etation by Darwin, who by most patient investigation
discovered at least approximately the path by which man has been
developed out of the lower animal forms. Spencer has shown, by a vast
generalization of facts, the working throughout all realms of existence
known to man of certain common tendencies--of variation and new and
specialized formation. Apart from all debatable theories of psychology
and metaphysics, he and a host of other students in the same direction
have discovered clews by which the growth of human societies and their
individual members can be in some degree traced under general laws.

In another department of knowledge the sacred histories of Christianity
have been given a new reading by scholars, among whom Strauss, Baur, and
Renan are conspicuous. The general result has been to show that these
scriptures are purely human documents, and the personages they describe
are purely human. Through the gospel histories Strauss ran his critical
theory like a plowshare through a field of daisies. He showed especially
the genesis of many of these stories by imagination working creations out
of Old Testament texts. Baur led the way in discovering by marvelous
analysis the composite influences which helped to shape the apostolic
histories in the interest of party or of piety. Renan reillumined the
scene which his predecessors seemed to convert into a dreary waste, by
reconceiving, with erudition illumined by genius and sympathy, the
personality of Jesus of Nazareth as a human character, nowise infallible,
but a sublime leader of the race. While Christianity has thus been
brought to the level of a natural religion, its old-time adversaries, the
other world-religions such as Buddhism, Brahmanism, Islamism, have been
shown by sympathetic students to be vast upward essays of mankind toward
truth and goodness. That no religion is handed down complete from
heaven, and that all religions are expressions of human aspiration and
effort, is coming to be accepted as axiomatic.

Turning from well-established knowledge to theoretical schemes of the
universe, the three typical names in this century are Hegel, Comte, and
Spencer. Hegel stood for the interpretation of all existence in terms of
man's inner world--thought and being are regarded as identical, and the
movement of thought, expressed by a new kind of logic, becomes
interpreter of the development of the universe. In absolute revulsion
from this tendency, Comt