BIOLOGY. Future discovery may show to us a solid basis for the opinion that all the facts of biology, including those of consciousness and reason and volition and moral obligation, are, in ultimate analysis, movements of matter in ac cordance with the mechanical principles which hold good throughout the inorganic universe; and every thoughtful biologist will keep this con summation in mind as eminently wort hy of his best and most earnest and persistent labors. But the opinion that it has already been attained. or must in time be attained, is. at the present day, a creed, or article of faith, rather than a demonstrated fact; for no one has, as yet, manufactured a living being in a laboratory, nor can the writing of a poem, or the discovery of a law of nature, or the performance of a deed of heroic self-saeri• lice, be formulated, as yet, in terms of matter and motion. Faith is not science; nor is anything more antagonistic to the inspiration Of soientifie discovery than the desire to its future progress by the declaration that what hope sonic day to prove is now to be accepted as truth. On the other hand, no one who reflects upon the past progress of science should, knciw ingly„ stand committed to any opinion that would not still be tenable. even if all the inani• festations of life. including those of intellect and volition and duty, should ,11/11e day be re duced to nieellanies. and should prove to be new illustrations of the law and order which pervade the universe. as strictly defined as the move ments of the planets in their orbits, rather than exceptions to law, and interruptions to the Orden of nature.
Ile who, in the fear that duty may prove to be no duty, right and wrong neither right nor wrong, and freedom and moral responsibility mere illusions; he who, in fear of these evil consequences, dreads the reduction of human -conduct to mechanics—may seek refuge in some corner of the realm of biology in hope that, since it has not yet been invaded by the inquisitive man of science, perhaps it never may be; but nothing could be less judicious, in view of the present condition and prospects of biology, than Outs to take refuge under the shelter of ig norance. He who believes that evil consequences
will follow the prevalence in biology of mechani cal conceptions. is not the only advocate of opinions that the progress of biological science may. in time, render untenable. It happens, odd ly enough, that certain highly esteemed thinkers, who are among the most enthusiastic advocates of a mechanical interpretation of all the facts of biology, and who claim to speak with authority upon the philosophical meaning of physical sci ence, are also the advocates and defendants of a system of philosophy that no one could, in consistency. accept. or even consider with favor, if all the facts of biology were to be formulated in terms of matter and motion; because this system of philosophy commits its disciples to the belief that there is a 'chasm' which is 'intel lectually impassable' between the facts of physics •and the facts of consciousness. Herbert Spencer, for example, is inevitably led, by the premises of his system of philosophy, to believe and to teach that mind "is something without any kin ship with other things; and from the sciences which discover, by introspection, the laws of this something there is no pussage by transitional steps to the sciences which discover the laws of these other things." As we are also informed by this philosopher that, while the volume of the synthetic philosophy which is to deal with the evolution of living beings from inorganic matter is not yet written, he has handled the subject of later volumes as if the reader had this missing Volume in his mind; the cautions biologist. who wishes to hold no opinion that he could not still maintain even if all the facts of biology were reduced to mechanics. may be somewhat puzzled, in lack of this missing volume, as to the frame of mind in whieb he is to approach the works of the author of the Principles of Biology.