour alone would render that impossible. Their influence
will only be able to be exercised indirectly by the peaceful
process of persuading public opinion.
Thus it appears to the writer of this essay that the process of scientific evolution, and the action of the actively
anti-Christian section of the community will probably
result in the development of a clergy and laity more
thoroughly, because more reflectively and self-consciously,
Christian and scientific in their physio-philosophical views
than the world has yet seen. Some of the most recent
developments in physiology, notably that of the nervous
centres, and the most modern discoveries in anthropology,
are, to say the least, singularly harmonious with the
Church's traditional teaching.   Such  developments  and
such discoveries may be, and probably are, fatal to crude
views popularly considered religious and Christian in this
country-such, e.g., as reciprocal action of soul and body,
and the existence of a primitive civilisation, in the vulgar acceptation of that phrase. But they harmonise perfectly with the traditional teaching of theologians concerning the anina forma  corporis, and homo sylzvaticus, and
with principles laid down centuries before such discoveries
were made. Few religious controversial errors are more
common than that of supposing that a Christian doctrine
has been refuted, when in fact it is but a post-Cartesian
superstition that has been laid low, and thereby the old
traditional view has become the more strengthened and
158 
Scienztifc Evouition.
justified. Descartes forsook the old traditional teaching
as to the soul for speculative novelties of his own, which
have spread far and wide, with the natural result of disgusting scientific physiologists with views erroneously
supposed to be specially orthodox. Here, however, we
are approaching the philosophical domain.
To conclude, there appears much reason for supposing
that the process we have attempted to follow will be the
occasion indeed for the abandonment of Christianity by
many individuals, but that nevertheless the Church herself
will be strengthened and made, not only more capable of
self-defence on the scientific arena, but also more vigorous
and better armed for attack against adversaries who now
possess very great influence. We have here, in fact, another aspect of the same process referred to in "political
evolution "-that which renders bracing climates, rough
living, and absence of medical aid, beneficial to a "community," however fatal to "individuals,"  by killing off
weak members and reducing it to a compact community
of hardy and vigorous survivors.
The doctrines of the Church, whether they are or are
not founded on fact, will at least receive an unexpected
and powerful support and justification, if it comes to be
demonstrated with regard to fresh scientific theories hereafter (as it has already been with evolution), that they are
powerless weapons as employed against her, she having
asserted beforehand principles amply sufficient to shield
I59 
Contemporary ~volution.
her from such attacks.   As to evolution as applied to
animal life, it is absolutely unquestionable by any one who
understands the meaning of the terms that "it is evident
that ancient and most venerable theological authorities
distinctly assert derivative creation, and thus their teaching harmonises with all that modern science can possibly
require."*   As  the present  writer has  elsewhere observed: f "It can hardly be denied to be a noteworthy
fact, that the Church should have unconsciously provided for the reception of modern theories by the omission of fruitful principles and far-reaching definitions
centuries before such theories were promulgated, and
when views directly contradicting them were held universally, and even by those very men themselves who laid
down the principles and definitions referred to. Circumstances so  remarkable,  such. undesigned  coincidences,
which, as facts, cannot be denied, must be allowed to
have been'preordained' by all those who, being theists,
assert that a'purpose' runs through the whole process
of cosmical evolution.   Such theists must admit that,
however arising or with whatever end, a prescience has
watched over the Church's definitions, and that she has
been so gziided in her teaching as to be able to harmonise
and assimilate with her doctrines the most modern
theories of physical science."
*" Genesis of Species," 2nd edition, p. 305.
t" Lessons from NatuLre," p. 449.
I6o 
Scienizic Evolution.
But the widespread reception of the doctrine of organic
evolution aids Christianity in yet  two other ways.   In
the first place, it aids it by making more clearly manifest
than before to those who  are neither  theologians nor
philosophers the extreme importance of the Christian
dogma of creation, both by the fatal consequences
erroneously deduced from evolution by those who believe
its affirmation to be equivalent to the denial of creation,
and by the enthusiastic reception given to evolution by
Darwin, Huxley, Haeckel, and others, expressly on the
very ground of the supposed refutation by it of that
cardinal Christian doctrine. Secondly, it aids Christianity
by demonstrating how hopeless is the impossibility of
refuting that dogma by any advance of physical science;
for the most hostile efforts of the most skilled assailants
have to their despite resulted in the decorating and filling in as it were, of the Christian doctrine of creation,
instead  of ending in its hoped  for  overthrow.    For,
as will be urged in the next chapter, the congruity of
creative action with the universe, as manifested in our
own free will, is made plain to us on ca' priori grounds;
and, similarly, from a consideration of the nature of the
First Cause, we are compelled to regard all existing forms,
organic and inorganic, as responding to prototypal ideas
in  God.*   With these  conceptions once accepted, we
* See "Lessons from Nature," pp. 275 and 279.
8
I61 
Conternporary Evolztion.
can now see, on evolutionary principles, how in the
instantaneous creation taught by St. Augustine the
whole vast series of animal and vegetable forms, created
potentially "in the beginning," have become actual from
time to time as the conditions for their manifestation have in their appointed order from time to time
occurred.  Indeed, even the literal narrative of Scripture
as to creation must be acknowledged  to have been a
remarkable anticipation of modern views compared with
other ancient cosmogonies.   This is confessed even by
Haeckel, who speaks of it as distinguished "by the simple
and natural chain of ideas which runs  through it, and
which contrasts favourably with the confused mythology
of creation current among most of the other ancient
nations;" there, he adds, "two great and fundamental
ideas meet  us... with  surprising  clearness  and
simplicity,-the idea of separation or differentiatioz, and
the idea of progressive development or perfecting."  Whatever divergence of opinion, however, may exist as to the
sense and meaning of the words of Genesis, any disproof
of the Christian doctrine authoratively taught by St.
Augustine is absolutely impossible.
There seems then to be nothing in the process of
scientific evolution to cause reasonable alarm and anxiety
to Christians, or  to afford  their opponents any wellgrounded hope Such evolution can indeed be indirectly
influential through the philosophy which may be mixed
i62 
Scientific Evolulion.
up with it, but by that alone. The question then as to
the future course of the philosophic aspect of contemporary evolution is the supremely important question of
all those connected with that great modern movement,
the Renaissance, made up as it is of the partly allied
partly conflicting elements of paganism and civicism. To
this question the writer proposes to next address himself.
i63
II 
CHAPTER V.
PHILOSOPHiC E VOL UTION.
HE  attempt has been made in the last chapter to
trace the effect on Christianity of a further evolution
of physical knowledge, and the conclusion arrived at was
that such evolution must be itself comparatively uninfluential, inasmuch as it could act only indirectly by
stimulating the diffusion of philosophical ideas. In the
third chapter we saw reason to believe that the results
of political evolution would also depend upon the course
hereafter taken by philosophy. We have here, then, to
consider that supreme question concerning the result of
the Renaissance movement, namely, the philosophical
direction it is likely to take, with the hope of being able
to form a final judgment as to the result of the great
conflict between reviving paganism and the Christian
Church.
The prospect that first strikes the eye of one surveying
the field of contemporary speculative activity cannot be
very encouraging to the lover of Christianity. Strauss,
Buiichner, Vogt, Haeckel, and Hartmann in Germany at
present attract the sympathies of multitudes now cooperating, at least in will, with the attack made by
Bismarck at the same time on both freedom and Chris 
PhilosoAhi'c Evoluttion.
tianity. In France, though the school of Comte is comparatively small, yet English sensationalism, that of Mr.
Spencer, is making considerable advances, while the old
Voltairian spirit holds its own with a tenacity similar to
that possessed by the "principles of I789." In Italy the
English and German speculative schools are also making
inroads, while, if such is not yet the case in the Iberian
Peninsula, traditional convictions are gradually losing
their hold, so that. such exemption may perhaps be mainly
assigned to political conditions unfavourable for intellectual activity.
In England a remarkable change has come over the
spirit of the nation, and now by a singular coincidence
even the liveliest sentiments of pity for the brute creation
happen to concur with popular science in tending to obscure the distinction between rational and irrational
natures, and in promoting a ready acceptance of the
great doctrine concerning the essential bestiality of man.
This doctrine is here specially referred to because it has
in fact become the test doctrine by which the philosophical position of teachers and  disciples may best be
gauged.* In the fourth chapter of this essay it was stated
that a certain philosophy was much diffused by means
* Mr. A. J. Mott, in his opening address, October, I873, to the
Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool, p. 3, says: "Questions concerning the origin of mankind have become either the
radiating or the culminating points in most branches of science."
I65 
Contemporary Evolution.
of physically scientific teaching, a strongly anti-Christian
philosophic school, of which Strauss may be taken as a
type, having eagerly caught at such physical teaching as
a most convenient auxiliary.
The English of the eighteenth century were the leaders
in speculative thought, and for all the great praise often
bestowed upon German culture, the same may be said
of those of our metaphysical writers of to-day who also
deal with physical science. Darwin has nowhere so
great a following as in Germany, while Mill has no slight
influence in the land where his ashes repose. It will, it
is believed, then, be amply sufficient for our purpose if
we mainly direct our attention to the English sensational
school which is ousting Hegel in Germany, and Cousin
in France, and which claims to have done justice to Kant
and Reid by harmonising the truths they held with the
apparently contradictory, but really complementary, verities put forward by those they refuted. The teaching of
the English school, as represented, amongst others, by
Mill, Bain, Spencer, and Lewes, logically culminates in
three negations; namely, of God, the soul, and virtue.
Yet this is the school still honoured by the University of
London with its exclusive patronage, thus imbuing with
its doctrines the minds of all our most cultured youth.
If such a system can sustain itself, and, still more, if it
can propagate itself, its effect on Christianity need not
be stated. These terms, which some may be disposed to
I66 
P~ilosopAic Evohziion.
think too severe as applied to our popular English system, cannot be fully justified here. It must suffice to
remind readers that by Professor Clifford atheism is now
avowed, that Spencer declares - theism to be not even
thinkable, and that the subordinate systems of all the
school necessarily deny virtue in refusing every element
of spontaneity to the human will. But this denial is
not less evident from yet another point of view. According to the popularly received view of evolution-the view
that is put forward by Spencer, Darwin, Bastian, Vogt,
Buiichner, and Haeckel-virtue is absolutely identified with
the most brutal selfishness. As Mr. Martineau has tersely
put it:* "Conscience is a hoarded fund of traditionary
pressures of utility;... our highest attributes are
only the lower that have lost their memory, and mistake
themselves for something else." Two considerations, however, present themselves at once with reassuring aspect
to the student of the various systems just now in vogue.
These are, first, their discord and the internecine war
amongst the teachers of these various systems, and
secondly, the grotesqueness of the idol which each severally offers to the homage of his followers. Thus Mr. Mill
and Mr. Spencer diverge respecting even the very foundation of the whole fabric of knowledge, which foundation
the second asserts, while the first denies, to be "incon
* Coaltentorary Review, April, J 872, p. 6to.
I67 
Con/ernPorary Evohzition.
ceivability." Mr. Bain and Mr. Spencer also differ on the
same question; Mr. Bain asserting "experience," and not
"inconceivability," to be the basis of certitude.   The
"principle of contradiction" presents another point on
which they differ.   Comte's teaching is repudiated with
apparent scorn by Mr. Spencer, while quite lately a wide
divergence* from the teaching of the last-named writer
has been introduced by his brother sensist, Mr. G. H.
Lewes, no less than from that of Mr. Mill.t
In this their mutual destructiveness the negative philosophers of our day but follow in the footsteps of their
predecessors of the last three centuries; and were it not
that "while the grass grows the steed starves," and that
we need something positive, such systems might be left
unassailed to the action of their own mutually disintegrating influences.
The curious objects presented to veneration by these
systems may claim a passing notice.
We have first the "Unknowable"  as an object whereon
* Thus, in his "Problems of Life and Mind," Mr. Lewes describes
"conceptions" as "symbols" (p. 19I), and affirms that the "object
felt exists precisely as it is felt" (p. I92). Again (p. 420) he says
that what is "unpicturable" may be "conceivable," and he plainly
declares his dissent from Mr. Spencer's "transfigured realism."
t As when Mr. Lewes asserts (p. 398) that the truths respecting
triangles are not generalisations but intuitions, and again (p. 424),
when he declares that "much" that Mill includes under induction
is either "intuition" or "description."
: It is rather amusing to find how much is after all "known"
I68 
Philoso'hic Evohition.
to expend our religious instincts, an entity without intelligence or volition, without an affection or a purpose,
as much the cause of everything vile as of all we most
admire-an entity to be saluted only by exclamations
(vocal or mental) of "It is! It is!"
Then we have the "universum" of Strauss,  the contempt of Schopenhauer for which was so great a sin in
the eyes of the former, seeing that Strauss demanded for
his idol (what from no sane man will he ever get) a
devotion such as a good man feels for his God!
A more naturally popular, but really as absurd an idol
is that "humanity"  of M. Comte,  so curtly dismissed
by Mr. Spencer* as a quite inadequate object of reverence,
which a little reflection readily enough shows it to be.
Small value can ever be widely set on the "immortality" which positivism promises to its faithful disciples,
and for the following reasons: I. Few persons will care
for a popularity which follows upon their utter personal
annihilation. 2. Few, again, can hope for such immortality at all, since the immense majority of men must
be content to die unknown. 3. Still fewer, it may be
affirmed, would really prize posthumous veneration by
about this " Unknowable." Thus we learn fromni Professor Tyndall
("Use and Limit of the Imagination in Science") that it is known
to have what may be compared with "shores," and further than
these "shores of the unknowable" are knou'n to be "infinite."
* "Study of Sociology," p. 31 I.
I69 
Contemporary Evolutzon.
public opinion, when they consider how many really contemptible and vile characters have been popularly revered.
4 The positivist heaven is, moreover, necessarily denied to
many of the most virtuous, since it is a necessary condition of the virtue of many to live obscure and unknown.
5. Finally, the difficulty which a conscientious man experiences in estimating even his owes motives and character, shows how simply impossible it is for many men
accurately and justly to estimate each other's real merits.
But one of the drollest notions of what may fitly inspire
reverence is put forth by Mr. Spencer himself; not indeed
in his own person, but in that of an imaginary disputant,
whose discourse he calls "comparatively consistent."
