The Baptist Quarterly (Volume 11) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: MODERN EVOLUTION THEORIES. Continued from the October Number. FROM the necessity of the case, evolution theorists have required a. reconstruction of psychology, of logic and of metaphysical analysis, to sustain their methods of argument and to give popular confidence in the conclusions drawn from their premises. Bain's Mental Science supplied the first need; in which the awakening of sensation in the nervous system, leading to development of intelligence from childhood up to manhood, is supposed to establish two conclusions; first, that mental energy is but a development of material forces; and second, that its origin is spontaneous and from causes inherent in matter. It is sufficient here to recall the Brahminic hint, echoed all along down the ages, that the infant form which exhibits this evolution is the product of a germ matured for months within, and then matured for years by a parent guided by matured intellect. The second demand of evolutionists, the want of a reconstracted logical system, has been supplied by Mill and Jevons. The former has elaborated his large volume with the sole purpose of meeting the difficulty that the first step in reasoning calls for; a general acceptance of what are called " first truths," so styled because, as all close and clear thinkers perceive, the first step in classification and in reasoning from resemblances cannot be and is not taken without the tacit admission of the mathematical axioms and the metaphysical conceptions of space- and time, of power and cause. As to the former, as well as the latter, . Mill insists at length that general convictions such as that " two things equal to a third, are equal to each other," come from experience derived from repeated acts of sight; either forgetful or ignorant of Socrates' convincing ...