re of equal
consequence, like sovereigns in a bag. The question whence and whither
must be asked, and the particular thing measured as part of a series.
Thus measured it is not less truly important, but it may be important
in a lower degree. On the other hand, and for exactly the same reason,
nothing that is real is unimportant. The "failures" are not mere
mistakes. We see them, in St. Augustine's words, as "scholar's faults
which men praise in hope of fruit."

We cannot safely trace the origin of the evolutionistic method to the
influence of natural science. The view is tenable that theology led
the way. Probably this is a case of alternate and reciprocal debt.
Quite certainly the evolutionist method in theology, in Christian
history and in the estimate of scripture, has received vast
reinforcement from biology, in which evolution has been the ever
present and ever victorious conception.

(2) The second effect named is the new willingness of Christian
thinkers to take definite account of religious experience. This is
related to Darwin through the general pressure upon religious faith of
scientific criticism. The great advance of our knowledge of organisms
has been an important element in the general advance of science. It
has acted, by the varied requirements of the theory of organisms, upon
all other branches of natural inquiry, and it held for a long time
that leading place in public attention which is now occupied by
speculative physics. Consequently it contributed largely to our
present estimation of science as the supreme judge in all matters of
inquiry,[218] to the supposed destruction of mystery and the
disparagement of metaphysics which marked the last age, as well as to
the just recommendation of scientific method in branches of learning
where the direct acquisitions of natural science had no place.

Besides this, the new application of the idea of law and mechanical
regularity to the organic world seemed to rob faith of a kind of
refuge. The romantics had, as Berthelot[219] shows, appealed to life
to redress the judgments drawn from mechanism. Now, in Spencer,
evolution gave us a vitalist mechanic or mechanical vitalism, and the
appeal seemed cut off. We may return to this point later when we
consider evolution; at present I only endeavour to indicate that
general pressure of scientific criticism which drove men of faith to
seek the grounds of reassurance in a science of their own; in a method
of experime