This disputant is made to speak* of the oscillations of
molecular motion thus: "The activities of this imponder able substance, though far simpler, and in that respect far
lower, than the activities we call mind, are at the same
time far higher than those we call mind in respect of their
inteiisit, their velocity, their subtlety.... Thought
is quick, light is many millions of times quicker." Thus
quick and strong jumpings and very complex antics are
relatively "highz "-using that word in the sense we apply
it to ninzd. Exceedingly complex gyrations of atoms are
thus higher than "love of God or man."  Contemplating
in imagination the atomic oscillations which this view of
* "Psychology," vol. i., p. 622.
I70. 
Phlilosophic Evoluitton.
the universe puts before him, the Spencerian disciple may
be imagined to exclaim: What wonderfully oscillating
atoms! how  noble! with what energy and rapidity do
they not vibrate! they are divine!  Veazitc, adoremus!  As
has been said, Mr. Spencer has not adopted this view as
his own answer to an imaginary objector; nevertheless he
patronises it as a "comparatively consistent" one, and
certainly does not condemn it as nonsense; yet it is really
wonderful how any one man of intelligence should for
a moment imagine that any other could think material
particles to be one bit more "noble" compared with
"mind," let them perform what gyrations they may, or
that they were made even a trifle "higher" by such restlessness.  This passage reminds us of the Emersonian
religion latent in the pious pirouettes of Fanny Ellsler.*
Returning to our main subject, we may note yet another
curious phenomenon. We refer to the strange contradiction presented by the Sensist school, which contains
reasoners who ignore reason, and teachers of others, who
not content with ignoring their own ego as a substance,
fail to appreciate their own passing logical activity.
Mr. Spencer and Mr. Lewes, however fundamentally they
differ, agree in representing "inference" as really nothing
but "association."  No doubt the senzse-judginent, so to
speak, of brutes, is the imagination of unapparent
* See Contemfiorary Review, January, I872, p. I87; and "Lessons
from Nature," p. 362.
I7I 
Conteiporary Evohlttizon.
sensibles  through  association with  felt  sensibles;  but
rationaltjudgzmcnt is, at the least, the taking up and tranlsformation of this sensible association by the action of a
self-conscious  intellect.   Mr.  Lewes*  speaks  of bees
feeling geometry in constructing their cells. They feel,
of course; but to imply they have thereby any appreciation of geometry would be hardly less unreasonable
than to imply the same of crystallising salt or sugar.
The "logic" of sense is truly "logic," but it is the logic
of some one else, not of the brute that feels. Mr. Lewes,
however, makes a remark of so strange a character, that
it is impossible after reading it not to hesitate before
accepting any opinion of his respecting intellect. Speaking t of "instinct" as being, according to his strange
notion, "lapsed or indiscursive intelligence," he says:
"The objection will doubtless be raised that instinct is
wholly destitute of the characteristic of intelligence in that
it has no choice. its operation is fixed, fatal. The reply
is twofold: in the first place, the objection, so far as it
has validity, applies equally to judgment where, given
the premisses, the conclusion is fatal, no alternative being
open. Axioms, in this sense, are logical instincts. Thus
the highest intellectual process is on a level with this
process'said  to be  its opposite."   "On   a level!"
"applies equally!"  Why, here the essential distinction
* "Problems of Life and Mind," p. 240.
t Op. cit., p. 4I.
I 72 
Philosob.hic Evolttion.
between  "instinct" and  "reason"  is utterly  ignored.
"Instinct" is "fatal," but blind.  Reason is "fatal," but
sees. Axioms cannot be "instincts," because they are
seen to be true, and are not blindly followed.
But is it possible for modern philosophy to culminate
in such unsatisfactory and misleading exhibitions as this?
It may be safely affirmed that self-contradiction, confusion, and that speculative annihilation, philosophical
scepticism, must be the logical outcome of all such modern
philosophy as either ignores the distinctive characters of
reason, or denies our certainty of our own continued
substantial existence, as does the philosophy alike of
Mill, of Huxley, and of Spencer.   The limits of this
essay prohibit any attempt to demonstrate the latter
operation; and it is the less necessary as the present
writer has endeavoured elsewhere* to make it clear.
But it may be here remarked, first, that it is logically
impossible to deny our knowledge of the substantial and
persisting ego without at the same time implying such
knowledge; and secondly, that uncertainty on the matter
can alone be justified by introducing a scepticism so
complete that the doubt itself vanishes in the uncertainty
which follows as to whether such doubt is not after all,
certainty, ending in mental paralysis and the breakdown
of all possible philosophy. But, once more, is this and
See " Lessons from Nature," chap. i.
I73 
Contemborary Evolttion.
such as this the end of modern philosophic evolution? As
the New Academy has seemed to some to close the cycle
of Greek speculative thought, is a hopeless and absolute
philosophic scepticism to close that of the modern period?
That such is to be the end, Comte, as all know, has
broadly proclaimed, and his English sympathiser, Mr. G.
H. Lewes, for all his verbal changes about "metaphysics"
and "metempirics," is as persistent as ever in denying the
possibility of solving all those problems which have ever
occupied the minds of the highest intellects; which problems he collectively stigmatises as "metempirical."
So gloomy and despairing a view is by no means
shared by the present writer; on the contrary, he looks
forward with confident hope to great metaphysical progress at no very distant period, and he sees no cause of
discouragement in a certain apparent barrenness of results
attending recent speculation. Progress is not uniform,
but is effected by successively advancing waves, and even
thus very unequally-advance in some directions being
generally accompanied by, at least temporary, retrogression in others.
The artistic triumphs of Greece were not attained
without an accompanying ethical depression, and when
the decaying Graeco-Roman civilisation became largely
replaced by that of hardy Teutons, fresh from the baptismal font, barbarian art accompanied the moral. renovation. The literary culture of the Renaissance was
I74 
Phzilosophic Evolution.
synchronous with a wide-spread loss of political liberty
to the profit of centralised despotism, while the gradual
growth and consolidation of our parliamentary system
marks a period of continued architectural decline. Mr.
Lecky has, in his "History of Rationalism," admirably
demonstrated to us how widespread sentiments and
habits of thought simply drop out of fashion, and how
beliefs which have never been disproved, and with their
evidence still unrefuted, come gradually to be abandoned and their evidence ignored, till a quite contradictory belief is eventually accepted. A wave of sentiment,
far more than any logical process, repelled from men's
minds the doctrine of man's ape origin when it was
first mooted.   It is the flow of an opposite wave of
sentiment which determines its wide-spread acceptance
now.   Might we not then expect, a' priori, that  the
great advance in natural knowledge of the last three
centuries-those marvellous discoveries which have more
and more directed men's minds to physical observation
and experiment-should be accompanied by stagnation
or retrogression along some other lines of thought?
Attention cannot fully be directed to two distinct
inquiries simultaneously, and an exhausting pursuit of
physics must necessarily starve some other intellectual
habit. We should then be little surprised to find for a
time a philosophical decline accompanying scientific
advance.   Moreover, it is ever the wont of men's minds
175 
Contemfiorary Evolu/ion.
to depreciate the object of admiration of the period
immediately preceding. We can view with more or less
admiration the costume of a century past, but the fashion
of some five or ten years ago seems to us more or less
absurd, as well as distasteful.   Thus each past activity
has to wait for its due appreciation, until the period of
unjust depreciation which has followed it has passed by.
The architectural glories of Northern Europe, those
medieval structures, at once (from their beauty and true
principles of construction) poems and scientific treatises
in stone, have only of late years ceased to be despised as
barbarous.   Now,  universally appreciated, fragments of
ruins which happy accident has saved from destruction,
are guarded with jealous care, and thoughtfully studied
as revelations of a skill and refinement which have passed
from amongst us.
As it is now with the material constructions of the
Middle Ages, so, we may find reason to think, will it be
to a yet greater extent with the far more marvellous
intellectual fabrics those ages have bequeathed us. The
soaring lightness of such lofty arches as those of the choir
of Le Mans awake our admiration by reason of their
beauty; but our wonder is yet more exercised by the
solidity of those slender piers and towering buttresses,
which, arch over arch, hold securely poised so vast a
roof of stone at such an airy height.   Similarly, the
wonderful acuteness, the delicacy and subtlety of dis
176 
PzilosopbAic Evolztilion.
tinction to be found in Scholastic writers are already
exciting the wonder of the few who, following the
example of Sir William Hamilton, are beginning to make
acquaintance with them. But it may be that wonder
will ere long be much more widely excited by the
solidity of the reasoning those acute and delicate minds
thought  out.   A  foretaste  of such  appreciation with
respect to the philosophy of this period has lately been
given us by one of its most distinguished opponents.
The Lord Rector of Aberdeen, addressing his subjects
thought it well to tell them:-*
"The Scholastic philosophy is a wonderful monument
of the patience and ingenuity with which the human mind
tried to build up a logically consistent theory of the
universe.... And that philosophy is by no means
dead and  buried, as many  vainly suppose.   On  the
contrary, numbers of men of no mean learning and accomplishment, and sometimes of rare power and subtlety
of thought, hold by it as the best theory of things which
has yet been stated. And, what is more remarkable, men
who speak the language of modern philosophy nevertheless think the thoughts of the Schoolmen."
It may be well, perhaps, now to state the reasons which
make this increased appreciation probable.
Mr. Spencer has remarked: "During all past times
e See Contenmo-ary R-eview, March, 1874, p. 667.
177 
Contemzporary Evolution.
mankind have eventually gone right, after trying all
possible ways of going wrong." * The same course mankind appears also to follow in philosophic speculation.
The great process of redictio ad absurdurn has attended
the evolution of our post-mediaeval metaphysics; the
logical result is scepticism. The intellectual paralysis (as
respects philosophy) attending the modern sensational
school, which is essentially the school of Hume, has
already been noted; it remains to call attention to the
fact that Hume's philosophy is the logical consequence
of the metaphysics referred to. That such is the case,
indeed, the event has shown. Berkeley's mind was far too
acute not to build logically on the premisses he accepted
from Locke, and the same may be said of Hume with
respect to Berkeley.   The refutation which  Kant for a
time effected has been itself refuted by the aid of that
very evolutionary process which Kant himself favoured
and foreshadowed.   In spite of the efforts of the philosopher of K6nigsberg, in spite of Reid and his followers
in England, and of Royer-Collard, Maine-de-Biran,
Jouffroy, and Cousin in France, the most extreme sensationalism is once more in possession of the field, ranging
from Naples to Aberdeen, and from Bordeaux to St.
Petersburgh.
Thus the teaching of the whole school of modern meta
* "Study of Sociology," p. 306.
I78 
Philosophic Evo/luzlion.
physics ends in scepticism, in nihilism, as the ultimate
result of materialism and idealism.
It will naturally be asked, then, If such is not to be the
end of philosophic evolution, what is the remedy, and how
is recuperative force to be obtained?
The reply here offered is, that a remedy is to be obtained by digging deeper. No mere return to Kant is
adequate to meet a scepticism which so much of Kant's
system completely justifies. It is impossible to secure to
practical reason its objective validity, if "pure" reason
be declared fallacious.   If the view here advocated  be
correct, what is needed, and what evolution will infallibly
bring about, is not a return to a philosophy, but a return
to the philosophy. For if metaphysics are possible, there
is not, and never was or will be, more than one philosophy
which, properly understood, unites all speculative truths
and eliminates all errors: the philosophy of the philosopher-Aristotle.
But, it will be exclaimed,-This is throwing us into confusion; all the speculative discussions of the last two
thousand years and more will have to be gone through
again! Aristotle is understood in many senses, and has
given  rise to many schools.   It would  be hardly less
irrational to refer us to the Bible for theology than to
refer us to Aristotle for philosophy! And the propriety
of the objection would be conceded, did there not exist
a continuous traditional line of philosophic evolution,
179 
Coldemporary Evolulion.
bringing down the peripatetic philosophy to the present
day.   Others may  exclaim, this is stagnation, or even
reaction. But there is of course no real danger of either;
the laws of evolution in general render it absurd to
suppose that stagnation, or a really reactionary reversal of
development, can ever be possible. All that is possible is
that speculation may revert to a temporarily abandoned
line of inquiry, experience having demonstrated that all
other possible lines end blindly.
Many persons may be surprised to read the assertion
that such a continuous and traditional school of philosophy exists at all; but that it does exist is none the
less a truth. The peripatetic philosophy simply fell 6ut
of fashion at the period of the Renaissance, when in the
scientific and literary intoxication of the period, with its
reviving Platonism, pantheism, and paganism, men left
traditional lines of speculative thought to fall into bondage to the philosophical empiric Descartes and the
wonderfully over-estimated Bacon. The French philosophical heresiarch-the logical father both of our
modern materialists and idealists-never understood-he
had never even learned-the philosophy he ignorantly
opposed. That philosophy, ridiculed and overborne, but
never refuted, was pushed aside by the force of the
popular current, and became, after a time, like the
architecture of the colleges it had illustrated, a byeword
of reproach and contempt; till, ignored and forgotten,
I8O 
Philosophzic Evolution.
the world is astonished to learn that it has never ceased
to have both teachers and disciples. It is even amusing
to observe how pointless are many of the arguments of
moderns such as Mr. Spencer, Mr. Lewes, etc., from their
want of acquaintance with the Scholastics, and the simple
way * in which they think that all is done when Kant
has been replied to, and that it is quite needless to go
further back.
Some readers may be disposed to ask, Where has this
philosophy been preserved, and who are its teachers
now?
At the epoch of that flood of barbarian invasion which
overspread a world deemed by so many to be approaching
its end, the treasures of classic literature found fortunate
shelter within the libraries of Benedictine monasteries,
scattered far and wide in dense forests, savage, rocky
solitudes, or dismal swamps. Those black-robed monks,
whose manual labour spread agriculture over Northern
Europe, not content with ministering to the peoples'
bodily and spiritual needs, paved the way for refined
* Thus Mr. Spencer ignores all philosophy anterior to Descartes,
and contents himself with Berkeley, Hume, and Kant, as examples of
the moderns. Mr. Lewes (" Problems," vol. i., p. 437) actually affirms,
"All modern  metempirics are  either Kantian or founded upon
Kantian principles." For examples of complete misapprehension of
the only philosophy worthy the nanme, and consequently futile argumentation, see pp. I52, 212, 214, 245, 249, 265, 271, 278, 363, 368, 437,
and 447.
