Science in Christian Perspective

An Extended Book Review Essay

THE POST-DARWINIAN CONTROVERSIES
RICHARD P. AULIE
6806 S. Jeffery Blvd., Apt. 2G
Chicago, Illinois 60649

Based on The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900 by James R. Moore. London, New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1979. This is part four of a four-part essay.

From: JASA 34 (December 1982): 219-224.

Theological Resolution

Moore is intrigued by two related questions. What were the ingredients of Darwin's thought that made his theory of evolution so readily accessible to these conservative Christians? What were the ideas in conservative theology that enabled them to embrace Darwinian evolution so readily and even eagerly? In Chapter 12 we come to sections that surely will bemuse many of Moore's readers, because he writes that the world views of Darwin and of these conservative Christians had much in common.

As to the first question (p 307-314), Darwin's thought was shaped by the tradition of natural theology, which sought to find evidence in nature for the existence of God. His course of study at Cambridge University included books by the Rev. William Paley, who was archdeacon of Carlisle and later a canon of St. Paul's cathedral in London. So impressed was Darwin by these books that he promptly tackled Paley's Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collectedfrom the Appearances of Nature (1802). After his circumnavigation, Darwin read the Essay on the Principle of Population as It Affects the Future Improvement of Society ... (1826), which was published anonymously by the English economist and demographer, the Rev. Thomas Malthus, who taught history at a school sponsored by the East India Company. Darwin's view of the natural world and of how it operates was strongly influenced by the writings of these two clergymen.

In 1859 Darwin wrote that he "hardly ever admired a book more than Paley's Natural Theology, " and that he could almost formerly have said it by heart" (p 309 in Moore). Paley developed the so-called teleological argument for the existence of God, which he adduced from evidence he saw of design in nature. Moore finds significant similarities between the Natural Theology and the Origin of Species, such as the heaped-up examples from plants and animals, and the method of reasoning on matters of opin-,, ion. Paley described the eye, and so did Darwin. Paley's ,'materials" became Darwin's "variations." Darwin was especially taken by Paley's concept of natural law, and I think this concept must have been a major influence on Darwin's thinking. Paley believed in what he defined as a "ruling Providence"-in God whose power penetrates to the "inmost recesses of all substance." Yet God and the world were distinct. "Neither the universe, nor any part of it which we see, can be he," Paley insisted (p 322). Reflecting his Christian view, Paley deprived nature of any occult or self-regulating principles, and so did Darwin. For Paley, "it is a perversion of language to assign any law, as the efficient, operative cause of any thing" (p 3 10), and a natural law was but a human description of events and causes brought about in nature by God. Darwin's principle of natural selection similarly embodied this empirical view of how change occurs in nature. Malthus' reasoning ability also impressed Darwin, and in the constraints that Malthus placed on the tendency of a population to increase we see at least one reason why Darwin rejected any notions of utopian progress like those heralded by the Spencerian "Social Darwinists. " Yet Darwin, like Malthus, did believe that the human condition could improve, and this belief, thinks Moore, was "the legacy of a Christian view of history" (p 314).Paley and Malthus both believed that nature, as the work of God, was fully contingent, that is, that nature was not

"The orthodoxy of Darwinism was that, not of its author, but of the theology of nature which his theory presupposed. "

controlled by any inner necessity, and their elaboration of this view strongly influenced Darwin's work. Moore continues, "For Darwin as for Christians, the world is a real historical place; its events are a meaningful and unrepeatable sequence; its purpose includes human beings but is not fully realized in them" (p. 308). On my first reading of these sections in Moore's book I clung to the sentences line by line, half-thinking I might turn the page to find that he would make a closet Christian out of Darwin, knowing this could not be. Moore explains: "The orthodoxy of Darwinism was that, not of its author, but of the theology of nature which his theory presupposed" (p. 345).

In the section on "The decline of Darwin's theology" (p 314-326) we are led step by step with Darwin until he has left Paley's notion of divine "contrivance" far behind, to enter the and regions of deism and agnosticism. Darwin's faith foundered on the limitations of human reason as he conceived them. Because the Creator's purposes were unknown, he could not see any theological meaning for variability and fecundity. Did the manifold variations that are lost when natural selection secures an adaptation- variations in the coloration of flower petals, variations in the sizes of pigeon crops-each have a divine purpose? Hardly, thought Darwin. Superfluous laws would be required. And the myriad eggs that perished save the exception that became a fish-such waste was beneath the dignity of a benevolent Providence. No, said Darwin, natural selection proceeds without divine supervision.

But the natural theologians would have said that even apparently fortuitous variations and excess fecundity were evidence for the design argument. Perhaps this is the place for me to interject a comment or two on the source of this time-honored idea, for all of Moore's Protestants were much exercised by the effect Darwinian evolution would have on the prevailing belief that biological structures and functions were marks of God's handiwork. Here we are at last, I think, at the heart of the Darwinian controversy.

