hand you the thousand years' history of modern literature and let you see for yourself that a full half of its records belong to the last hundred years: many great historians, many great novelists, many great essayists, many great orators, many great philosophers, many great poets-I really must not undertake to mention even representatives of the several classes. But it is with these, especially with the men of letters, the poets and prophets, as strictly the true spokesmen and representatives of their times, that we shall here concern our selves, with the intention of showing how the main tendencies of thought, the great intellectual movement, the tempers and traits of mind of the nineteenth century are embodied in their productions.

Byron, Shelley, Carlyle, Ruskin, Browning, Tennyson, Jowett, Matthew Arnold, Stanley, Emerson, Whittier, Lowell I confine myself to the AngloSaxon race, and give but a partial list— these reflect, and more than reflect, they immortally express, the ideas, the aspirations, the fears and doubts, the beliefs and unbeliefs, the whole mind of the century in which they shine like stars.

The task I have in hand is, I am fully aware, a very large one, and I am sensible of the presumption anyone is apt to expose himself to the charge of in proposing himself as the interpreter of so vast a century. But it has for a long time been my business to study the poets and to interpret them to others; and a very little reflection will bring home to the dullest mind that there is no understanding of a poet apart from the general temper, speculations, and intellectual character of his age; therefore, if for no other reason and other reasons have been irresitably strong with me--I have made an earnest endeavor to appreciate what science and philosophy also achieved in the nineteenth century, and what the main lines of progress were.

On the very first day of the nineteenth century an Italian astronomer sweeping the heavens with his telescope beheld a

new planet speeding around the sun,- a world never before seen by mortal eyes. This discovery may be taken as grandly prophetic of the new worlds of thought that were to be revealed to the human mind in the following epoch. The enlargement of the mental horizon of humanity during the century was indeed commensurate with its marvelous astronomical discoveries and can be illustrated adequately only by their vastness and splendor. In truth there is a closer relation between such discoveries and men's thinking in apparently the remotest matters than is generally imagined. The influence of Sir William Herschel's revelation that the stars are suns, and these myriads of suns are the probable centers of planetary systems many of them greater than ours, begets reflections of momentous reach and import. Man's intellectual horizon expands under such revelations with the speed of light.

It was once atheistical to affirm that the earth moved and that it was but one of many similar planets that revolve about the sun as their center. For teaching this doctrine Gallileo was imprisoned and Bruno was burned at the stake. But Sir William Herschel revealed that the entire solar and planetary system to which our earth, as but a minor orb, belongs, is only one of innumerable similar systems in an infinite universe of worlds, systems, and groups of systems.

In another respect, too, the same great astronomer's telescope had startling truths to reveal, which were to affect men's thoughts in unsuspected spheres. For the universe that he beheld through lenses perfected by his own patient toil was not a universe finished, uniform, and in repose, but a universe exhibiting in its various parts every stage of development from the formless eddying dust-cloud of worlds yet in the process of evolution to the dead satellites that have had their day and now with borrowed luster only make beautiful the night of the inhabitants of younger orbs. The sublime truth which rises in man's thoughts to

consciousness in view of this great disclosure is of a God who works hitherto, who displays the power of his hand, yet building and re-building, thinking in terms of stars and constellations, systems and galaxies that no mind less than infinite can measure. The song of creation is an eternal song, and the poem of Genesis is being written in act and material form, now and forever, through all the ages, in the heavens. This is the truth which the stars declare.

Another science, which may be said to have been born in the nineteenth century, the science of Geology, had, possibly, a still greater influence on speculative thought than Astronomy did. It would seem that the least harmless of all studies would be that of the homely earth; and yet the geologist has destroyed many of our inherited ideas, overthrown whole systems of thought, and started vast mental revolutions. The conception which now among all classes of educated persons prevails of the uniform operation of nature's laws and forces throughout all the ages, and the indefinite extension backward of those ages during which those laws and forces have been at work shaping this world and others like it, this conception of uniformity and of vast eons of time, had its birth in the nineteenth century. And its influence upon speculative thought has been incalculably great. It has modified men's ideas of the Creator and of His ways in bringing worlds into being. It has combined with other conceptions of like novelty and like greatness to enlarge our intellectual horizon and to emancipate the mind from traditional views in every realm of thought. It has introduced the idea of law and of uniformity-I recur to this as of chief significance-into all our thinking about nature and the power which is in nature.

A few instances of the previous way of thinking will sufficiently reveal its crudeness and simplicity. Far into the century fossils, for example, were generally believed to have all been imbedded in

their rocks at the time of Noah's flood. And, for that matter, all the rock formations themselves were supposed to have been the work of but the brief space of 5,000 or 6,000 years since the creation of Adam. No order in the earth's strata had as yet been observed, no succession of animal populations had been guessed. And without such conceptions of a continuous and regular order in the rock formations and of a definite, progressive succession of plant and animal species in the world, the old estimate of the earth's age was of course entirely adequate.