I8i 
Contemporary Evohdlizon.
mental culture by their preservation of so many writings
which, but for them, would have been finally lost to us.
For these deeds the gratitude of all enlightened men of
all creeds or of none has been and is theirs; and thus
when modern vandalism recently threatened with destruction the venerable abbey of Monte Cassino, some of
our noblest fellow-countrymen allowed no difference of
belief to hinder their energetic protest against so cruel a
blow to history, to literature, and to the glory of the
Italian nation itself.
At the epoch of that flood of pagan intoxication which
overspread Europe at the Renaissance, as the culture of
the traditional philosophy passed from disesteem to abandonment, it found a fortunate shelter also within religious
houses, and especially (as was most natural) with the
Dominicans.   The  mission of the friar-preachers  was,
however (for some centuries to come at least), mainly
accomplished, and thus we have to look elsewhere for
its most efficient support. Just at the critical moment
there appeared in the arena of speculative conflict those
ever fresh spiritual athletes, the sons of St. Ignatius of
Loyola. In their colleges the traditional philosophy has
been scrupulously preserved, and from Suarez and Lugo
to Kleutgen (now living in exile) an uninterrupted body
of teachers has carried on its cultivation and development, applying its principles again and again in opposition to the various errors as they have arisen, from
182 
Philosophic Evolution.
the time of the society's foundation to the present day.
As gratitude is now due, and widely acknowledged, to
the Benedictines, for their preservation during the illiterate ages of our choicest literary treasures, so gratitude
is now due, and will one day be even more widely acknowledged, to the Jesuits for their preservation during
the whole Renaissance movement of our choicest philosophic treasures, as main guardians of the peripatetic
tradition.
The fathers of the society enjoy the glory of perennial persecution and hostility; and, whatever may be
the view taken of their merits, and whatever good men
may oppose them, all must admit that they at least
possess the distinction conferred on them by the special
hostility of all the vilest of mankind. Nevertheless, it
is not impossible that their careful preservation for us
of the traditional philosophy may one day be reckoned
a yet greater distinction.
This philosophy then lives, and is taught amongst us
here in England now, and it is to be regretted that
some prominent English sensists do not profit by such
teaching. Were one of the leaders of the modern school
to cease altogether to write or teach for a period of
some three years, and to endeavour to obtain for that
period the hospitality of a Jesuit seminary, and there
devote himself (merely at first as a learner, and not as
a critic) to the acquisition of the peripatetic philosophy,
I83 
Contempfiorary Evolution.
his labour would not be lost. The present writer has
too strong a belief in human free will to be confident
that the supposed student's views would be thereby, as a
matter of course, fundamentally modified, but is quite
certain that his power and depth as a philosopher would
be very greatly augmented, and, irrelevant matters being
removed, controversy would be brought more aptly to
an issue.
It may be asked, however, Wherein do you see actual
signs of such a revival of philosophy?   It may be answered, that amongst other indications the writer has positive information of the advance of the peripatetic philosophy in Germany; that Professor Ueberweg himself bore
witness to such a movement; that Mr. Spencer's own
writings tend to force it on; that Mr. Lewes' last book*
is calculated to drive it forward at an accelerated rate;
that its course is facilitated by the philosophy of Hart
* See his "Problems of Life and Mind;" we find there good peripateticism as to the soul and body unconsciously set forth at pp. IT2,
156, i6o, and I6i; as to the distinction between men and brutes, at pp.
124, I53-I55, I57, i6o, I69, 250, and 296; as to universals, at p. 136;
as to the existence of "potential" knowledge, at p. 243; as to the
sort of existence possessed by "co-ordination," "life," and "mind," at
p. 28 i; as to terminology, at p. 336; as to the relation of the ideal to the
real order, at p. 342; as to mathematical intuitions, at p. 398; as to
the relations between imagination and conception, at p. 420. Even as
to logic, as an art, he goes wrong rightly.   Thus  he says (p. 77),
"There is no more an art of reasoning than there is an art of breathing or digesting." But peripatetic logic is an art in so far as it is
i84 
Philosophic Evolution.
mann; and that the testimony of no less an opponent
than Professor Huxley himself has borne witness to its
vitality. Moreover, as will be almost immediately urged,
recently discovered scientific facts and the direction of
modern biological thought favour philosophical conceptions universally prevalent amongst men of culture four
centuries ago, but which have since been generally neglected and ignored.
If, then, such a revival as is here indicated is indeed
to be looked for; if that philosophy, in the terms of
which the various Christian doctrines have been defined,
is likely once more to play a prominent and dominant
part in the intellectual world,-it is almost needless to
point out that there can be no fear for Christianity.
That evolution is taking such a course the present writer
believes, and he consequently also believes that scientific
and political evolution can but favour Christianity, in the
modes predicted in former chapters of this essay, on the
condition that philosophic evolution should be found to
take no hostile direction. But if post-Cartesian philosophy
has been so wanting in positive results, even from its
own point of view, as is here maintained, are the gyrations it has gone through useless, and will the world
be none the better for the expenditure of so much effort
cathartic, and that as we tnay improve our actual breathing or digestion through a knowledge of physiology, so we may practically improve
our actual reasoning through a knowledge of the laws of thought.
9
I85 
Conlem.orary Evolution.
and so much skill? Instead of such being the case, it
seems probable that the post-Cartesian philosophy, of
which Spencerism may be taken as the culmination, will
have performed a most useful part. Indeed, considering
how through it and its alliance with physical science,
philosophy has penetrated where, but for these conditions, it might never have effected an entrance, it would
be difficult to estimate its value and importance too
highly.   The  main  reason why  the  wide diffusion of
Spencerism seems so advantageous is its bearing upon
four fundamental objects:-I.  The Ego.  II. The Will.
III. Nature. IV. God.
I. With respect to the Ego, the very pertinacity with
which writers of the agnostic school (that of Huxley,
Spencer, etc.) have denied that we know its existence
with supreme certainty, and the very arguments which
they have made use of to disprove such certainty have
really aided, in no small degree, the cause they have
sought to overthrow. They have so aided it, by making
manifest the extreme importance of our knowledge of our
own continued existence-the substantial Ego, and forcing
on us a recognition explicitly of much that is implicitly
contained and involved in that knowledge, but which is
apt to be overlooked or neglected. For every one, who,
by this controversy has, for the first time, brought home
to him the really marvellous nature of his own present
knowledge of his past states of being, will thereby be
I86 
Philosophic Evozi/ion.
brought to recognise that he has a knowledge of absolute,
objective truth.   His eyes will thus be opened  to the
supremely important truth, that he is endowed with an
intellect which is not shut up in a mere subjective knowledge of its own states and modifications, but which is
endowed with the wonderful capacity of knowing absolute, objective truth external to these states. He will
learn this through his recognition of the "veracity of
memory," without accepting which he cannot advance
one step in knowledge.   Consciousness is of the present,
but we cannot know our own continued existence without
at the same time knowing the past. This consideration
alone is sufficient to refute the whole experimental philosophy which teaches that we become nothing but phenomena. For "experience" itself is not possible, unless
memory  can  be  relied  on as trustworthy.   My  "experience" would be of small value indeed, if I could not
be absolutely certain that it was mine, and not that of
some other person.*
Again, every one who recognises the truth of his knowledge of his own existence must equally recognise -that
his intellect declares certain dicta (such, e.g., as that "what
thinks exists," "the whole is greater than its part, " ingratitude is blameworthy") to be absolutely and universally true.   He must further see, on examining the de
* See "Lessons from Nature," p. 23.
187 
Contemporary Evolution.
clarations of his own intellect, that such truths as these
are not agreed to by him out of sheer mental impotencefrom mere inability to think the reverse-but that they
are, on the contrary, truths which he apprehends actively,
and which he sees to be positively necessary and absolutely universal, that they must be true in Sirius or the
Pleiades, and that they were as true when the first film
of mind laid the foundation of the Laurentian rocks.
Thus again, his mind is in another mode carried by its
own power and force out of the mere subjective and
phenomenal  into the objective and noumenal region of
absolute external truth.
Once more, this self-knowledge will force on each one
who investigates it, that his intellect has yet another
power; namely, that proceeding by a peculiar logical process (ratiocination) to draw forth explicitly truths implicitly contained in other truths, but not fully apparent
till so drawn forth. When to the proposition, "All the
radii of one circle are equal," we add, "the lines A and
B are radii of one circle," we see that a third truth is
implicitly contained in these two propositions; which truth
explicitly stated is the conclusion, "the lines A and B
are equal," and the force of the whole process of influence
is expressed by the word " therefore."  This process forms
yet another mode of arriving at real objective truth and
knowledge other than phenomenal, for we learn that such
lines as A and B must be equal everywhere and at all
I88 
Philosophic Evouition.
times, and that God Himself could not make them otherwise. The declarations of the intellect and its logical
processes having been thus justified, its declarations as
to "causation" and  "morality" gain  at once an unquestionable validity. It becomes a self-evident truth,
that even if the material universe be eternal, its series
of phenomenal, conditional changes, ranging in recurring
cycles through a past eternity, must none the less require a real, absolute eternal Cause, while the absolute
declarations of the intellect respecting morals will necessitate the attribution to that supreme Cause of "a
goodness" harmonising with, however immeasurably
exceeding, that of man. To put it shortly, this zealous
propagation of the absurd denial of our knowledge
of our own existence is but the prelude to a more
thorough and complete understanding of that knowledge and of all which it involves, than any other cause
(save such denial) could well be conceived as producing.
In knowing our own continued existence, we come to
know, with a supreme degree of certainty, a whole
system of objective truths which the intellect is seen to
have the wonderful power, not only of perceiving, but
of perceiving to be objectively, absolutely, and universally
true.
The facts here stated may be thus summed up:  Our recognition of our own self-knowledge reveals to us
objective truth and our possession of it.
I89 
ContempAorary Evoition.
It also shows us that there are universal, objectively
necessary truths, and that we know them.
Also it causes us to recognise the validity of ratiocination, or the explicit evolution of implicit truth.
Hence we learn the validity of our inference as to the
existence of a First Cause adequate to produce all that
we know as existing in its effects, and therefore as necessarily possessing qualities, such that "intellect," "order,"
"purpose," etc., which we recognise as existing amongst
its effects in ourselves, may be predicted of it in a superior degree; such human characteristics being but adumbrations of the corresponding qualities in such First Cause.
II. As to "Will." The persistency, and even passion,
with which the declarations of the commonsense of mankind are met by denials that we possess even a fragment
of really self-determining power, serve to make even clearer
than before the marvellous and isolated character of the
power of choice, as also the important truths which its
assertion implies. When it comes to be fully appreciated
by the many, how rigid law rules, not only all irrational
living beings, as well as inanimate and inorganic creatures,
but also even the vast majority of our own actions, the
marvellous character of our power of voluntarily choosing
the less attractive of two modes of action will be less
inadequately estimated.   It will become generally understood, that while we may be certain of possessing that
power of choice which all unprejudiced men know that
I9o 
Pzhilosophic Evolution.
they possess, yet that in making a free act of choice they
really dominate and control the whole chain of physical
causation by their free will. As to the implications of
this truth, it is evident that our own power of dominating
physical causation renders supernatural action on the part
of the First Cause not only credible, but to be anticipated
a' priori. Creative action, miracles, response to prayer,
and the bestowal after death of rewards and punishments
according to our exercise of volition during life, are not
only completely congruous with a philosophy which asserts
the freedom of the will, but are made antecedently probable by such philosophy. Indeed, that such is really the
case may be judged from a consideration of who those
are who deny our power of free volition. They are one
and all opponents of religion, natural as well as revealed.
It is daily becoming more and more apparent, that to deny
free will is to deny even the existence-still more the obligation-of virtue, to uproot every possible basis of morality, and to eliminate from the social organism those legal
sanctions, and even those modes of speech, which are
bound  up  with  the  very existence  of "rights"  and
"duties." Yet these men, finding themselves forced by
inexorable logic to accept religion if they accept free will,
prefer to deny it, in spite of all the above-mentioned consequences,-prefer to be untrue to the dicta of their own
intellects as to necessary truths, and even to commit the
absurdity of denying the supreme certainty to them of their
I9I 
Contemp5orary Evo?ution.
own existence; more than this, they have every appearance of rejoicing in the doctrine of the bestiality of man,
in the belief that they have no sentiment or aspiration
which is not in root and essence the desire of food, or the
brutal appetite of sex, or the dread of brutes more powerful or more malignant than themselves. This phenomenon
is one of much  interest, and very instructive.   At  first
sight it seems almost incredible that such bitter hostility
should exist. Yet, apart from religion, a certain explanation presents itself in the trial to pride which arises from
the admission of free will, since it places the poorest
peasant on an absolute equality, as to morality, with the
most cultured and refined, since both are equally capable
of exercising rational, meritorious volition.   If there is
such a thing as morality at all, it must necessarily be beyond comparison, as to value, with mental refinement,
culture, or intellectual capacity; and it necessarily follows,
that a rude savage, with no implements but a few chipped flints, may be above all comparison in nobility with
the greatest of our agnostic philosophers, "while a poor,
paralysed old woman, sitting in a chimney-corner, may,
by her good aspirations and volitions, be repeatedly performing mental acts, compared with which the discovery
by Newton of the law of gravitation is as nothing."*
Moreover, in free will and morality we have that which
* "Lessons from Nature," p. 380.
I92 
Phizoso,phic Evolution.'
cannot be merely the result of the inheritance of the
habitual actions, feelings, and imaginations of brutes.
Conceptions of time and space may be with apparent
plausibility (though not without real absurdity) represented as the results of structural modifications induced
in a practically infinite brute ancestry, which had been
ever submitted to conditions of time and space; but at
any rate such ancestry was never at any time submitted
to conditions of moral responsibility. It is in this way
that the recognition of a power of choice in man, which
only those false to their own reason can deny, renders
the belief that man has been developed from a brute a
true absurdity-a physical superstition which must vanish
before the light spread abroad by a more diffused knowledge of the powers and declarations of the human intellect.