Like all important ideas, the design argument did not spring up in full flower. The ancients, who did not always distinguish sharply as we do between the animate and the inanimate, saw order and regularity everywhere. Plato, for one, wrote of "soul" as a self-regulating principle within nature. Aristotle also thought that "purpose" must be inherent, and like Plato, he did not separate the source of this order from nature itself. In the Middle Ages, Thomas Aquinas adopted much of this reasoning, but he argued that God was the source of this order and regularity, and that God was separate from nature. This is the beginning of the modern statement of the design argument-that perceived order presupposes external intelligence and benevolence. Notwithstanding David Hume's brilliant disclaimers, enthusiasm for the idea waxed during the eighteenth century and in the first half of the nineteenth.

In 1802, these various strands came together in Paley's classical statement, his celebrated Natural Theology, which, incidentally, is a rather good survey of the science of the day, especially of biology. His book was influential on both sides of the Atlantic. It was published by the American Tract Society, and was used for a time as a text in colleges and seminaries. Paley multiplied example after example in his massive theme of design in nature. Just as a clock presupposes a clockmaker, said he, so do the intricate and elaborate structures of plants and animals entitle and oblige us to infer a Creator operating beyond nature. God must have created the human eye in its present form. To use fancy language, the design argument proceeded on the assumption that the end preceded the means.

Somewhere along the way this old concept presupposed a new ingredient, the fixity of species, and here we have the doctrine of special creation-the belief that individual species, and perhaps even separate structures like the petals of a flower, must be regarded as the result of direct action by the Creator. This, I think, was the view of design that Darwin rejected, not the view that nature in general was God's handiwork, which he believed, at least for a time; he rejected the view that every variation was the result of such direct action. As far as I can tell from a perusal of Natural Theology, Paley did not expressly say that Godacted in so direct a fashion, and if I am not mistaken, neither did the early church fathers of the patristic age. Paley's teleology emphasized rather that God acted through natural law. In fact, the concept of natural law, to the extent that it embraces parts-in the plural-acting in concert, I should think would preclude the concept of such direct action on individual parts of the creation. Then again, perhaps Paley would not have agreed with me.

If the above sounds confusing, you have the Rev. William Paley to blame, for he was not altogether clear in the way he used his terminology. I should like to have asked him whether he thought his concept of natural law did preclude direct action by the Creator, as I think it must. He might have spared this world a good deal of arguing had he been clear on this point. On the other hand, the American mathematician and philosopher Chauncey Wright (not George F. Wright), who was a student of Gray, apparently thought that you can have natural law and direct action at the same time after all. But he may only have had his tongue in his cheek when he wrote about miracles: "To admit twenty or more (the more the better), as some geologists do, is quite enough to make them pious and safe. I would go even farther, and admit an infinite number of miracles, constituting continuous creation and the order of nature" (p 398, note 123). So, instead of a series of causally-related events you can have a string of miracles, you cap the lo with natural law, and you have special creation and science all at once. Maybe this would be something like 'special evolution' or 'evolutionary creationism'!

Whether Darwin's natural selection meant the demise of the design argument was the central concern for all the Protestant writers, and this brings me back to the second question that intrigues Moore, on the relevancy of orthodox theology for Darwinian evolution (p. 326-340). What was it about orthodox theology that prompted the Christian Darwinians to accept Darwinian evolution so eagerly, even while Darwin himself was losing his faith? Three points emerge from my understanding of Moore's analysis.

First, his Christian Darwinians began with the biblical doctrine of creation that was held by the Renaissance founders of modern science, including Francis Bacon. Moore elaborates their conception of this doctrine, as follows. Nature, as the product of divine creation, is separate from God, but God is actively present in nature through His benevolent providence. Such a belief has consequences for the acceptance of Darwinian evolution. Matter, of which living and non-living nature is composed, is devoid of life in the Greek sense or of any other selfregulating principle, they would have said, it is constantly in motion, and it is governed by natural law which imposes order and regularity. (This is the natura naturata of the philosophers of old.) Natural events are completely contingent, that is, 4hey occur only because they are acted on by other natural events, and, because nature lacks the aforementioned internal, self-regulating principle, natural events do not restrict God's activity. These two principles, matter and natural law, are the basic and legitimate concerns of science; they are the result of God's voluntary action.

Such was the view of the seventeenth century author of the Advancement of Learning (1605), who declared that we must study the "book of God's word" and the "book of God's works," in the passage, Moore reminds us (p. 328), that Darwin quoted in his Origin of Species. Yes, we have come back to Francis Bacon again. His meaning was probably better understood in Darwin's day than in our own.