But an actual study of the earth brought forth startling results of most far-reaching consequences. The first great discovery in this field is accredited to a practical surveyor, a self-educated man of independent and unprejudiced ways of thinking, whom fate tried to conceal by naming him William Smith. It was this man for whom the earth waited, we do not know how many centuries, to make known the fact of the orderly arrangement of its formations and the fixed progression from lower to higher in the orders of its living creatures, as indicated by fossils. But his views, of course, did not immediately find acceptance. They were declared to be opposed to the plain account of Genesis and were therefore denounced as atheistical in tendency. But it was too late in the world's history for an unwelcome truth to be stamped out, or to perish for centuries with its proclaimer at the stake. Other investigators made discoveries, one after another, that tended to confirm the doctrine of the wise-headed surveyor. And as investigation proceeded there were propounded and established yet other revolutionary theories, dealing with other geological phenomena. The chief of these was that the forces of nature as at present seen in operation around us are altogether adequate to account for the configurations of the earth which had before been attributed to great and sudden catastrophes. According to this new doctrine, which was called Uniformi

tarianism, the continents and seas, the mountains and plains, the rivers and lakes, all the features of the physical world were given their present shape, not in general by sudden and intermittent eruptions, but by long, slow and constant processes, such as are exhibited everywhere in present operation. In this view, again, the reign of law is affirmed as against chance, or unintelligible Catastrophism, on the one hand, and arbitrary unintelligible divine intervention on the other.

Sir Alfred Lyell's Principles of Geology, published in 1835, is the book that stands out with the greatest prominence in the history of this science. The service that it rendered to research in. other fields, especially to biology, was also notable, as we shall see.

The science of biology belongs so exclusively to the nineteenth century that not even the word was used before that time. It was in 1802 that two writers first independently employed the term. To be sure it would be a very erroneous way of thinking to suppose that men had not before, had not always, indeed, given more or less attention to the phenomena of plant and animal life, to the development and modification of structures, and the like matters. But, while many facts had been observed, and while by Erasmus, by Darwin, by Lamarck, by Goethe, and other great students of nature, the biological theories of two generations later were anticipated just at the close of the eighteenth century, yet it was not until past the middle of the nineteenth century that their views, revised and corrected with larger knowledge, entered into the common thought of educated men. When Charles Darwin, in 1859, published his Origin of Species the world, even the scientific part of it, was startled as by something entirely novel. The grandfather, who had put the question, "Can it be that one form of organism has developed from another?" Goethe, who had definitely affirmed the development of one species from another and had

remarked the metamorphosis of structures; Lamarck who had boldly asserted the doctrine of one common origin for all animals, including man, explaining the the transmutation of species as due to processes of self-adaptation to environment, these investigators with their theories had apparently been forgotten, and their memories were revived by the truly epoch-making book of 1859, which restated and established the truth that was in their views, but which owed them no debt, beyond possible suggestions.

The extraordinary significance of Charles Darwin's work is in no degree diminished by a recognition of the honor which rightly belongs to his great predecessors. Their investigations and their reasonings based upon their investigations did not result, as Darwin's did, in breaking up the old foundations of their science and of laying them anew. Other realms of thought were still less affected,— although, beyond doubt, such views having once been published to the world could not but exert an influence on the human mind. Lyell's summary, in his Principles of Geology, of the doctrines of Lamarck is an evidence that those doctrines had not and were not to be wholly forgotten.

The battle that was waged, in the third quarter of the nineteenth century, around the Origin of Species bears testimony to the importance which all classes of thinkers attached to the inductions of Darwin. Their thoroughly revolutionary and far-reaching significance was at once discerned. If these inductions were true, if his main thesis-the origin of species by natural selection-was true, then history would have to be rewritten, every science that deals with living organisms, nay, with human life and human thought even, would have to be re-written from this point-of-view. With this doctrine of evolution as a guiding principle all future thinking must be done. This was perceived, and this has proved true. The name of Darwin stands for an epoch in the intellectual history of the human race.

If, now, we condense into a few sentences the combined resules of Geology and Biology our summary would stand thus: The planet upon which we live was untold millions of years in forming and coming to its present condition. The several stages in its later history since it began to assume a permanent form, are indicated by its stratified formations whose order, extent, and origin can be definitely made out. By the study of the fossil remains and of extant species of plants and animals the development of life upon the earth has been traced and the successive orders of living creatures have been described.