III. With respect to "nature," the modern conception
of it is in many respects, as has been lately said, a return to older views, or at least harmonises with such.
The prevailing views are indeed simply pantheistic, but
all that is positive in such views may be easily assimilated with philosophic theism. Indeed, it may be affirmed
that much in modern physiology demands the philosophy of Aristotle as its logical complement, and the
doctrine of biological evolution needs pre-eminently the
aid of the peripatetic doctrine of "matter" and "form."
Mr. Spencer's view of evolution itself may be taken
I93 
Contemporary Evolution.
up and included within a larger one, which will then
assume the part  of "form" to the "matter"  provided
for us by Mr. Spencer.
Mr. Spencer's law is, that everything in the material
universe is proceeding from an indefinite, incoherent homogeizeity to a  definite, coherent heterogeneity.   But he
supplies us with no explanatory basis for this law. We
can see, by his system, neither its origin, its ultimate
future, nor the principle of its continuity. Our philosophy, however, shows us (by means of our self-conscious
substantial Ego, endowed with the power of knowing
objective truth) a necessary First Cause-which amongst
its attributes must have an intelligence and a will, such
as find  their faint and  inadequate type in  the corresponding faculties of the human soul. Such a Cause, as
intelligent, cannot be self-contradictory, and hence necessarily follows  the continuity of cosmical evolution.   It
must, as Will, have such an intensity of "purpose," that
no human purpose can be comparable with it. "Hence
necessarily follows'final causality'-the enchainment of
all phenomena and their adaptation to ends in a heriarchy of augmenting activities, from celestial revolutions
and  the attractions  and  cohesions  of sidereal  masses,
through vegetative life and animal sentiency up to
self-consciousness and  free volition; so that, from  kingdom to kingdom, the creation may rise towards an
ideal-by successively higher degrees of participation in
194 
lo
Phzilosophic Evoa/ution.
the  perfection  of the  First  Cause itself."*    By the
union of these two laws of (I) continuity, and (2)
final causality, the whole phenomena of the universephysical, biological, political, moral, and religious-may
be really explained and understood, and Mr. Spencer's
law may be accepted as conveniently expressing its
material aspect and mode of action. Whether or not
the teleological part of this conception can be gathered
from mere irrational nature directly, it can most certainly be obtained from a consideration of what is involved in our own self-consciousness. When such implication is brought thence and applied to the universe,
nature, on a large scale and when broadly read, loudly
confirms it, though, as might be expected, the application of the human mind to the task of thoroughly comprehending the purposes of God in any given phenomenon has led, as it must necessarily always lead, to delusion and disappointment.
The phenomena of cosmical evolution are presented by
the Sensist school in terms of matter and force, and Mr.
Spencer presents us with matter also reduced to conceptions of force. But that the universe can be explained
by the conceptions of one sole force by itself, without
any other force or any matter upon which such solitary
force may act, is an evident absurdity. We must there
* " Lessons from Nature," p. 358.
I95 
Contemporary Evolution.
fore conceive at least two forces, or force and matter.
But for a solitary force to act upon matter, that matter,
even if consisting of but a single element, must have
certain qualities and powers of response to incident forces
-i.e., we must conceive latent potentialities which incident forces may render actualities. "Hence we get the
formal law of cosmical evolution-whereof Mr. Spencer's
law  is the material expression.   This formal law may
be defined as the continuous progress of the material
universe by the unfolding of latent potentialities through
the action of incident forces in harmony with a pre-ordained end, such unfolding exhibiting a change from
indefinite incoherent homogeneity to definite coherent
heterogeneity." *
It was before observed, that reason shows us that phenomenal changes, even if eternal, require an eternal absolute cause.   It shows it us thus:  The  principle of
causality teaches us that everything must be absolute or
caused.   Science  reveals to us an indefinite series of
passed phenomenal changes, but points to no beginning.
Reason does not affirm that such changes may not have
proceeded in cycles from all eternity, owing to an eternal
collection of causal  factors.   If such collocation and
factors be the absolute, we have pantheism, which is to be
refuted by a priori demonstrations of reason as well as
* " Lessons from Nature," p. 36I.
I96 
PAilosophic Evo?iion.
by the positive dicta of our intellect in the sphere of
morality, revealing to us an absolute distinction between
good and evil, which pantheism necessarily denies.   If
such collocation and factors be not the absolute, they are
caused (that they are really fortuitous would probably be
asserted by none of our modern school of philosophy,
and this alternative may be neglected as absurd and obsolete). If such collocation and factors be caused, they
cannot be caused by the whole sum of the phenomenal
series, since this is the effect; still less by any part of it.
They must, then, be caused by something external to the
series and to the collocation of causal factors. "But if the
phenomenal universe be eternal, this cause must be
eternal. It must be absolute, as the cause of everything
phenomenal and relative. It must be orderly and intelligent, as the cause of an orderly series of phenomena
which reveals to us an objective intelligence in the bee
and ant, not that of such animals themselves, but which
harmonises with, and is recognised by, our own intellect."*
It must be adequate to produce all the phenomena which
have been produced-amongst them power, intelligence,
morality, and will; in other words, it must be God.
This Divine First Cause thus recognised by our intellect
as necessarily existing, is more or less qualitatively revealed to us in the material universe according as we
* Op. cit., p. 358.
197 
Conle9ian orary Evo/utiou.
extend the sphere of our observations. It is concealed
most completely when the inanimate creation is alone
considered.   It seems  to  assume  a  pantheistic form
when  we  rise no higher than  the brute  creation.   If
man alone occupies our attention, a narrow anthropomorphic deism may be the result; but from a sympathetic study of the whole universe-the mineral, vegetable,
animal, and human creations, including intellect, morality,
and will,-the conception of Almighty God becomes fully
revealed to the human intellect.
The process of evolution, as carried through the material world, shows us the evolution from potentiality into
actuality of successively new forms. We cannot imagine
how they are produced; we simply recognise that they
are. In passing to the vegetable world from the mineral
kingdom, we behold, for the  first time manifested,  a
vital form.   In passing to the animal world from the
vegetable kingdom, we behold, for the first time manifested, a sentient form. In passing to the human world
from the kingdom of brute animals, we behold, for the
first time manifested, a rational form.
With our entrance on the world of self-conscious reason and free volition, we impinge upon another order of
being from that revealed to us by all below it-an order
of being which the cosmical universe, as it were, intersects, as the different lines of cleavage and stratification
may intersect in the same rock.
I98 
Philosofhic Evol/ution.
The mingling of the hyperphysical world of rationality
with the irrational creation is paralleled by the existence
of crystals in plants, and by the action of the vegetable
kingdom in modifying the results of merely physical
and chemical laws.
Such mingling is again paralleled by the action of
plants on animals and of animals on plants (as, e.g., the
necessity of insect-life for the fertilisation of many, and
even for the nutrition of some plants), such fertilising
action, perhaps, even occasioning important variations.
Modern science convincingly shows us that truth which
St. Thomas taught centuries ago-that a successively increasing purpose runs through the irrational creation up
to man. Cosmical entities and their laws do serve organic
being more than inorganic, sentient being more than
insentient, rational being more than sentient. Therefore,
if the First Cause wills at all, He must have willed most
service to man of all known creatures.
This increase of service (and consequent dependence)
becomes manifest when we consider the following truths:
"The inorganic world can do without the organic, but
not vice versa.  The vegetable world can exist without
the animal, but not vice versd. The animal world can
do without the rational world as experienced by us, but
not vice versa. Therefore, if there is iiztecztioit at all, all
things are for man in the chief degree.
"The same law of progress extends through the evolu
I99 
Contemporary Evolution.
tion of human society. In politics, in law, in science, in
art, and in religion,* we find the same law of evolution
-continuity and final causality resulting in the manifestation of increasingly stable and definite varieties of
being." t
IV. The last and supremely important result of
modern philosophical controversies is the vividness with
which they force on the many a higher appreciation of
the awful, the inconceivable majesty of God, under the
irrational term "the Unknowable." Certainly, however,
nothing said on this subject by Mr. Spencer or by any
other agnostic writer has not in effect been said over
and over again by theologians of early, mediaeval, and
recent times. It is indeed amusing to read Mr. Spencer's
objection to the application of the term  "personality"
to the First Cause as being inadequate, as if in so
saying he had said anything new or important.
If he had only inquired, he would have found that
every tyro in theology knows that  not even  "being"
can be predicated univocally of God and creatures,
while  the  special term  hyperhypostasis is one familiar
to theologians as denoting the supreme Personality, and
is used to distinguish It from every subordinate and
dependent personality. For all this, it cannot be denied
* See Dr. Newman's great work, "An Essay on the Development
of Christian Doctrine."
t "Lessons from Nature," p. 360.
200 
Philosoaphic Evozliizioi.
that grossly inadequate and absurdly anthropomorphic
conceptions of God are far too common, while popular
preachers or writers, by their inaccurate language, tend
to spread yet farther such grossness and absurdity. Of
course, after all, the difference between our highest conceptions of God and those of the rudest boor are as
nothing compared with the difference between such
highest conceptions and the Divine reality. Nevertheless,
although our conceptions of God cannot be appreciably
raised when viewed in relation to Him, yet in relation
to ourselves they of course can be; and it is a very
great gain to us to obtain and spread abroad in any
way a somewhat higher and less inadequate notion of
the being and nature of our Almighty Creator.
Now the controversy respecting "the Unknowable"
must tend in this direction, and therefore really helps
to promote that very theology which agnostics would
fain abolish.
We may reasonably hope, with respect to many
of these opponents of theology, that their opposition
may be due rather to ignorance than to malice, and to
want of acquaintance with the conception of God really
entertained by Christian theologians. It may thus not
be out of place to cite here the following passage, in
which one of the most widely revered priests of our
own country now living expresses the teaching of the
Christian religion in this matter.
~* -!-'aI 
20I 
Co;l,c:iiorziy  Evol/?uzioi.
He tells us that
"As in the human frame there is a living principle,
acting upon it and through it by means of volition; so.
behind the veil of the visible universe there is an invisible, intelligent Being, acting on and through it,
as and when He  will.   This invisible Agent is in no
sense a soul of the world, after the analogy of human
nature; but, on the contrary, is absolutely distinct from
the world, as being its Creator, Upholder, Governor, and
Sovereign Lord. Here we are at once brought into the
circle of doctrines which the idea of God embodies. I
mean, then, by the Supreme Being, one who is simply
self-dependent, and the only being who is such; moreover, that He is without beginning, or eternal, and the
only eternal; that in consequence He has lived a whole
eternity by Himself; and hence that He is all-sufficient
for His own blessedness, and all blessed, and ever blessed.
Further, I mean a Being who, having these prerogatives,
has the supreme good, or rather is the supreme good,
or has all the attributes of good in infinite greatness; all
wisdom, all truth, all justice, all love, all holiness, all
beautifulness; who is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent; ineffably one, absolutely perfect; and such, that
what we do not know, and cannot even imagine of Him,
is far more wonderful than what we do and can. I mean,
one who is sovereign over His own will and actions,
though always according to the eternal rule of right and
..'.
0 2 
Phziloso~phic Evolution.
wrong, which is Himself. I mean, moreover, that He
created all things out of nothing, and preserves them
every moment, and could destroy them as easily as He
made them; and that, in consequence, He is separated
from them by an abyss, and is incommunicable in all His
attributes. And further, He has stamped upon all things,
in the hour of their creation, their respective natures, and
has given them their work and mission and their length
of days, greater or less, in their appointed place. I mean,
too, that He is ever present with His works, one by one,
and confronts everything He has made by His particular
and most loving Providence, and manifests Himself to
each according to its needs; and on rational beings has
imprinted the moral law, and given them power to obey
it, imposing on them the duty of worship and service,
searching and scanning themn through and through with
His omniscient eye, and putting before them a present
trial and a judgment to come.
"Such is what theology teaches about God, a doctrine,
as the very idea of its subject matter presupposes, so
mysterious as in its fulness to lie beyond any system,
and to seem even in parts to be irreconcilable with itself,
the imagination being unable to embrace what the reason
determines. It teaches of a Being infinite, yet personal;
all blessed, yet ever operative; absolutely separate from
the creature, yet in every part of the creation at every
moment;  above all things,  yet under everything.   It
203
:.:...1.. 
Contemporary Evolution.
teaches of a Being who, though the highest, yet in the
work of creation, conservation, government, retribution,
makes Himself, as it were, the minister and servant of
all; who, though inhabiting eternity, allows Himself to
take an interest, and to feel a sympathy, in the matters
of space and time. His are all beings, visible and invisible, the noblest and the vilest of them; His are the substance, and the operation, and the results of that system
of physical nature into which we are born; His, too, are
the powers and achievements of the intellectual essences,
on which  He  has bestowed an independent action and
the gift of organisation.
"The laws of the universe, the principles of truth, the
relation of one thing to another, their qualities and
virtues, the order and harmony of the whole, all that
exists, is from Him; and, if evil is not from Him, as
assuredly it is not, this is because evil has no substance
of its own, but is only the defect, excess, perversion, or
corruption of that which has. All we see, hear, and touch,
the remote sidereal firmament, as well as our own sea
and land, and the elements which compose them, and
the ordinances they obey, are His. The primary atoms of
matter, their properties, their mutual action, their disposition and collocation, electricity, magnetism, gravitation, light, and whatever other subtle principles or operations the wit of man is detecting or shall detect, are the
works of His hands. From Him has been every move
204
.::.:.... ~ 
Philosophic Evolution.
mnent which has convulsed and refashioned the surface of
the earth.
"The most insignificant or unsightly insect is from Him,
and good in its kind; the ever teeming, inexhaustible
swarms of animalcule, the myriads of living motes invisible to the naked eye, the restless, ever spreading vegetation which creeps like a garment over the whole earth,
the lofty cedar, the umbrageous banana, are His. His
are the tribes and families of birds and beasts, their
graceful forms, their wild gestures, and their passionate
cries. And so in the intellectual, moral, social, and
political world. Man, with his motives and works, his
languages, his propagation, his diffusion, is from Him.
Agriculture, medicine, and the arts of life, are His gifts.
