If it be objected that scientists accept the theory, and that we therefore should, we reply, _mere_ scientists do; and of all men, the least safe of guides is the mere scientist. No other man is more apt to become a blind worshipper of the idols of the Cave. He confines himself within the narrow limits of his laboratory, among instruments of death, and then would excogitate a solution to the problems of life and of the universe; as if with bolts and screws he could wring from nature the secret it will not yield. Goethe well knew that from such men we need not expect the answer to the riddle of the universe; that one glance at the world as a whole as it lies bathed in the sun on a summer’s day tells us more than all the tomes of philosophers. “Ah me! this dungeon still I see, This drear, accursed masonry, Where even the welcome daylight strains But darkly through the painted panes, Hemmed in by many a toppling heap Of books worm-eaten, gray with dust, Which to the vaulted ceiling creep, Against the smoky paper thrust, With glasses, boxes, round me stocked, And instruments together hurled, Ancestral lumber stuffed and packed: Such is my world: and what a world! And do I ask wherefore my heart Falters, oppressed with unknown needs? With some inexplicable smart All movement of my life impedes? Alas! in living nature’s stead, Where God his human creature set In smoke and mould, the fleshless dead And bones and beasts surround me yet!” And although we can see some force in the general theory of evolution, we cannot accept it till it settles its account with the principle on which the whole inductive method is raised—the constancy of the laws of nature. The theory of evolution strikes, it seems to us, at the very root of this principle. It proclaims that there is not and has never been any constancy in nature. It devours all other law, or rather destroys it. It means simply change. Permanency, constancy, and their synonymes are opposed to it; and thus the theory of evolution must invalidate all the sciences which are founded on the assumption that nature is constant; in other words, that it does not change, does not evolve. The definition of evolution given by Mr. Spencer makes it simply a change. True, he states the method or law of that change. But the method is discovered by induction. Induction is in turn annihilated by evolution. The fabric as it rises loses its foundation, and floats in the air, a baseless vision. But if we are in no haste to yield assent to Darwinism or evolution in general; as applied to man’s soul by advocates like Spencer or Chapman, we reject it _in toto_. It is incompetent to account for the facts, nay, in glaring contradiction to them.