toward the new ideas was hospitable, they never fructified in his mind. While his thinking has been of great value to the world, much of it belongs to an era which we have now left far behind. This is illustrated in the degree to which he was influenced by the speculations of Auguste Comte. Probably no two leaders of thought, whose dates of birth were scarcely a quarter of a century apart, were ever separated by such a stupendous gulf as that which intervenes between Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, and this fact may serve as an index to the rapidity of movement which has characterized the nineteenth century. Another illustration of the old-fashioned character of Mill's philosophy is to be seen in his use of Paley's argument from design in support of the belief in a beneficent Creator. Mill adopted this argument, and, as a professed free-thinker, carried it to the logical conclusion from which Paley, as a churchman, could not but shrink. This was the conclusion which I have already mentioned, that God's creative power has been limited by some inexplicable viciousness in the original constitution of things.
I feel as if one could not be too grateful to Mr. Mill for having so neatly and sharply stated, in modern language and with modern illustrations, this old conclusion, which after all is substantially that of Plato and the Gnostics. For the shock which such a clear, bold statement gives to our religious feelings is no greater than the shock with which it strikes counter to our modern scientific philosophy. Suppose we could bring back to earth a Calvinist of the seventeenth century and question him. He might well say that the God which Mr. Mill offers us, shorn of the attribute of omnipotence, is no God at all. He would say with the Hebrew prophet, that God has created the evil along with the good, and that he has done so for a purpose which human reason, could it once comprehend all the conditions of the case, would most surely approve as infinitely wise and holy. Our Calvinist would ask who is responsible for the original constitution of things if not the Creator himself, and in supposing anything essentially vicious in that constitution, have not Plato and the Gnostics and the Manichæans and Mr. Mill simply taken counsel of their ignorance? Nay, more, the Calvinist would declare that if we really understood the universe of which humanity is a part, we should find scientific justification for that supreme and victorious faith which cries, "Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!" The man who has acquired such faith as this is the true freeman of the universe, clad in stoutest coat of mail against disaster and sophistry,—the man whom nothing can enslave, and whose guerdon is the serene happiness that can never be taken away.
IV
The Dramatic Unity of Nature
If we can truly take such a position, and hold it rationally, it is the modern science so apt to be decried by the bats and owls of orthodoxy that justifies us in doing so. For what is the philosophic purport of these beautiful and sublime discoveries with which the keen insight and patient diligence of modern students of science are beginning to be rewarded? What is the lesson that is taught alike by the correlation of forces, by spectrum analysis, by the revelations of chemistry as to the subtle behaviour of molecules inaccessible to the eye of sense, by the astronomy that is beginning to sketch the physical history of countless suns in the firmament, by the palæontology which is slowly unravelling the wonders of past life upon the earth through millions of ages? What is the grand lesson that is taught by all this? It is the lesson of the unity of nature. To learn it rightly is to learn that all the things that we can see and know, in the course of our life in this world, are so intimately woven together that nothing could be left out without reducing the whole marvellous scheme to chaos. Whatever else may be true, the conviction is brought home to us that in all this endless multifariousness there is one single principle at work, that all is tending toward an end that was involved from the very beginning, if one can speak of beginnings and ends where the process is eternal. The whole universe is animated by a single principle of life, and whatever we see in it, whether to our half-trained understanding and narrow experience it may seem to be good or bad, is an indispensable part of the stupendous scheme. As Aristotle said, so long ago, in one of those characteristic flashes of insight into the heart of things in which no one has ever excelled him, in nature there is nothing that is out of place or interpolated, as in an ill-constructed drama.
To-day we can begin to realize how much was implied in this prophetic hint of Aristotle's, for we are forced to admit that whatever may be the function of evil in this world, it is unquestionably an indispensable function, and not something interpolated from without. Whatever exists is part of the dramatic whole, and this can quickly be proved. The goodness in the world—all that we love and praise and emulate—we are ready enough to admit into our scheme of things, and to rest upon it our belief in God. The misery, the pain, the wickedness, we would fain leave out. But if there were no such thing as evil, how could there be such a thing as goodness? Or to put it somewhat differently, if we had never known anything but goodness, how could we ever distinguish it from evil? How could we recognize it as good? How would its quality of goodness in any wise interest or concern us? This question goes down to the bottom of things, for it appeals to the fundamental conditions according to which conscious intelligence exists at all. Its answer will therefore be likely to help us. It will not enable us to solve the problem of evil, enshrouded as it is in a mystery impenetrable by finite intelligence, but it will help us to state the problem correctly; and surely this is no small help. In the mere work of purifying our intellectual vision there is that which heals and soothes us. To learn to see things without distortion is to prepare one's self for taking the world in the right mood, and in this we find strength and consolation.
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