Society, laws, government, He is their sanction. The
pageant of earthly royalty has the semblance and the
benediction of the Eternal King. Peace and civilisation,
commerce and adventure, wars when just, conquest when
humane and necessary, have His co-operation and His
blessing upon them.   The course of events, the revolution of empires, the rise and fall o.f states, the periods
and eras, the progresses and the retrogressions of the
world's history, not indeed the incidental sin, over
abundant as it is, but the great outlines and the issues
of human affairs, are- from His dispositions. The elements
and types and seminal principles and constructive powers
of the moral world, in ruins though it be, are to be
205 
Contemnporary Evolulion.
referred to  Him.    He'enlighteneth  every man  that
cometh into this world.'   His are the dictates of the
moral sense, and the retributive reproaches of conscience.
To Him must be ascribed the rich endowments of the
intellect, the radiation of genius, the imagination of the
poet, the sagacity of the politician, the wisdom (as Scrip ture calls it) which now rears and decorates the Temple,
now manifests itself in proverb or in parable. The old
saws of nations, the majestic precepts of philosophy, the
luminous maxims of law, the oracles of individual wisdom,
the traditionary rules of truth and justice and religion,
even though imbedded in the corruption, or alloyed with
the pride, of the world, bespeak  His original agency,
and His long suffering presence. Even where there is
habitual rebellion against Him, or profound, far-spreading
social depravity, still the undercurrent, or the heroic outburst of natural virtue, as well as the yearning of the
heart after what it has not, and its presentiment of its
remedies, are to be ascribed to the Author of all good.
Anticipations or reminiscences of His glory haunt the
mind of the self-sufficient sage and of the pagan devotee;
His writing is upon the wall, whether of the Indian fane
or of the porticoes of Greece. He introduces Himself, He
all but concurs, according to His good pleasure, and in
His selected season, in the issues of'unbelief, superstition,
and false worship, and changes the character of acts by
His overruling operation.   He condescends, though He
2o6 
Philosophic Evolution.
gives no sanction, to the altars and shrines of imposture,
and He makes His own fiat the substitute for its sorceries.
He speaks amid the incantations of Balaam, raises
Samuel's spirit in the witch's cavern, prophesies of the
Messias by the tongue of the sybil, forces python to
recognise His ministers, and baptises by the hand of
the misbeliever. He is with the heathen dramatist in his
denunciations of injustice and tyranny, and his auguries
of Divine vengeance upon crime. Even on the unseemly
legends of a popular mythology He casts His shadow, and
is dimly discerned in the ode or the epic, as in troubled
water or in fantastic dreams. All that is good, all that is
true, all that is beautiful, all that is beneficent, be it great
or small, be it perfect or fragmentary, natural as well as
supernatural, moral as well as material, comes from Him"
("Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University
Education," pp. 91-97).
From all the foregoing considerations, minds tolerably
free from prejudice can hardly fail to deduce certain
practical conclusions.
I. Worshippers of God are often reproached with seeking to influence their Deity to unduly favour them by the
use of flattery; while yet (it is urged) no mere man, if
good, would allow himself to be influenced by praises or
abject entreaties, or by expressions of reverence and selfabasement, whether by word or gesture. But any one who
has gone through the modern controversy as to "the
207 
Contem.porary Evolution.
Unknowable" must logically admit that this reproach and
this argument are nothing less than absurd. He must
recognise that there is no parity whatever between praise,
entreaty, and reverence as addressed to man, and praise,
entreaty, and reverence as addressed to God. It is contemptible to flatter men, because it is wrong, and contemptible to say that which we know not to be true;
but to flatter God is simply inmpossible. Reverence of
an extreme kind paid to man is contemptible, because
it is a mode of lying, of asserting a disparity and a
superiority which in truth do not exist; but with God
it is quite otherwise.   No  Oriental prostrations  can
even approximately express the reverence with which
reason declares it fitting for a creature to approach his
Creator, regard being had to that Creator's majesty
alone. A worship which by every outward expression
should denote a reverence and adoration such as no
words could declare would, from this point of view,
surely be that which could alone deserve the epithet of
rational.
2. The recognition of God's inconceivable greatness,
joined with our clear perception of all that is implied in
our own free will, must force on the student of this
modern controversy a special apprehension of the nature
of opposition to Him.   If "the Unknowable" be  all
that we are told It is,-if, in other words, God exists,
a Being of absolute beauty and holiness, it follows as a
208 
Philoso)hic Evolution.
necessary consequence that no other evil can be so great
as to.be even for a moment comparable with that of a
deliberate or habitual denial of worship, or any other act
of rebellion  against Him.   Another  consequence  also
becomes plain; namely, the culpability of those who are
careless and indifferent, not caring to inquire seriously
and  deeply into the truths of religion.   Nay, a state
of mind which enters upon such  an inquiry with the
same placidity that befits an inquiry into some purely
historical or critical problem is also blameworthy.   It
is blameworthy, because a will rightly directed cannot
but lead its possessor to most earnestly desire that the
doctrines of natural religion (the existence of an all
holy God, the rewarder in another world of those who
strive to follow the dictates of conscience  here) may
prove to be true.  The absence of such desire, then, is
in itself a sufficient proof of a bad will. The Author of
nature declares to us, through our reason, what, as the
Author of grace, He declares through revelation, that
"He that is not with Me, is against Me; and he that
gathereth not with Me, scattereth."
It thus appears that the true line to be drawn as regards
men is between those who have and those who have not
a will to adore, love, and serve God. This is taught by
the Church in allowing the possibility of salvation to all
who, being through no fault of theirs ignorant of revelation, simply worship a Deus ui'us et remunerator, and in
10
209 
Contemporary Evolution.
affirming that one pure mental act of love of God alone,
or with contrition if needed, suffices for justification.
Tender consideration and loving sympathy are due to
all who reject revealed religion because they cannot'see
how it accords with their notions of God's perfections.
But, unhappily, it is impossible to doubt but that there
are men who reject all divine worship because they
will submit to no being whatever, and who even pass on
to "hate God"  with all their heart, with all their soul,
with, all their mind, and with all their strength; thus
beginning, even in this world, a hatred of their Creator
which may exist eternally.
3. These considerations, as the present writer has elsewhere* observed, cannot but bring home to the student
how evidently true is the saying that God's ways cannot
be as our ways, and how, therefore, "the action which
we discover immanent in the material universe may be
rationally taken to be from God. In that universe we
find an acticn the results of which harmonise with man's
reason, which is orderly, which disaccords with the action
of blind chance and with the'fortuitous concourse of
atoms' of Democritus; but, at the same time, an action
which ever, in part and in ultimate analysis, eludes our
grasp, and the modes of which are different from those
by which we should have attempted to accomplish such
* "Lessons from Nature," p. 374.
2IO 
PhilosopAhic Evolution.
ends.   The inconsistency is surely very great of those
who assert that all our knowledge comes from experience,
and at the same time that'creative action' is incredible,
because nature affords no evidence of it. It is so great,
because that action must necessarily be unperceived and
uncomprehended by us, since of creative action we have
and can have no experience whatever. The action of God
must necessarily be unimaginable by us in its fulness, but
its reality and efficiency can be very clearly conceived as
incessant and universal in every form of being known to
us.  God is thus neither withdrawn from nor identified
with His material creation, and no part of it is left devoid
of meaning or of purpose. The poet's plaint as to the
flower'born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on
the desert air' is thus manifestly uncalled for-every
creature of every order of existence being ever, while
its existence is sustained, so complacently contemplated
by God, that the intense and concentrated attention of all
men of science together upon it could but form an utterly
inadequate symbol of such divine contemplation."
4. There is yet one more practical consideration which
this controversy seems well fitted to bring home vividly
to the student of it; namely, the question of "worship." The consistent evolutionist, who fully apprehends
the great principle of continuity, must recognise the utter hopelessness of any one inventing de novo a form of
worship of "the Unknowable" capable of satisfying the
2I I 
Contemporary Evolution.
intellectual, moral, and esthetic tendencies of men of
culture.  Perceiving the fact that the ascending process
of evolution is "integrating" and not "disintegrating,"
and that, speaking broadly and on the whole, the later
developments are superior to the earlier, it seems inevitable that the rational and consistent evolutionist should
go to mass.
Recognising  "the Unknowable" as everywhere present in nature, the evolutionist must recognise that a
fitting worship shall embrace as wide a field of existences and activities as is compatible with historical
evolution. He will not affect to despise the senses and
emotions any more than the intellect as involved in
such worship; rather, being impressed (as a follower of
Herbert Spencer) with the vivid permeability of those
channels which lead to irreligious emotions, he will see
the reasonableness of facilitating religious emotion by
supplying it with easily permeable channels, and of
bringing in as much as possible instead of excluding
vivid sensations.
In the various fragmentary relics of.the Church's worship which have been adopted by the sects, the reason of
the evolutionist can hardly fail to be tried and irritated
by a service (which is a product of mere disintegrating
action) in which worship consists of sentences distinctly
uttered in the vernacular tongue, followed by a sermon
with which it is very likely he will have but little sym
212 
Philosophic Evolution.
pathy. At mass his intellect, though amply exercised,
should he so will it, yet need not be tried by the hearing of a single word from beginning to end. His -esthetical instincts may be gratified by treasures of the
organic and inorganic worlds, by products of human skill,
whether of the artisan or the musician, and by the solemn
movements and stately rhythms of motion incident to
the sacred rite. His historical sentiments will be gratified by contemplating a worship essentially the same
as that spread over our land before these last three
centuries  of repression; a  worship  the same as that
which aided to weld together Normans and Saxons
into our English race; the same as that which has afforded  spiritual  support  to all those  the  world  has
deemed most holy-to Fe'nelon, Vincent of Paul, Aquinas, Francis, and Augustine. Even dimly, as in a glimmering twilight, he may see in the sacred offerings and
the accompaniments of flowers, of tapers, and of perfumes, suggestions of a past, remote indeed, even of the
early worship of his primitive Aryan forefathers in their
Eastern home. The "reasonable service" of Him who
is at once the source and maintainer of all evolution
from the merely physical to that of human society
should surely have this harmonious universality of character. If "the Unknowable," if Almighty God is to be
vorshipped at all, the consistent evolutionist must surely
deem that worship to be most fitting which has thus
2 1 3 
Conlemptorary Fvolution.
from century to century grown on and on in one progressive process of increasing integration.   The  evolutionist, recognising the First Cause everywhere, and also
(if a consistent follower of Mr. Spencer) recognising the
need of religion, must require a real worship of profound, at least mentally prostrate, adoration of that
Cause as actually present here and now. Such a one
could not surely find a more fitting mode of worship
than the one suggested. Being himself a creature under
conditions of space and time, and necessitated to frame
his thoughts according to such conditions, he must worship, if he worship at all, the First Cause under those
limitations. In joining in worship at the elevation of
the host he cannot err, since, as he admits his Deity
everywhere, he must surely be also THERE. Nay, he
must needs admit that He is emphatically and supereminently there in that which is the centre of devotion
to those present, anid which has been the centre of
devotion and worship of all the holiest souls the world
has seen for many centuries past.
But if the follower of Herbert Spencer, convinced of
the existence of an inconceivably high First Cause, which,
from reverence alone, he refrains from calling personal,
should so assist at the Church's highest act of worship,
evzery doubter as to theism may rationally also so assist.
In offering a hypothetical worship such doubter palters
with no truth, but only manifests his goodwill to perform
214 
Phzlosophci Evolution.
a duty, should the existence of such duty be a reality, as
to which, by the hypothesis, he is in a state of uncertainty. If he is sincerely desirous of having his doubts
resolved, surely he must feel convinced that such a
manifestation of goodwill can have no other than a
beneficial effect (supposing a personal First Cause
exists) while in no case can it harm or degrade him,
since he is not supposed to give any assent to that
which he does not really accept, but being confessedly
in a state of doubt, he offers only a hypothetical worship, such as should rationally accompany the existence
of such doubt, though not, of course, the existence of a
state of positive and absolute negation, such as hardly
any modern English philosopher openly avows.
Glancing backwards over the course we have traversed, it seems borne in upon us that the logical
development of that process which Philip the Fair
began is probably advancing, however slowly, to a result very generally unforeseen.   But if such result as
that here indicated be the probable outcome of philosophical evolution, Christianity has once more evidently
nothing whatever to fear from it. A philosophy which
as a complement unites in one all other systems, will
harmonise with a Religion which as a complement synthesises all other religions, and not only religions properly so-called, but atheism also.
Atheism, pantheism, and pure deism running their
215 
Contemporary Evolution.
logical course, and mutually refuting each other, find an
ultimate synthesis in Christianity, as we have before found
them to do in nature.   Christianity affirms the truth
latent in atheism, namely, that God, as He is, is unimaginable and inscrutable by us; in other words, no such
God as we can imagine exists. It also affirms the truth
in pantheism, that God acts in every action of every
created thing, and that in Him we live and move and are
Finally, it also asserts the truth of deism, but by its other
assertions escapes the objections to which deism by itself
is liable from opposing systems. Similarly, Christianity
also effects a synthesis between theism and the worship
of humanity, and that by the path not of destruction, but
through the nobler conception of "taking the manhood
into God."
It may be well to conclude this chapter by a retrospect.
Our investigations concerning social, political, scientific,
and philosophic evolution have but led us to what we
might have a' priori anticipated-the conclusion that the
highest and most intellectual power is that which must
ultimately dominate the inferior forces. Neither political
nor scientific developments can avail against the necessary
consequences of philosophical evolution. No mistake can
be greater than that of supposing that philosophy is but
a mental luxury for the few. An implicit, unconscious
philosophy possesses the mind and influences the conduct
of every peasant. Metaphysical doctrines, sooner or later,
2i6 
Philosophic ~volution.
filter down from the cultured few to the lowest social
strata, and become, for good or ill, the very marrow of
the bones, first of a school, then of a society, ultimately
of a nation. The course of general philosophy, it is here
contended, is now returning to its legitimate channel after
a divergence of some three centuries' duration. This return cannot affect prejudicially the Christian Church, but
must strengthen and aid it, and thus that beneficial action
upon it of political and scientific evolution, before represented as probable, will be greatly intensified, and the
great movement of the RENAISSANCE hereafter take its
place as the manifestly efficient promoter of a new development of the Christian organism such as the first
twenty centuries of its life afforded; it no opportunity to.manifest.
