proval of the chapter, without making any specific qualifications. In the course of the chapter I had occasion to quote a passage from the Psychology (vol. i, p. 158; cf. Cosmic Philosophy, vol. ii, p. 444), in which Mr. Spencer twice inadvertently used the phrase "nervous shock" where he meant "psychical shock." As his object was to keep the psychical phenomena and their cerebral concomitants distinct in his argument, this colloquial use of the word "nervous" was liable to puzzle the reader, and give the querulous critic a chance to charge Mr. Spencer with the materialistic implications which it was his express purpose to avoid. Accordingly, in my quotation I changed the word "nervous" to "psychical," using brackets and explaining my reasons. On showing all this to Mr. Spencer, he desired me to add in a foot-note that he thoroughly approved the emendation.
I mention this incident because our common, every-day speech abounds in expressions that have a materialistic flavor; and sometimes in serious writing an author's sheer intentness upon his main argument may lead him to overlook some familiar form of expression which, when thrown into a precise and formal context, will strike the reader in a very different way from what the author intended. I am inclined to explain in this way the passages in First Principles which are perhaps chiefly responsible for the charge of materialism that has so often and so wrongly been brought up against the doctrine of evolution.
As regards the theological implications of the doctrine of evolution, I have never undertaken to speak for Mr. Spencer; on such transcendental subjects it is quite enough if one speaks for one's self. It is told of Diogenes that, on listening one day to a sophistical argument against the possibility of motion, he grimly got up out of his tub and walked across the street. Whether his adversaries were convinced or not, we are not told. Probably not; it is but seldom that adversaries are convinced. So, when Prof. Haeckel declares that belief in a "personal God" and an "immortal soul" are incompatible with acceptance of the doctrine of evolution, I can only say, for myself—however much or little the personal experience may be worth—I find that the beliefs in the psychical nature of God and in the immortality of the human soul seem to harmonize infinitely better with my general system of cosmic philosophy than the negation of these beliefs. If Prof. Haeckel, or any other writer, prefers a materialistic interpretation, very well. I neither quarrel with him nor seek to convert him; but I do not agree with him. I do not pretend that my opinion on these matters is susceptible of scientific demonstration. Neither is his. I say, then, that his fifth thesis has no business in a series of scientific generalizations about the doctrine of evolution.
Far beyond the limits of what scientific methods, based upon
