“The Unity of Nature”

Abstract

I REGRET that the Duke of Argyll should have been led by anything that I have written to make some of the remarks which appear in this week's issue of NATURE (p. 524). If a reviewer in a signed review cannot express freely his opinion upon a book without its being suggested that he is actuated by secondary and sinister motives, I fancy that few men of common honesty would care to continue the work of reviewing. Moreover, in the present instance the imputation of animus seems to me specially unjustifiable. I had almost forgotten the correspondence in NATURE to which the Duke alludes, but on now referring to it again I can only see that, if it was provocative of animus, there was assuredly no reason for the animus to have arisen on my side (see NATURE, vol. xxiv. pp. 581 and 604; vol. xxv. pp. 6 and 29). But, to ignore so unworthy a charge, and one which I can only suppose to have been made under a sense of irritation, I must explain that the Duke is under a wrong impression when he assumes that my objection to his advocacy of Theistic belief is due to what he regards as my aversion to Theism. As I have never been in the habit of “using your columns for the purpose of inculcating personal beliefs and disbeliefs on subjects which lie outside the boundaries of physical science,” I shall not do so now. But in view of the slender grounds on which the Duke has felt himself entitled to infer that I “hold that the highest aim of the human intellect is to prove the mindlessness of nature,” I feel it is desirable to correct the inference. For this purpose it is not needful that I should publish my “personal beliefs and disbeliefs.” It is only needful to say that my previous remarks will be found to have been directed, not against the cause of Theism, but against its champion in the Duke of Argyll. Had my sympathies been more on the side of the materialists than they happen to be, the Duke of Argyll might not have found so much reason to quarrel with my “dislike” of his advocacy.