217 
CHAPTER VI.
FSTIHETIC EVOLUTION.
F the reasoning hereinbefore put forward is correct, the
influences of social, political, scientific, and philosophical evolution can have no other ultimate effect than
that of strengthening and advancing the Christian Church.
It might then be expected by the reader that a further
question should next be considered, namely, one concerning that evolution of religion itself which is now taking
place around us-its antecedents, its present action, its
results; and this would form a most deeply interesting
subject of inquiry. For the Christian religion claims to
be not the true religion, but simply religion-the only
religion which ever was, is, or shall be. The patent fact
that various forms of heathenism have existed, exist, and
will for a time continue to exist, is not of course denied;
but it is asserted that all these religions differ from the
Christian as being fragmentary, distorted, and therefore
misleading representations of the one great truth conveyed
to us in- its entirety by Christianity, just as the Church
itself differs from the sects as being the synthesis of all
those truths they severally hold.   The  religion of the
Christian Church claims to differ from all other systems,
heathen or Christian, not as one coloured ray of light 
,sthetic Evolution.
differs from another-the violet from the red of the solar
spectrum,-but as white light differs from all the coloured
lights as being the synthesis resulting from their harmonious blending in one perfect unity.
Now were we to treat of the process of religious evolution which we see going on about us, that process might
be regarded as it takes place within and without the great
Christian organism.  But the evolutionary process within
the Church has been once for all elucidated with a master
hand by Dr. Newman in his great work on "The Development of Christian Doctrine;" and it is well worthy of
remark, that this contribution to the great theory of
evolution was one of the first. Its sagacious author anticipated the doctrines of Spencer, of Darwin, and of Haeckel,
though he restrained their application strictly within the
area of his proper subject. It should not be forgotten by
those who esteem so highly the doctrine of evolution, that
almost the first, and perhaps the most solid and enduring
contribution towards it, was in the domain of theology,
and by one of the most uncompromising supporters of
sacerdotalism and the supernatural.
It would be presumptuous for one who is no theologian
to attempt to follow in such footsteps. It will be enough
to observe that the generation which has gone by since
that era-marking work appeared has apparently justified
its assertions and predictions.   The culmination of the
process has been the grieat Vatican decree, the keystone
2I9 
Contemporary Evolhiiton.
of the great arch of civil and religious liberty,-a decree
which Germany now proves to us to have been dictated
by a more than mortal prescience.
As to the characters presented by contemporary religious evolution outside the Church, we have already, in the
first chapter, pointed out that the religious disruption of
the sixteenth century resulted in two distinct yet intermixed processes and tendencies. One of these was simply distinctive and pagan, and has ended in the widespread negation of all religion which we see in Germany
to-day. The other was the formation of the various sects,
such as Lutheranism, Calvinism, Anglicanism, Puritanism,
etc., etc. In the present day it is sufficiently obvious
that these various religious bodies are undergoing a more
or less slow process of disruption and dissolution, and
their adherents tending, with greater or less rapidity,
either towards anti-theism on the one hand or towards
the Church upon the other.
Closely connected, however, with the evolution of religion is that of aesthetic evolution; and this essay may
perhaps be fitly closed by an endeavour to pourtray-some
few of the probable effects of the great modern movement
of contemporary evolution upon Christian art.
It is generally admitted that art has been profoundly
affected by Christianity. The effect was indeed gradual, and
the changes which have taken place from the second and
third century have been due to the action of many other
220 
Esthetic Evolution..
causes also, but it cannot be contested but that Christianity has been at least one of the most important of
them.  Christian art as regards architecture culminated in
the thirteenth century. Sculpture and painting continued
to develop at the least until the end of the sixteenth century; but as they gained in natural beauty they lost the
Christian inspiration, and the nature of the artistic movement of the Renaissance has been already noted in the
first chapter.*
Now the greatest lover of Christian art, if he is candid
cannot deny the various imperfections of its early and
mediaeval efforts, nor the great improvement and advance
which in many respects marked the reappearance of the
pagan spirit in art.
Are we then to anticipate a complete severance between
high art and Christian symbolism of all kinds; or may
we hope that the decay of Christian art has been but the
prelude to its reappearance in a more perfect condition
hereafter, as the break up of the harmony of the grub or
larva into the discord of the chrysalis or pupa, results in
the more perfect harmony of the imago, or butterfly?
In the present day we have seen a great reaction against
the Renaissance movement,-architecturally in modern
gothic, pictorially in the school of Overbeck and preRaphaelism, and musically in a return to Palestrina and
* See ante, page 24.
22 I 
Contemporary Evolution.
Gregorian Church singing.   In sculpture, the reversion
has been less marked, yet it may be traced in many monumental effigies.
Still, nothing we have yet seen is, it must be confessed,
very encouraging. In order that this artistic evolution
should follow the general law, it should present us with
examples of a progress from a comparatively undifferentiated and simple beginning to a complex and heterogeneous result.
Now as regards MUSIC, the very controversies which
take place about it show that we have arrived at a new
conception; namely, the appropriateness of different styles
for different purposes.   When  the Gregorian style was
young, it was the general style of the day, and had no
special sacredness.
Similarly, the styles which succeeded were forms of
the fashion of their period, and the praises of love or
wine were celebrated in the same manner as the praise of
Christ and His saints. We have, then, now a new idea to
work upon, with immensely enriched materials, and music
is becoming curiously and deliberately Christian in a way
it never was before. Gregorian singing and the music of
Palestrina are made use of with a distinctly Christian
feeling and intention; and however different may be the
musical expression of the Christian religious sentiment in
the time to come, the foundations of its distinctness are
already laid, and its differentiation is determined.
222 
,slhetic EvolutIon.
III PAINTING, the beauty as to devotional expression
and religious conception of Fra Angelico and painters
of kindred schools was of course marred by a defective
knowledge of anatomy and many tecl,ical defects.  Yet
how superior are such works in religious expression to
later works, in other respects so superior! The process
of evolution in this art has now already given us two
distinct styles —sources of endless enjoyment —the landscape and the historical picture.   The  third style, the
religious, is yet in embryo; but we have already its
conception-the idea of painting consciously Christian,
and separate from other styles to a degree never thought
of before, yet making use of all the improvements
which the last three centuries have introduced.
Nevertheless, purely realistic painting and naturalism,
most suitable for landscape and historical subjects, are
now recognised as inappropriate, save as regards subordinate details, in attempts to pourtray what is infinitely
beyond human imagination. Purely religious subjects, it
is recognised, can only be pourtrayed symbolically; and
in order so to pourtray them, more may be learnt from
the devotional treatment and expression of earlier days
than from the artistic triumphs of later centuries.
Precisely the same considerations apply to SCULPTURE.
A development of this art may well, however, take place
in connection with religion beyond anything seen in
former days. It may do so, because when the absurdity
2e3 
Contemporary Evolttion.
of trying to do away with sacred images and image
worship is fully realised, the use of such may be expected
greatly to increase. The absurdity of trying to do without images will be appreciated at its just value when the
spread of philosophy will have made it axiomatic that
we cannot even think but by the help of sensible images
in our minds. The most rigid Puritan, the strictest Mahometan, cannot worship without worshipping imagesthe images of his own imagination formed by his own
brain-images in our own day far from likely to be taken
for realities (taken as objectively agreeing with what they
represent), and therefore far more misleading than any
solid images of wood or stone, against the adequacy of
which, as representatives of the divine, we are fully on
our guard.
In ARCHITECTURE again we have now developed a distinction which certainly did not exist in mediaeval times
-that between sacred and secular buildings. Then all
buildings were essentially of one style, and the refectory,
or hall-of justice, if of sufficient dimensions, might hardly
be distinguishable from the nave of a church. The form,
however, which church architecture should assume is a
matter of keen debate, and mostly between the advocates of the pointed style and those who admire modern
Italian architecture for church purposes. The arguments
by which these two views are supported have been put
forward in two articles which, appeared in the Dublin Re
224 
,s/helic Evolution.
view, and  a consideration  of them, as types  of two
schools, may serve to bring forward the author's views
as to the probable effect of the progress of modern
evolution on Christian church architecture.
The first of these articles was by an author who signed
himself H. W. B., and it appeared in the April number
of the Dublin Review for I872. The second article appeared in the January number of the succeeding year.
The first article advocated the employment of the
"gothic" style in our church architecture. The second
article gave the preference very decidedly to the "Italian."
H. W. B. advances the following arguments in favour of
the employment of " gothic" in our churches:-(I) It was
re-introduced amongst Catholics by the great and good
Bishop Milner; (2) it is the only architecture which has
originated under Christian influences; (3) it is the style
at present popular for ecclesiastical buildings; (4) it is
capable of adaptation to all needs; (5) its use is now
widely diffused over both hemispheres;  (6) it is cheap.
The writer further controverts the allegations of such
anti-goths as maintain:-(I) That gothic is anti-Roman;
(2) that it causes the obstruction of church interiors by
too many columns; (3) that gothic churches are dark;
(4) that they are cold; (5) that their constructive peculiarities cause the altar to be hidden from a large part of
the congregation. In opposition to these five assertions,
H. W. B. contends:-(i) That, far from being anti-Roman,
225 
Contemporary Evolution.
gothic is adopted by the zealous and uncompromising
ultramontanes of Germany and Holland; (2) that many
columns and narrow naves are by no means necessary
features of gothic (instancing the cathedrals of Alby and
Angers, seventy feet wide, that of Angouldme without
columns, and that of Terragona, in Spain, eighty feet
wide); (3) that gothic is the style which is par excellence
capable of admitting light, some of its structures being
almost all window, while Italian churches, like St. Paul's,
alone of English cathedrals, is incapable of being photographed internally; (4) that gothic churches can just as
easily be made warm as Italian ones; and (5) that the
altar can as easily be made visible to the congregation in
gothic as in any other style of architecture. This writer,
on the other hand, fully admits that a real and complete
Italian church is a fine and noble thing, but contends that
those generally built (or likely to be built by us in England
now) resemble mere unsightly rooms. Expense alone, he
asserts, would prevent the erection of really fine Italian
churches in England, an elaborate stucco ceiling (like that
of S. Peter in Montorio, in Rome) being likely to cost
more than would a stone vault, even if that stone were
marble.
The  other writer, the advocate of "Italian" church
architecture, opposes H. W. B., and replies to the follow
* Dblinii Review, January, I873, Art. v., p. 105.
226 
Esthetic Evolution.
ing effect.   He begins by conceding* that there is no
force in those five objections to gothic just noticed as
anti-Roman, over-columned, dark, cold, or hiding the
altar. These concessions are, however, followed by the
following hostile assertions:-He  says  (I) that gothic
churches are ill adapted to the existing exigencies of
Catholic worship; (2) that they are unsuited to the use
of paintings; (3) that they are also unfavourable to the
use of sacred images, which  latter were, he asserts, in
gothic architecture too much subordinated to architectural features; his chief contention, however, is (4) that
a majestic "unity"  finds expression  in almost every
Italian church, while in gothic ones unity is lost in multiplicity of detail and complexity of design. He asserts
again and again that a church should be the material
expression of a divine religious unity which can be apprehended "at one glance,"-that it should be well
adapted to the most recent developments of ritual, and
especially harmonious with the modern religious developments of the pictorial and plastic arts.   He also maintains that an Italian church need not cost more than a
similarly sized gothic one; and to the affirmation that
a common structure of the former style is a mere
"room," he rejoins by stigmatising an inferior gothic one
as a mere "barn."
Now it is not probable that the first of these writers
would deny the needfulness of the positive characters
227 
Contempfiorary Evoition.
for which the second writer contends, nor that the second
would repudiate the advantages desiderated by the first.
We may therefore venture to combine their requirements
as to the style of architecture really suited for a Christian
church. They will be as follows:-(i) That it should be
connected with saintly memories of the past; (2) that
it should have originated and have been greatly modified
through Christian influences; (3) that it should be widely
acceptable; (4) that it should be capable of adaptation
to varied circumstances; (5) that it should not be antiRoman;  (6) that it should be exactly fitted to our
existing modes of worship; (7) that it should not necessitate too many columns; (8) that it should not exclude
a due amount of light; (9) that it should not render
heating  exceptionally  difficult;  (IO) that  it should
manifest one predominant idea and exhibit an impressive unity; (I I) that it should afford good spaces for
the effective exhibition of paintings;- (I2) that it should;
harmonise with the use of sacred images according to
existing modes; (I3) that it should not be extraordinarily
expensive.   To  these requirements I would venture to
add: (I4) that it should be eminently rational as well
as beautiful, so as to be a fitting shrine for our "reasonable service."
By the word  "gothic" is here meant the successive
styles of architecture which prevailed from the very
earliest "early English "-or its Continental equivalent
228 
,sthetic Evolu/ion.
-— down to the latest "perpendicular" or "flamboyant."
But these styles are in many respects so diverse, that
it is difficult to find for them any common character
other than that of the employment of the pointed arch,
which runs through them all in the smallest ornamental
details as well as in the main constructive features, and
profoundly modifies and dominates the whole. Thus
the phrase "the pointed style," so commonly adopted
to denote what many call "gothic,"' is one admirably
chosen for its purpose, the pointed arch being the one
governing character of all forms of gothic.   The word
"Italian," as here used, denotes that style which has
prevailed generally, but especially in Italy, from the full
development of the transitional Renaissance down to the
revival of pointed architecture. As notable examples
may be taken S. Peter's, S. Andrea della Valle, and
the  Gesu,  of  Rome;  S.  Paul's,  of  London;  the
Pantheon and  S. Sulpice, of  Paris.   For  the  church
architecture of this post-medieval period it is perhaps
more difficult to find any positive common character
than for gothic architecture.   Perhaps it may best be
shortly described as  "round-arched,"  with  ornamental
details copied exclusively from or directly suggested by
pre-Christian Roman and Greek authorities, with a tendency to the use of the dome.
The lovers or advocates of the pointed style may
well contend that as to the first two of the fourteen
229 
Contemiporary Evolution.
requirements above enumerated it is unrivalled. Centuries must indeed elapse before any later style can
boast as many sainty associations as can that one which
ranged from the birth of S.. Bernard to that of S.
