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belong to a rational system grander than the system of nature, with the wise and beneficent and all-comprehending design of expressing the archetypal thoughts of reason, extending the reign of moral law, realizing rational ideals of perfection and the ends which reason approves as worthy, and so establishing, extending and perfecting the kingdom of God in grander worlds and ages eternal. Rational beings act in and upon the natural system; but they do it no violence, and by their agency advance it in its development to perfection.

As to Mr. Spencer's belief that if there were free-will there "would be a retardation of that grand progress which is bearing humanity onwards to a higher intelligence and a nobler character," it is a notorious fact that man by his wickedness of every kind has effected a great deal of that "retardation" of all good; and that science must find a place for this fact. Free-will fully explains it. But if all this wickedness is the result solely of the necessary and normal action of nature, it is incompatible with the "grand progress" effected by evolution, and it becomes Mr. Spencer to speak with some less assurance of the "beneficent adaptations" of nature; especially as all the beneficent results must be realized in man's natural life on earth, and there is no grand outlook to higher results in the sphere of the spiritual and unseen. Science gives us a grand conception of evolution in nature. Theism, and especially Christianity, gives us a grander conception of a "new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness," and of an evolution in spiritual life and power immeasurable and eternal.

V. The theory that man's character and action are determined by the forces of nature acting on him to the exclusion of free-will is contrary to the facts of human history. Diderot states this doctrine:"Examine it narrowly and you will see that liberty is a word devoid of meaning; that free agents do not and cannot exist; that we are made what we are by the general course of nature, by our organization, our education and the chain of events. We can no more conceive of a being acting without a motive than we can conceive of one of the arms of a balance moving without a weight. The motive is always external and foreign, fastened on us by some cause distinct from ourselves." Here again is a misrepresentation; freedom does not imply that a man acts without motives, but that among conflicting motives he chooses his end in the light of reason and with susceptibility to the influence of rational motives over against the natural or instinctive impulses; and the motives themselves are not all "external and foreign."

In accordance with this denial of freedom, it is held that the diversity of nations in character, institutions and civilization is the result solely of the influence of climate, soil and other peculiar cosmic agencies.

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Now I affirm that this theory is contradicted by the facts of human history.

1. Different countries within the same isothermal lines and subject to essentially the same cosmic influences, ought, according to the theory, to develop the same civilization; but it is notorious that they do not. Mr. Buckle adduces in support of this theory the similar conditions of climate and soil in India, Egypt and Mexico, as explaining the similarity of their ancient civilization. But for similar reasons he acknowledges that we should expect a similar civilization in South America, on the East side of the continent, while in fact it was found only in Peru on the West. Why did not these similar cosmic influences produce the same civilization in Brazil? Mr. Buckle gives only an inadequate answer. After a brilliant description of the luxuriance and opulence. of nature there, he says: "Amid this pomp and splendor of nature, no place is left for man. He is reduced to insignificance by the majesty

with which he is surrounded."*

Dr. Draper has attempted to apply the same theory in the writing of history. In "The Intellectual Development of Europe" he accepts the old generalization, made by the fancy and not by the judgment, that "nations pursue their way physically and intellectually through changes and developments answering to those of the individual, and represented by Infancy, Childhood, Manhood, Old Age and Death respectively." This fancy is contradicted by the facts of history. Besides, how can the same influences of configuration of territory, nearness to the sea, soil, climate and other cosmic agencies, produce on the same nation so contrary effects as first to cause it to grow, and then to decline, and finally to cause its death? And how is this fancy consistent with the theory of evolution and with "the beneficent necessity' involved in it, on which Mr. Spencer insists, that "the life must become higher and the happiness greater?"

In his "History of the American Civil War," Dr. Draper applies the theory of cosmic influences to explain that history; or, as it seems more probable, wrote the history to exemplify his theory. He says: "Climate and place of abode, not only in a superficial, but in a profound manner, can change the constitution and construction of man." "The antagonism of habit and thought must be between the North and the South; there will be harmony between the East and the West." When it is remembered that the territories known as the North and the South are contiguous and the dividing line winds up and down through four degrees of latitude, it is incredible that climate should have caused the alleged differences. If the people of the two sections

* History of Civilization, Vol. I., chap. ii.

were alike when they emigrated, as, according to Dr. Draper's theory, being of the same race and emigrants from the same island, they should have been and as his argument assumes they were, it is a marvellous instance of the rapidity of evolution that such changes should be effected by it in so brief a time; if evolution is proceeding at this rate, why has it effected so little in all the historical period? Dr. Draper says that while the climate of the South favored slavery, it "promoted a sentiment of independence in the person and of State Rights in the community;" while at the North climate "intensified in the person a disposition to individualism and in the community to Unionism." At the same time the physical geography of the two sections aided this influence, and produced centralization in the North and separation in the South; "the one tended to diversity, the other to unity."

