plicity. We repeat, that evolution as opposed to free creation, cannot be made a fundamental principle without destroying science.

The associationalist, also, is in the same dilemma, and commonly emerges by the same illegitimate assumption. Why do we believe and think about any thing as we do? The answer which he gives, when stripped of its verbiage, reduces to this: We think and believe as we do, because we have become used to it. Habit is at the bottom. There is no such thing as necessary truth. Two and two may make five; and, if so, they may make any thing or nothing. Events need not have a cause. We e are used to thinking so, and now we cannot help it; but, in fact, one thing is just as possible as another. There is no rational and no absurd, no consistent and no contradictory; but every thing is indifferently one or the other, as we have learned to think. This doctrine, though commonly held in the interests of skepticism, is the extreme of credulity and superstition; yet, strangely enough, its holders are the most sensitive of all critics to the irrationalities of religion. No one has a more vivid intuition, at such times, of what can and cannot be than the associationalist. Theism, miracles, divine control of nature, and divers other doctrines, are pursued by him as with the besom of destruction. They are irrational, absurd, impossible; nevertheless, he holds that two and two may make five, and that there is no necessary truth.

A similiar mode of reasoning applies to every materialistic theory. In such theories, thought is a product of the brain, just as bile is a product of the liver.

But as we never speak of true or false bile, or of true or false blood, so we can never, with any sense, speak of a true or false brain or of a true or false thought. The consistent materialist can know no true or false, no high or low. These are ideals of the mind, and have no objective existence. For the materialist, the actual is all; and the ideal is delusion. He can know only what his brain secretes. When it produces true thoughts and when false ones, or whether it ever produces true thoughts, he cannot tell. He may attempt to distinguish between true and false by saying that true thoughts result from the normal action of the brain, while false ones result from its abnormal action; but this distinction will not save him. For normal means, according to the standard, and abnormal means, not according to the standard; and the materialist has no standard. He, like the evolutionist, may attempt to reach a standard of normality by taking a vote; but this would be especially unfortunate for the materialist. For brains are so constructed, that they almost invariably decide that there is a soul, a God, a moral government of the universe, and a future life. But as the materialist rejects these notions, although held by the majority, it is clear that he cannot determine what is normal in brain action by appealing to a vote; for in that case, we should have to conclude that the materialist has an abnormal and untrustworthy brain. On the other hand, it is a rather startling proposition that the only normal brains in the world belong to a few materialists, who, as a class, have never manifested especial power in any direction except that of self-stulti

fication. In that case, it would become a serious question whether a normal brain would be an especially desirable possession.

Here the materialist may object that all this pleasantry is quite irrelevant, that he has a standard of truth and error, and that it is not determined by any vote. This standard is simply results. Those thoughts and views are true which work well; and those are false which work ill. In a rational system such a test would be valid; but the materialist has no such system. Moreover, he fails to see that in setting up such a standard, he has fallen into the jaws of his black beast, teleology. In assuming that the useful is the true, he either assumes an unexplained harmony between the true and the useful, or else he assumes that the useful is the only true. The former assumption entangles us in the doctrine of design; and the latter is a complete abandonment of science in order to hunt for our own interest. And here again we fall into difficulty, for if we allow that the useful is the only true; the question arises, Useful for what? Of course, useful to promote well-being; but what well-being? Physical, or mental, or moral well-being? It will hardly be claimed that materialism elevates and enriches the moral nature; or that it leads man to think highly either of himself or of his kind; or that it leads to social and political prosperity. In spite, too, of the materialist's "normal brain," the doctrine makes an equally sorry show in producing mental power. If, then, we are to test its truth by its outcome for well-being, we can hold it only by showing that the supreme end of man is to

develop a body, and that materialism is especially useful in promoting the interests of the animal nature. The normal brain is that which takes care of itself; and the test of truth is self-preservation. Moral aims and scientific truth, so far as they have no physical value, must be voted not merely worthless, but delusion; for the test of truth is physical preservation. Hence the inhabitant of the sty would be the prince of materialistic philosophers; he is not troubled by delusions, and he preserves himself. He has, then, the deepest truths of the universe. Of course, the materialist will indignantly repudiate these conclusions as caricatures; but he is more given to repudiating than to reasoning. Let him for once forego indignation, and give his standard of truth and error, or his test of a normal brain. It will be an unusual, but profitable subject for reflection.

Now it is not our purpose to criticise any of the preceding doctrines as to their truth and falsehood, but only to show that they are fatal to scientific knowledge. And we think it must be plain, that it is not indifferent to science what kind of a philosophy we hold. On the contrary, the philosophic and anthropologic problems concern the very life of science. What is the mind, and what is its relation to reality? What is truth, and how may it be known? In a skeptical time, these questions must be answered before there can be any question about science. But language allows the formation of such phrases as materialistic science and atheistic science; and confusion and incapacity accept them as representing great facts; where

as, they are as contradictory as the phrases square circles, wooden irons, etc. The existence of rational science is involved in that of the theistic and spiritual philosophy. We lay down, then, the following thesis: (1) Unless we admit the existence of the mind with an outfit of rational principles, and for which principles it needs no proof beyond its own power of insight, there is no rational science possible; (2) Unless we admit that these rational principles are also the laws of reality, or that reason is law-giving for objective fact, again no rational science is possible; (3) Unless we allow that the basal fact of the universe is a free and rational creator, there is no rational science possible.

The first part of the thesis needs no further proof. The attempt to deduce first principles from experience always results, when thought is tolerably clear, in dragging all rational knowledge down into ruin. Empiricism cannot deny that two and two may make five, although but one empiricist has had the courage to avow it. On such a theory not even mathematics can be saved; where, then, shall the other sciences appear? Since the time of Hume, empirical philosophy has been a patent anachronism; and the zeal with which its claims have been upheld, clearly disproves the notion that thought never goes backward. It was a long time before the empiricists understood Hume, and then they ignored him. By consequence, the most of our English philosophy is in the crude, uncritical state in which Locke left it. The method by which they cover up their inconsistency has been already referred to. In practice they hold the common sense view of reality