Ignatius.   These  associations, moreover, have  especial
force in England, owing  to the  apostasy which  synchronised with the abandonment of that style. Again,
it is evident that no other style is so emphatically and
exclusively Christian in its origin.
It may also be fairly maintained that gothic is now
widely acceptable; but it should not be forgotten there
is also a wide-spread hostility to its use, and that with
the very congregation with which the recent spread
of the Church in England is so signally connected —
the Oratorian, it does not appear to have found favour.
Far be it from me to be faint in acknowledging the
deference due to the judgment of our immortal Bishop
Milner, but there is another authority equally great on
the opposite side-that of Dr. Newman. The fourth
character, adaptability to varied circumstances, is one in
which gothic has indeed the advantage over Italian.
The very essence of gothic is the subordination of means
to ends; irregularity and asymmetry, instead of being
blemishes, add to the very attractiveness and picturesqueness of the pointed structures which display
them.   Not so with Italian architecture-rigid as to its
requirements in these respects, all buildings erected in
230 
,sthetic Evolution.
that style must subordinate all details of arrangement
to the general design adopted. The next requirement is
one of extreme importance and of deep significance
that, namely, of essential harmony with Rome.
The arguments brought forward by the first writer are
forcible enough.   It is most true that thorough-going
ultramontanes in France, Germany, and Holland have
built in the pointed style, and it may be added even
the Society of Jesus itself has habitually, as we all
well know, made use of it in England and elsewhere.
Nevertheless, there is a mode of favouring gothic which
is not-only anti-Roman but essentially anti-Christian, and
a danger attends the too eager advocacy of the former
which in no way attends the most zealous support of
Italian architecture.
A strong assertion of the claim of gothic to be the
"Christian" style, to the exclusion of all others, is almost tantamount to a reproach on the Church for
having consented to its abandonment in favour of a
revived "pagan" style.  It harmonises with the view
(so strongly put forward by Michelet in this connection)
that Christianity culminated at the period of Innocent
III. and S. Louis-at the time of the purest and most
perfect gothic architecture, that of the S. Chapelle-and
that since then Christianity itself  has  been  progressively decaying and disintegrating.
But the Christian Church, as has been before said,
23I 
Contemporary Evolution.
went forth from the  "upper  chamber" of Jerusalem
conquering and to conquer, and though always "militant" and never yet "triumphant," her course, in spite
of apparent superficial reverses, has been in fact a progress from victory to victory. Far from failing in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, her Catholicity became even more manifest, more explicitly developed, and
more consciously maintained on the part of her spiritual
children.
Any position, then, which leads us to view with want
of sympathy the post-mediaeval path of the Church is
essentially uncatholic in its tendency, and such a view
seems latent in that exclusive and passionate advocacy
of the pointed style which has occasionally found expression.   It seems to indicate the presence of a preference for the Church as she was at an earlier period,
instead of a loyal and undeviating fidelity to the Spouse
of Christ, as she exhibits herself to us at this day; and
it is where the gothic spirit is strongest out of England,
namely, in Germany and Holland, that the heresy of Reinkens has found both its birthplace and anointing.
It is not, of course, contended that gothic is essentially anti-Roman; but it is contended that it is
accidentally so, as will again appear in connection with
the next requirement, namely, fitness for the existing
ritual. Nothing could have been more admirably adapted
for the worship to be carried on within them than were
232 
Esthetic Evolulion.
the gothic churches at the time of their erection. Now,
however, the assistance of the laity at "office" has all
but ceased; nor have we, nor are we likely to have,
troops of canons, regular and secular, to fill the deep
stalled chancels and vast enclosed choirs of our mediaeval edifices. Almost daily benedictions, frequent expositions, and prayers recited at the altar's foot, to be
heard and responded to by the people find in general a
more suitable and congruous home in an Italian church
than in a real gothic structure, which is thus again,
to a certain extent, unavoidably anti-Roman. As to the
requirement that the interior should not be greatly obstructed by colnns, it has been demonstrated by the first
writer, and admitted by his opponent, that "gothic" by
no means necessitates its infringement.
The eighth requirement, that of an adequate supply of
light, can equally be met by either style. But the mode
of meeting it is different in both, and seems to the present writer to be objectionable in both. As H. W. B. most
justly observes, a gothic church may be "all window,"
as is the case with the noble pointed choir added to the
old Dom of Aachen; and indeed, the pointed style in
its fullest development, such as the choir of Beauvais,
with large lower windows and with double, glazed triforia as well as clerestory, becomes one enormous lantern.
Moreover, these pointed windows, with their graceful
tracery, are beautiful objects in themselves, apart from
11
233 
Contlnporary Evolution.
the glorious colours which should fill them. Nevertheless it cannot but be unreasonable and contradictory
to provide immense windows for the admission of light
and then exclude that very light by the treatment of
the material with which such windows are glazed; this
appears to be a serious objection, in addition to others
which will shortly be noticed in relation to painted
windows. Italian architecture is free from this glaring
irrationality, but then it is at the expense of presenting
ugly and staring gaps for the admission of light, instead
of the graceful fenestration of gothic architecture.  This
objectionable Italian feature is also likely to be much
more offensive and obtrusive in our dull climate than it
is in Italy, where the exclusion of sunlight is a boon to
be desired.
In connection with "light" naturally comes "heat";
but it is difficult to see how any one style can necessarily have any advantage over another with regard to affording facilities for the admission of manufactured warmth.
The tenth requirement proposed was that a church
"should manifest one predominant idea and exhibit an
impressive unity."   I think it must be conceded that
the advocate of the Italian style is right when he
says, that on entering an Italian church (say S. Peter's
or the Gesu), as opposed to a gothic one (say the
Cathedral of Canterbury or the Abbey Church of Westminster), one does receive an impression of majestic unity
234 
,-slhetic Evolution.
rather than of awe-inspiring complexity-that all is, as
he says, "taken in at a glance," instead of offering for
investigation a series of successive revelations of beauty
and mystery.   But to very many the absence  of this
element is one fatal defect in churches of the "Italian"
style. How many varied combinations, each as full of
interest as of beauty, are presented to us by a magnificent old gothic church, the original complexity of
which has been increased by the irregular additions
of succeeding centuries! At the same time, though it
would be a grievous loss to give up this rich element of
surprise and mystery, we need not shrink from admitting that gothic does leave something to be desired
as to unity, and does often, as in Canterbury, more or
less impoverish the general effect of a building as a
whole by excess of subdivision.   Most persons would
surely admit that a combination would be desirable in
which, while a majestic unity should be the prevailing
characteristic, a subordinate complexity, presenting unexpected mysterious features and varied combinations,
should by no means be excluded.
The next desirable feature of a modern church is that
perhaps in which gothic appears at the greatest disadvantage compared with Italian; namely, in the space
it affords for the effective exhibition of paintings.  In
addition to the relatively small unbroken wall (between
the many windows and architectural irregularities of sur
235 
Contemporary Evoluizon.
face), the effect of paintings must ever be ruined by the
brilliant hues of the material with which every window of
a perfect gothic church should be glazed. Thus, in spite
of the beauty of stained glass, it has in addition to its
intrinsic irrationality the grievous disadvantage of marring,
or rather destroying, the effect of perhaps the most important of the arts which minister to religion.*
But not painting alone; sculpture also (as now used
for purposes of devotion) finds a place more readily and
harmoniously in an Italian than in a gothic church.
In the former, holy images can attain both a larger and
more independent development than the latter, where
each, closely buried in its niche, assumes a quasi-architectural character. The second writer referred to goes on
indeed to add that in the gothic style "the images of our
Lord and the saints are not representations of our Lord
who came in the flesh, or of the saints, who were men of
like passions with ourselves. They are as if'clothed in
white samite, mystic, wonderful.'"   But this objection
seems a very unreasonable one. To assert that mediaeval
sculpture was necessarily defective, from the imperfect
anatomical knowledge of the period, would be reasonable enough; but to object to images which are to
suggest to us divine and sanctified beings as they now
are in glory, because they are "mystic" and "wonderful,"
* The church of S. Apollinaris at Remagen is a good example of
the incongruity of gothic with paintings.
236 
Ssheli/c Evolution.
seems to me a mistake. Surely such are the very cha racters which such images should present!
Passing by the requirement as to expense, which appears to be about equally capable of fulfilmeiit by either
gothic or Italian, we may pass to the last requirement,
that, namely, as to the reasonableness which should
pervade it and should manifest itself in the constructions
it inspires.   In this matter it must  be  allowed  that
gothic has a most decisive advantage over Italian. Mediaeval architecture has developed with admirable skill
the art of forming the largest and most durable constructions with the least expenditure of material. It may be
called emphatically the most rationalistic and truthful
system of stone construction which the world has yet
witnessed.   That canon for which Mr. Ruskin has had
so much credit, but which was, years before, enunciated
by Augustus Welby Pugin, "that nothing should be constructed for ornament, but that all construction should be
useful first, and secondarily made the vehicle for ornament," is thoroughly embodied in "pointed" architecture
alone.
No doubt this rule was occasionally transgressed by
medieval architects, as, e.g., by the designer of the west
front of Wells cathedral; but in Italian architecture it is
persistently ignored.   Thus the erection of flying buttresses is almost a necessity where a massive stone roof is
suspended at a great altitude over a spacious interior; but
237 
Contemporary Evolulion.
while such buttresses become, in the pointed style, objects
of beauty no less than of utility, in the architecture of
Italy they have no avowed place, and may be, as in
S. Paul's cathedral, concealed by an elaborate screen of
stone, which is doubly mendacious, since it denies the existence of constructions which it exists only to hide, and
at the same time tends to delude the observer as to the
real height of the walls, the altitude of which it falsifies by
exaggeration.   In gothic architecture, wherever  a door
or a window is really wanted, there it is placed. It is not
denied or disguised, but made manifest, and at the same
time ornamental.
It would be easy to adduce a multitude of examples,
but these are sufficient to illustrate the principle which
is here maintained; namely, that a temple of the God
who has given us our reason no less than our esthetic
instincts, and who is truth itself, should be both eminently
rational" and thoroughly "true."
Recapitulating, then, our short examination of the fitness for church architecture of the two styles, gothic and
Italian, it seems that neither one nor the other can be
deemed free from very serious objections.
But is there no alternative? Are we externally to oscillate from gothic to Italian, and from Italian to gothic?
Has the Church come to the end of her architectural
powers of expression after passing from the catacombs
through the basilica to the pointed minster, and back to
238 
,Esllzeic Evolution.
the classical revival of Italy? Believing, as has been asserted in this essay, that the Church's splendour in the
thirteenth century was but a faint adumbration of the
august future reserved for her even in this world, and while
still only the Church militant, it is probable that architecturally, no less than in other respects, what is yet to be
will be far more glorious than anything which yet has
been.
Readers may well ask whether there are any grounds for
this prediction,-whether the invention of a new style is to
be expected. Certainly no style was ever formed, nor, is it
probable that one will ever be formed, otherwise than by
gradual growth. Yet there does seem to be evidence of the
possibility of such future growth. A zealous Italian may
say, "You have objected to extreme gothicism as opposing
a Church of the past to the Church of to-day, and as blaming
its action in the post-mediaeval period; but you yourself
implicitly blame that period when you abuse the mendacity
and other failings of the architecture which during that
period it formed. This criticism would, however, be very
erroneous. We do not blame the course pursued in adopting and developing the Renaissance; on the contrary, we
believe it to have been the only wise and proper action
then possible. But it is one thing to say that an action
was, under given circumstances, the relatively best, and
quite another to say that such action would be, under
all circumstances, the absolutely best.
239 
Contemporary Evoittion.
If what is here advocated should find favour, it would
none the less have been impossible at the period referred
to. The Renaissance and subsequent architecture was a
necessary transitional step; the return to pagan models
was, probably, the only mode possible for progress, even if
that progress should hereafter take the course here suggested.  "Reculer pour mieux sauter" will then be found
to have been the real signification of the retrogression,
although, of course, the actual enthusiasts for classical
revivals were not conscious of the future which they were,
in fact, but beginning to prepare.
We would urge then, that while full of veneration for
every manifestation of the Church, while reverencing its
outward expression from the first to the nineteenth centuries, we should carefully keep ourselves clear from all
exclusize attachment to any one of those passing modes
-whether basilican, gothic, Italian, or what not-in which
its spirit found material expression, In the words of the
first writer here referred to,* we should be careful not "to
adore the works themselves instead of the God who inspired them," or "to worship the mere garments in which
the Church has decked herself."   The view taken by
fanatical admirers of "Christian" (i. e., pointed) architecture is very different from that taken by the mediaeval
builders themselves, who actually fancied that they were
* Loc. cit., p. 449.
240 
,'sthelic Evolulion.
continuing true classical architecture, just as the German
kaisers were, in their eyes, real successors of Caesar and
the Antonines.
It is time now to explain exactly where the development
is to be looked for of a new style of architecture combining
the advantages and avoiding the defects of both the Italian
and the gothic styles. As was said at starting, the pointed
arch is the one dominant feature of gothic architecture, and
it is so with good reason, if, as we believe, the whole mode
of architectural development in the thirteenth, fourteenth,
and fifteenth centuries was due to the introduction of the
pointed arch in the twelfth.   That element, once introduced, gave as it were a certain twist to architecture,
which, once having got into the pointed groove, ran its
natural course and worked itself thoroughly out. Having
reached its last stage, no richness of detail in panelled
wall or fantraceried vault could compensate for the weariness produced by endless mechanical repetition, where the
same ornamental features were reproduced on all sides,
so as to suggest their being carried down to microscopic
dimensions. Great indeed must have been the feeling of
relief afforded by the change to a revived classicism. We
may speculate as to the possibilities of architectural
development had no classical Renaissance taken place,
and there are facts enough to make us rejoice over that
Renaissance, as at least a relative blessing, compared with
what might otherwise have been in store for us.
241 
Contemporary Evolulion.
