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Mr. Morley inveighs against the Education Act of 1870

as being "of the nature of a small reform," and desires

the entire destruction of the denominational system. 108

The reason is obvious: this "future great reform"❞ would

supply the most effective means of undermining the

Christianity of England, and of making straight the

paths of the new gospel

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CHAPTER IV.

THE REVOLUTION AND SCIENCE.

There is a great consensus of Revolutionary publicists

that the Revolution must be "scientific

They urge that the public order must rest on "natural

truths;" for them physical sciences are the only

sciences; and the generalisation of those sciences.

called Darwinism, is specially dear to them.

By Darwinism they mean, however, the speculations.

engrafted on Mr. Darwin's writings by teachers such

as Professor Haeckel, the general result of which is

a purely physical explanation of life.

In this Haeckelian Darwinism the new gospel hopes to

find a most effective weapon for the overthrow of

the old.

The appeal, then, is to Darwinism. To Darwinism let us

go. What are the facts of Darwinism as apart from

the speculations founded on it?

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111

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SUMMARY.

It does not appear to be open to doubt that the law of

natural selection, as Mr. Darwin has stated it, largely

explains the progress of descent; or that the struggle

for existence, the variation of types under circum-

stances, heredity, sexual selection, the action of

environment, the use and disuse of organs, correla-

tion, are really principles whereby the survival of

the fittest is worked out; or that moral sentiment

and dogma have been evolved through prehistoric

conditions, although it must be doubted whether

Mr. Darwin ever properly apprehended the essential

nature of ethics. These facts are among the assured

conquests of the modern mind.

But these facts are fatal to the fundamental propositions

of the Revolutionary dogma; to its doctrine of the

natural, inalienable, and imprescriptible rights of

the individual; to its doctrine of absolute reason;
to its doctrine of the social contract; to its doctrine
of the aboriginal goodness of man; to its shibboleth
of "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity "; to its panacea
of education; and to the optimism underlying it

The absolute antinomy between the postulates of the Re-

volution and the truths summed up in the evolu-

tionary formula is certain. Does the like antinomy

exist between those truths and the transcendental

conceptions on which religion is based?

All religions rest upon an ethical feeling. The central

idea of Christianity is this: of the root of moral

obligation in the Divine nature, and in man's filial

relation to it

Religion, and especially Christianity, proclaims Deity and
Immortality as the crown of the moral law, whose

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123

126.

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existence, and dictates, and absolute character reason

discloses. How do these transcendental conceptions

accord with the verities of physical science? That

is the question.

The answer is that while Mr. Darwin has succeeded to

some extent, in tracing and exhibiting the evolution

of conditions, he has revealed to us nothing whatever

concerning the evolution of essence

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128

128

The domain of physical science is the sphere of sense

perception

128

The evolutionary formula is not concerned with the origin

of spirtual or vital forces

128

The moral sense may have been evolved as Mr. Darwin

supposes, but you do not explain a thing by tracing

it back to its rudimentary forms, or by exhibiting

the course of its development.

128

In the moral sense there is something transcending organic

life and sensation. Relativity is the last word of

Darwinism. The Categorical Imperative is absolute. 129

Mr. Darwin's facts point to, and harmonise with, a

psychic basis of life and Directive Intelligence

Thus the whole universe is transfigured before us, and

we catch some glimpse of its real meaning. The

supreme law which rules through it, is a law of

tendency upwards, of striving after perfection. This

is the true law of evolution

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131

These considerations commended to men of good will who

rage against Mr. Darwin's doctrine without under-

standing it

132

SUMMARY.

CHAPTER V.

THE REVOLUTION AND ART.

Naturalism in art a note of the Revolution

M. Zola's Nana may be regarded as a type of Natural-

ism

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135

136

M. Zola's apology for Naturalism as the manifestation in

art of the Revolutionary idea.

138

M. Zola contends that the object of Naturalism is a return

to nature; his view of nature

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The old view of nature

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Difference between the old and the new æstheticism

145

M. Zola contends that the novelistic and dramatic art,

like all other art, must be scientific, physiological,

pathological, positive, in order to harmonise with the

Revolutionary spirit. He claims as his great fore-

father, Diderot, and asserts that Stendhal, Gustave

Flaubert, and Balzac were of the same school

M. Zola does, in some sort, represent the movement in

literature initiated by Diderot, but he has no warrant

for numbering Stendhal, Gustave Flaubert, and

Balzac among the prophets of experimental art

His parallel between his school in literature, and the school

in medicine of which Claude Bernard was the great

light, is fair enough

And his claim that his school is the popular artistic

expression of the Revolution seems unquestionably

true

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157

The word Democracy is commonly used to denote the polity in contemporary Europe which is informed by the Revolutionary dogma

This Democracy has very little in common with the democracies of pre-Christian Europe or of the Middle Ages

Ancient and medieval democracies were the result of fierce struggles, and of the triumph of the most highly endowed races; they rested upon a basis of fact, and were, even in their most popular form, essentially aristocratic; citizenship in them being regarded not as a natural right but as a hardly won privilege

The Revolutionary Democracy of the present day, on the other hand, starts with the proposition that man, quà man, possesses all the highest attributes of citizenship, and is based on Rousseau's theory of the abstract rights, innate, inalienable, and imprescriptible, of humanity in an imaginary state of nature

Its issue cannot be doubtful; the doctrines of absolute political equality, and of the supreme right of the numerical majority-relatively poor-must issue in Socialism

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