These are certainly wonderful generalizations. They are also plainly contrary to history, for the distinctive characteristics of the people of the Northern and Southern colonies existed when they came from England and can be traced in the colonies from the beginning. Does Dr. Draper suppose that the difference of the two classes of English people represented by the Puritans and the Cavaliers, was created by different cosmic influences in the small territory of England? And can he explain the remarkable differences between the English and the Irish of the present time by cosmic agencies? Dr. Draper further says: "Let it be proposed to ascertain what would be the character of a European population placed on the Atlantic border," between the isothermal lines which bound the Southern States; "we shall have to ascertain in what part of the old world the same isothermal zone occurs; then we shall have to learn from history the character and acts of the nations who have inhabited that zone;" and we may expect the same characteristics to appear in the South. But if we follow this isothermal zone along the Southern shores of the Mediterranean, through Palestine, Central Persia, and onwards around the world, we find no people bearing any peculiar resemblance to the people of the Southern States; certainly we do not find the doctrine of State Rights, which, according to Dr. Draper, is a necessary result of this peculiar climate. And we may further ask why this climate, which has acted so powerfully on the whites, has had no perceptible effect on the negroes? Dr. Draper is so confident that he even indulges in prophecy; speaking of the climate-zone of our Pacific coast as analogous to that of Asia, he says: "Man also in these varied abodes will undergo modification; and since, under like circumstances, human nature is always the same, the habits and ideas of the old world will reappear in the new. The arts of Eastern life, the picturesque orientalism of

Arabia will be reproduced in our interior sandy deserts, the love-songs of Persia in the dells and glades of Sonora, and the religious aspirations of Palestine in the similar scenery of New Mexico."

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I have dwelt the longer on this work, as exemplifying not only the contrariety of this theory to facts, but also the trumpery which is sometimes imposed on the public in the name of science. It also exemplifies the rash generalizations and inferences in the philosophy of history which are so easy to any man who writes history in the interest of a theory. One who writes history from a theory has no need of facts. He develops it all from his own inner consciousness.

A recent writer ascribes the gloomy Calvinism of Scotland to its bogs and fens and fogs. He forgets that Calvin himself lived in Geneva, and Augustine, who taught essentially the same system, in the north of Africa.

2. This theory is contrary to historical facts as to the civilization of the same country in different ages. Egypt, with its early science and civilization, Palestine, the mother of true religion, Greece, with its unrivaled culture, had the same cosmic influences in ancient times as now. Why were the peoples of these countries so great in ancient times, so mean and insignificant now? Why was Italy in ancient times without distinction in painting and sculpture, and yet with the same soil and climate and all cosmic influences, why did Italy take the lead in these and all æsthetic culture at the renaissance and after? Such questions may be multiplied. And here again the theory under consideration is directly contradicted by the facts of history.

If cosmic influences in America have so powerfully affected the Europeans and their descendants who inherit it, why have they not produced in them the distinctive characteristics of the Aborigines? Dr. Büchner appears to be the only scientist who has observed any fact of this kind. When in this country he wrote to a periodical called the Gartenlaube, a communication which was published, saying that he had observed that American ladies in dancing have a gliding motion, like the stealthily gliding step of an Indian; proving, as he profoundly remarks, that with all their civilization they have not been able to resist the climatic and other cosmic influences under which they live. The gliding tread of the Indian may be observed by any one in Cooper's novels. And why, again, were not the differences now characteristic of the North and the South found among the Indians at the discovery of America?

* History of the American Civil War, Vol. I.; Causes of the War and the events preparatory to it, pp. 91, 93, 242, 255, 113, 103.

3. I believe that human history is the progressive realization of an all comprehensive plan :

Through the ages one increasing purpose runs,

And the thoughts of man are widened with the process of the suns." But it is a plan or purpose of wisdom and love; a plan in which nature is not merely a blind concatenation of physical effects with no law except the invariable succession of mechanical facts and transformations of force, and with no power except a resist less efficiency acting without intelligence or purpose; but nature is itself a cosmos in which the truth of absolute reason is expressed and the wise and beneficent designs of reason progressively accomplished. It is a plan which comprehends also a system of rational free agents under the moral government of God; a rational system to whose higher ends nature itself is subordinate; in which law is the truth of reason recognized by rational free agents as law to the action of will; in which the progress consists in quickening, disciplining and educating rational beings to perfection and so bringing them into harmony with the supreme reason and with each other in a kingdom of God, a commonwealth of righteousness, good-will and true blessedness; and in which the great result is progressively accomplished, not merely by the action of cosmic forces on physical organizations, but by the influences of God's gracious and all-pervasive activity in the exercise of perfect wisdom and love, and through the agency of human intelligence, human aspirations and affections, and human choices and volitions, in all their free, rich and complicated activities.

nature.

69. Free-Will and Man's Implication in Nature. Though man exercises free-will, he is, nevertheless, implicated in Nature acts on him from without as well as within his physical organization. It is necessary to inquire what is the action of man's free-will under the immediate influence of nature and the cosmic forces.

I. Man is implicated in nature.

His physical organization is a part of nature as really as a tree is. It grows from a seed, as the tree does. His body like all bodies, is subject to gravitation, and to the action of the forces of cohesion, heat, light, electricity and chemical affinity.

He is also implicated in nature through his natural sensibilities. Hunger and thirst, the sensations of heat and cold, the natural instincts, propensities, desires and affections, are only indirectly under the control of his will. Through them man's implication in nature reveals itself in his consciousness. In these respects man is the crea

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