When we consider the wonderful pulpits of Belgium
-with their apes and parrots-and certain late churches,
where the pillars expand above into realistic reproductions of palm-trees, the possibility suggests itself that,
but for the classical revival, our churches might have
assumed such a realistic botanical and zoological development as to have become like immense structures
of Dresden china transformed into stone, its pillars stone
trees, its window-tracery a collection of petrified creepers,
its niches grottos, and its altars rocks
If, however, nothing further is to be hoped from
gothic, and if we can nevertheless only hope for something new by a more or less continuous development
from something old, what is to be our starting point?
As has been said, gothic architecture is essentially
pointed, and its raison dtee is the pointed arch.   To
obtain a new starting-point, continuous with preceding
structures, we must then revert to architecture as it
existed before, or independently of, the introduction
of the  pointed  arch.   Now,  of  such  architecture we
fortunately have abundant examples in Germany, where
the pointed arch appeared late, was for a long time
sparingly adopted, the pre-existing round-arched or
Romanesque style persisting.
We have in the cathedral of Speyer a magnificent
example of this style in its earlier condition, that of
excessive strength and stability; but from this early
242 
Esthetic Evohi/ion.
Romanesque a lighter round-arched style became developed, embodying the true principles of construction
and much of the picturesqueness of gothic, while free
from the special peculiarity of pointed arches and
details. There is much reason to believe that if the
pointed arch had not made its appearance in Germany at all, a style would have been ultimately developed at least as perfect as the true gothic subsequently became. But this development was nipped ill
the bud by the introduction, first of the pointed arch,
and then of true French gothic, like that of Cologne
cathedral.
It is here contended that we must have recourse to the
Romanesque, not for adoption and imitation, but as a
starting-point whence to develop an architecture at once
rational and beautiful, embodying all the truest and best
principles of construction and ornamentation, and profiting by and learning from both pointed architecture and
from all that was admirable in the Renaissance of Italy.
It is not meant that we are to become architectural
eclectics, and cull a feature here from the gothic, there
from the Renaissance-a window from Lincoln, an arch
from Italy, etc. It is meant that the architect should
endeavour to improve upon the Romanesque by a mind
imbued with all that is best, both in the spirit of true
gothic and of the Renaissance.   In this way I believe
it possible that a style of church-building may be
243 
Contlemp)orary Fvo/tIl'on.
evolved which shall satisfy all the requirements drawn
out in the earlier part of this chapter.   This we  will
endeavour shortly to show; but first it may be useful
to notice some of the old more or less perfectly Romanesque churches, which may serve, not as models, but as
objects of study, full of fruitful suggestions.
Foremost amongst these may perhaps be cited S.
Cunibert's at Cologne, which, although finished in the
same year in which the cathedral was begun, nevertheless exhibits the pointed arch only here and there. It
consists of a nave and aisles with clerestory, an apsidal
choir, having on each side a tower. At the west end
is a lofty transept, somewhat as in our old college
chapels, as e.g., at Magdalen College, Oxford.
Again, the Apostles' Church, with its three apsides,
and that of S. Martin's, with its short sanctuary, so
suitable for modern worship, as well as the grand old
church of Andernach and the Abbey of Maria Laach,
should be carefully studied.   The  lovely fragment still
left of the abbey church of Heisterbach may be referred to as an example of the lightness and elegance
attained to in the transition period, as the cathedral
of Maintz, and that, before referred to, of Speyer, may
be quoted as examples of the majestic solidity of the
earlier Romanesque.
S. Gereon's church at Cologne shows how fine an
effect might be produced by the addition of the dome
244 
Esthetic Evolulion.
to Romanesque architecture; while the peculiar semicircular windows of St. Cunibert's, as also of the nave
of the minster at Bonn, suggest the employment of
windows at once ornamental and light-giving, yet not
absorbing too much space.
The cathedral of Durham and the city of Shrewsbury show us how light and beautiful a development
the round arch sometimes attained even in England;
but it is in Germany that by far the richest collection
will be found of round-arched buildings calculated to
suggest treatment and features suitable for modern
round-arched  buildings  constructed  on  the principles,
though not in the configuration, of medieval, pointed
architecture.*
It is much to be regretted that so many of our
architects have been so tied down and cramped by the
narrow taste of their public for "middle-pointed" architecture with abundant floral ornamentation.   We  know
more than one who groans over the apparent impossibility of introducing a taste for grand and solid buildings
of real majesty, instead of the "pretty" and petty beauties so generally in vogue.   Those readers interested in
* Many of these German churches have an apse at each end. It
appears to me that this feature might be very usefully adopted with
a slight modification, the western apse serving as a baptistery. As
we are ".buried with Christ in baptism," a representation of the entombment might be appropriately placed in a small crypt beneath
the font in such western baptismal apse.
245 
Contempfiorary Evolution.
some parish church about to be built may profitably
make a pilgrimage to S. Columba's, Shoreditch, and
imagine the excellent effect of similar buildings, the
designer being invited to discard in them the pointed
arch except where solidity or convenience of construction
might require it.
Let us now review the style of church architecture
here suggested as regards the fourteen requirements
enumerated in the earlier part of this communication.
In the first place, as it adopts its principles of construction and ornamentation mainly from mediaeval architecture, it can claim a share in the holy memories connected with the latter, while, in its repudiation of the
narrowness of gothic, it is in harmony with the spirit
of St. Philip and the saintly men of the post-Tridentine
period.
The same considerations show that it fulfils the second
requirement, that, namely, of having been "originated
through Christian influences."   The third requirement,
"that it should be widely acceptable," is one which it is
already well on the way to fulfil.  In France, in Belgium, in Germany, and even in England, symptoms of
a spontaneous and apparently unconscious development
in this direction are already to be met with.
The next requirement, "that it should be capable of
adaptation to all needs," is of the very essence of its
principles, which are those of medieval architecture, it
246 
Esthetic Evoilution.
not being in the least tied down to the formality and
symmetry of the Italian style.
"That it should not be anti-Roman" is also of its
essence, since it will arise in part from an objection to
gothic as being to a certain degree open to that reproach, and since it will freely adopt all the best features
of the Italian style.
"That it should be exactly fitted to our existing
modes of worship" will also necessarily follow, since it
will be developed with the express purpose of providing
in the best manner possible to harmonise with and subserve the ritual of the period of its birth. The seventh
requirement, "that there should not be too many
columns," also follows, since it is free to adopt in this
respect whatever features in whatever preceding style
may  be deemed  most desirable.   The eighth requirement, that respecting the due admission of "light," is
one in which it will present numerous important advantages over every preceding style.
In the first place, the absence of any rigid rule of
symmetry will allow the admission of light just whenever it may be required.   Secondly, the windows may
be of any shape found the most convenient,-square,
elongated, and narrow windows, rose-windows or semicircular windows, as in the nave of Bonn cathedral.
They may also be made ornamental by mullions, while
tracery need not by any means be confined to the upper
247 
Contemporary Evolution.
part of each window, since each window may be all
tracery, the stonework being of such thickness as may
combine strength and security with a copious admission
of light. The absence of that beautiful but self-contradictory feature, brilliant stained glass, will allow an ample
supply of light without too great a sacrifice of wallspace, and without any impairment of stability. Not that
the glazing should not be ornamental and artistic; the
pieces of glass might be so designed that their lead
framework may form elegant patterns,* while the glass
itself, of delicate greys and half-tints, will afford a wide
scope for the skilful designer. The nature and arrangement of the windows will especially facilitate the eleventh
requirement-that as to paintings,-since the neutraltinted glass will be highly favourable, while the nonobstruction offered by it to the entrance of light will
by rendering less numerous or less large windows necessary, increase the amount of available wall-space.
The preceding requirement that each church should
"manifest one predominant idea, and exhibit an impressive unity," can as well be met by the developed Romanesque  as  by  Italian  architecture.   That  noble  and
* A precedent for this is to be found in the abbey of Pontigny.
This abbey was built in the early days of the Cistercian reform, and
the luxury of stained glass havin)g been forbidden, an ornamental
arrangement of colourless glass by means of the leading became
the only adornment.
248
c 
.sthetic Evolution.
especially  unity-giving structure "the dome" will find
its place therein; and there is no noble feature of the
Italian style that may not be freely adopted in the style
I venture to advocate. At the same time, the absence
of any rigid canons as to symmetry will allow the free
development of all such subordinate features or later
added additions in each building as original or subsequent
needs may require, and thus an element of complexity,
surprise, and mystery may be annexed, in a secondary
manner, to the predominant and primary unity of the
whole.
It is hardly necessary to add that the modern use of
holy images will here meet with facilities fully as great
as in Italian architecture, and a different degree of prominence, importance, or majesty, can readily be given to
each separate image.
Finally, that requirement as to church architecture
which has been here added to those of H. W. B. and his
opponent, namely, rationality of construction, will find
itself pre-eminently met in the architecture here advocated.  It will be so that because the adaptation of all
the true principles of medieval architecture is one of the
primary conditions supposed and laid down for its development, while whatever is noble and striking in postmediaeval architecture may be freely adopted; nevertheless, its various objectionable features will be as studiously
eschewed.
249 
Contemporary Evolution.
Thus a concordat may be established between those
rival parties the "Goths" and the "Italians," and we shall
cease to be "cabined, cribbed, confined" within the narrow
limits of the last six centuries.
If we are right in believing that the Church will, even
in this world, attain a majesty and glory such as was but
poorly shadowed forth by its mediaeval beauty, it is surely
reasonable also to believe that the artistic expression of
its spirit has as yet by no means fully blossomed forth,
and an undue exaltation of the post-mediaeval art of
Italy is surely to be deprecated as strongly as are the
exaggerated claims made by some for the style which
preceded it.
Should it one day, by God's permission, whether by
war, by natural convulsion, or the violence of demagogic
passion, be demolished, there is no need to doubt but
that afterwards another S. Peter's would arise as much
excelling in majesty and beauty the S. Peter's we see
to-day as the S. Peter's of to-day excels the ancient and
venerable basilica of Constantine which preceded it.
H. W. B.'s opponent himself makes* the following
remark: "That different ideas of the human mind are
expressed by different styles of architecture will hardly
be denied by any who have thought upon the subject.
If this be granted, then it is difficult to see how any
* Loc. cit., p. i07.
250 
Esihetic Evolition.
one style of architecture can be upheld to the exclusion of
all others." This seems to be in one sense true, and in
another sense false. That any one style of architecture
is suitable for all times and all places is manifestly
absurd; but nevertheless, we may surely maintain that
only one style can be really suitable for a definite purpose
at any special locality at any given period.
If it is true, as the writer just quoted says, that "different ideas" are expressed by "different styles," we hold
it to be also true that one definite and clear idea can
have but one distinct and articulate architectural expression. We also believe that every church built should be
the expression and embodiment of its religious object as
conceived at the period of its erection in the locality in
which it is placed.
While this rule is by no means a narrow one, but
freely allows that various and diverse buildings (e.g.,
Amiens, or the Certosa of Pavia, or the Gesu) may correctly embody the diverse ideas of their designers, it is
decisive against the fitness of either gothic or Italian
for the religious architecture of the future in England.
That which correctly embodied conceptions of the thirteenth century, or the Italian climate, cannot also be the
correct embodiment of an English devotional idea of the
nineteenth century, except such idea is of the essential
identity of the Church of to-day with that of the Middle
Ages. As such an idea of continuity has largely occupied
251 
Conteiiiorary Evolution.
the minds of English Catholics since Catholic emancipation, it has been nationally and fittingly expressed by the
architecture we have in the main hitherto adopted. What
could be more satisfying to the mind of an English
Catholic at the end of three centuries of persecution than
to see rising on every side church and chapel, convent
and cloister, the very same with those of which their
forefathers had been formerly deprived! What a poem
can be read in the stones of S. Augustine's, Ramsgate!
How complete is the resuscitation presented to us by the
Black Friars of Woodchester! For some time to come
gothic architecture will still be fitly used, and surely
it might be well that the metropolitan church of Westminster should visibly and tangibly declare the spiritual
authority ruling in it to be the legitimate successor and
* representative of the extinct primacy of the abolished
province of Canterbury.
That providential action which favoured the classical
Renaissance, and which did away with the narrowness
of pointed architecture has no less presided over the
great mediaeval revival which has spread so widely over
the earth with such happy results. But in the nature of
things such an architectural protest cannot be continual.
The continuity and unity of the Church of the nineteenth
century with that of the thirteenth having been by the
recent happy revival once for all architecturally demonstrated, the devotional idea will surely cease to be occu
252 
,Esthetic Evolution.
pied therewith, and will address itself to the direct object
of the buildings it erects without an eternal retrospect on
any particular period. Such ideas will not improbably
find their architectural embodiments in some such development as that here advocated. Therein and thereby
all wants and aspirations will find their satisfaction; and
while the actions of the Church in this matter in different
preceding epochs will all alike be justified, we shall none
the less be encouraged to look forward to other developments and greater glories of religious art than any revealed to us in the course of the centuries which are gone.
Vulilum tempus occurrit ecclesiw!  The ever fruitful mother
of beauty and of truth, of holy aspirations and of good
works, has not come to the end of her evolution even in
the world of art, and one mode has been here indicated
in which that evolution may be advantageously worked
out.
Recurring to what has been said as to the other arts
besides architecture, it may, then, -in conclusion, be affirmed
that there appear to be grounds for thinking that in
the whole field of art, music, painting, sculpture, and
architecture, our successors may witness a vast, new, complex, and stable artistic integration of a special and distinctly Christian character-a self-consciousness, as it
were, in Christian art such as never was before, and which
will appropriately serve toi externally clothe and embody
that vast and magnificent Christian development for which
253 
Contemfiorary Evolution.
the modern phases of political, scientific, and philosophic
evolution are, if the views here put forward are just and
true, surely preparing the way at a future period; to which
Christians may look forward with joy and hope, but without a shadow of impatience, being abundantly thankful
if the providence of God graciously grants them the
opportunity of helping forward in their own day, in however insignificant a degree, that great scheme, which, as
all theists are rationally compelled to allow, is the one
supreme end of the whole evolutionary process, so far as
the great Author of nature has revealed His purposes to
our eyes, not merely by supernatural revelation, but also
by that great natural revelation which the universe, as
manifested in mind as well as in matter, displays to the
eyes of every one who duly ponders without prejudice
over the lessons it conveys.
254 
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