The vast length of time, a period to be measured only by thousands of years, that man has been an inhabitant of the earth, and the long stages of his progress in civilization, address themselves to us here as the chief inductions of universal human interest. There is in this doctrine veritably a new conception of humanity, a new way of approaching the investigation of every phenomenon of man's life, all the institutions of society, all the creations of the intellect and soul of man. The key that unlocks every door is evolution, admitting, it is true, not, as bigoted sciolists might claim, to absolute knowledge, but to vaster and vaster mystery; explaining method and process, but not the power which thus works, not the ultimate purpose toward which all moves.

The leap that thought now took from the data furnished by a study of the earth and its creatures was analogous to that which occurred when Newton, observing the apple fall, conjectured the universal force of attraction, at one mighty sweep of thought conceiving that the planets and their attendant moons were held in their orbits and governed in their motions by the same attractive force that drew the apple to the earth. The cosmic philosophy of Herbert Spencer, the stupendous outlines of which were given to the world in the middle years of the century, was the product of the application of the

evolutionary hypothesis to all the phenomena of the universe. And this conception in its broad outlines has now become almost as general a possession of humanity as the wonderful induction of Newton.

A fact of interest to recall in this connection is that Newton's doctrine in the early years of its history was regarded with no less fear and hostility than Spencer's has been wont to be regarded. It was said that Newton "substituted gravitation for God," that he took away from the Supreme Ruler "that direct action on his works which is constantly ascribed to him in Scripture, and transferred it to material mechanism." For doing this the great and good philosopher was declared to be "heretical and impious." But, of course, we may admit that the fears excited by the doctrine of universal gravitation were foolish, and that time proved the hostility not only vain but unintelligent and mistaken,this may be admitted, and yet it be maintained that nothing can be proved by this and that, though Newton's doctrine was not really "heretical and impious," yet Spencer's may be altogether so. The sober-minded student may admit that it is too early to pronounce judgment; but while doing so he will repudiate the prejudicial epithets "heretical and impious." A great hindrance to the general acceptance of Spencer's philosophy, is his theory of the unknowableness of God. But I recall that Charles Wesley begins one of his hymns with the line:

begun by the primitive man, is that the power manifested throughout the universe distinguished as material is the same power which in ourselves swell up under the form of consciousness."

This permits a spiritualistic interpretation of the universe, as likewise does this doctrine: "Phenomenon without noumenon is unthinkable." And here is his thought upon religion:

"The truly religious element of religion has always been good; that which has proved untenable in doctrine and vicious in practice, has been its irreligious element; and from this it has been ever undergoing purification."

But I hold no brief for any man or any philosophy. I seek to be but a faithful reviewer.

For metaphysics our era has not been distinguished. The genius of the age has not been distinguished. The genius of the age has been for investigation, the finding out of facts and laws, rather than for speculation upon the eternal mysteries. It has been a scientific age rather than a philosophic age. True it is, science comprehends the discovery of principles as well as of facts, the forming of systems and the making of large generalizations; and these are processes of what we ordinarily think of as the philosophic mind. But speculation has adhered closely, in general, to the verifiable; it has acknowledged a constant dependence upon the work of the physical laboratory. At the same time every result of science has acted as an incitement to fresh speculation.

It might be inferred from this acknowledged dependence that the philosophy of the century was materialistic. In reality it was not decidely so, at least in the latter portion of the century. Even the philosophy of the great scientists was not materialistic. Huxley, upon whom fell the opprobrium meant for all, repudiated most emphatically the materialistic view of the world, "as involving grave philo

sophical error." His rejection of the classification of himself which others insisted on making he declares as follows:

"Not among fatalists, for I take the conception of necessity to have a logical and not a physical foundation; not among materialists, for I am utterly incapable of conceiving the existence of matter if there is no mind in which to picture that existence; not among atheists, for the problem of the ultimate cause of existence is one which seems to me to be hopelessly out of reach of my poor powers. Of all the senseless babble I have ever had occasion to read, the demonstrations of those philosophers who undertake to tell us all about the nature of God would be the worst, if they were not surpassed by the still greater absurdities of the philosophers who try to prove that there is no God."

Spencer's philosophy, as greatly as it is denounced, can legitimately receive a spiritualistic interpretation. Undoubtedly he leaves an open door for this, else how are we to understand the following utterance:

"Amid the mysteries," says Spencer, "which become the more mysterious the remain the one absolute certainty, that more they are thought about, there will he [man] is ever in the presence of an Infinite and Eternal Energy, from which all things proceed."

Physical science itself has indeed tended to confirm the mind in the idealistic philosophy. For what are both the positive and the negative conclusions of Physics? First, as one of the great discoveries of the century, we have the doctrine of the conservation of energy and transformation and correlation of forces. Now, what does this doctrine mean? Simply stated, just this: that no force ever disappears; nothing acts, nothing is acted upon, no change takes place in the physical universe, without indeed an expenditure of force, but this force, though spent, is not lost, only altered,