Darwin and the Christian Darwinians knew what Bacon meant when he said that if ever we are to seek out the advancement of learning we must put aside the preposterous philosophies of the ancients, become like little children, and hasten to the book of Creation, even as we do to the Bible. In this larger sense alone, Darwin was the complete Baconian, the fulfillment of the seventeenth century Christian vision of nature.

Second, The Christian Darwinians boldly emphasized the doctrine of divine immanence-God is continuously active everywhere in nature. "We must frankly return to the Christian view of direct divine agency, the immanence of Divine power in nature from end to end," admonished Aubrey Moore, "or we must banish him altogether" (p. 338). A benevolent Providence became the theological analogue of natural law. But, following Paley's insistence that natural law does nothing and that to say that it does really means that natural law would be just another outmoded Greek, self-regulating principle introduced all over again (p. 310), they insisted that God was the active doer. They asserted instead that natural law was the human description of God's orderly action (p. 330).

The next step for the Christian Darwinians was easy. Natural selection is the human conception of Providence. Moreover, they all seemed to share with Darwin a high regard for Paley. Van Dyke, for one, expected that "some future Paley" would demonstrate that by means of natural selection "the Creator has left upon His handiwork innumerable traces of intelligent design" (p. 329). In sum, natural selection became the expression of a muchexpanded and thoroughly transformed Paleyan teleology. And so the doctrine of divine immanence became the foundation of the Christian Darwinian acceptance of Darwinian evolution with the belief that natural selection was the manifestation of Providence. Acceptance by the Americans was strengthened by their Calvinism, with the belief that natural selection was the manifestation of Providence.

What is especially striking to me among these Christian Darwinians is their clear perception that "chance" was not an essential ingredient in Darwin's theory. Today we sometimes hear the objection, "Oh, I cannot possibly believe in evolution because it is based on chance" -notwithstanding

Richard P. Aulie holds the doctorate in the history of sciencefrom Yale University, the B.S. from Wheaton College and the M.S. from the University of Minnesota. Formerly a high school biology teacher, he has published frequently in the professional journals on the history of science, including articles on the nonbiblical and pre-Christian origins of the doctrine of special creation. Continuing his interest in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he is now writing a book on the scientific results of the voyages of Captain James Cook. He is cited in Who's Who in the Midwest.

Darwin's unambiguous statements and reasoning to the contrary. To Aubrey Moore, natural selection meant the "elimination of chance" (p. 329), because every species, every organ, every adaptation comprise both means and ends, the whole manifesting divine purpose and design. The same view appears in Gray's essay, "Design versus necessity" (1876, 1963). The assertion that -nothing is due to caprice in the biological world arose from this belief in Providence, a belief, said Iverach, which rescues us "from the tyranny of chance" (p. 256). For these writers, chance meant only whatever was unknown about the process in nature. Similarly, McCosh in 1890 wrote that "The design is to be seen in the mechanism. Chance is obliged to vanish because we see contrivance. Supernatural design produces natural selection" (p. 335).

Third, this reconciliation of natural selection with Providence raised no major difficulties for these orthodox theologians. Certainly the meaning of variability and fecundity, which had left Darwin in that muddle, was no trouble at all to the Christian Darwinians. Moore writes (p. 334):

Though Darwin found the difficulty "insoluble" and a hindrance to theistic faith, it did not appear as such to the adherents of that orthodox theological tradition which was inaugurated by Augustine, systematised by John Calvin, preserved in Scotland, transplanted in New England, and represented on both sides of the Atlantic in the nineteenth century by theologians of the Presbyterian and Congregational churches.

Moore develops the view that Calvin's theology provided the Christian Darwinians with the resources for reducing the conflicts or "dissonance" between Darwinian evolution and their Christian faith. Seeing the parallels between difficulties raised by Darwinian evolution and difficulties often faced by Christian theism, they felt no need to seek absolute answers. The ultimate meaning of every lost variation, the death of individuals in the struggle for life, and of the extinction of a species, all remain hidden in the mysteries of the providence of God, just as Christians manage to get on without understanding the meaning of suffering, and without reconciling free will with predestination. Even the major problem of relating man's unique origin with his relation to the animal kingdom faded away in the light of the unresolved problem of the origin of the human soul. Recalling the historic debate over whether the soul is propagated or specially created, Wright noticed an analogy between evolution and "traducianism" (p. 337).

The theological tradition carried forward by Augustine, Calvin, and Edwards promoted the acceptance of Darwinian evolution on both sides of the Atlantic by the Christian Darwinians. The Trinitarian and Calvinist doctrines enabled especially Gray and Wright to transcend the difficulties Darwinian evolution posed for their belief in Providence.

The conclusion of the book dwells on Darwin's refusal to mount an attack on the clergy, and his sincere efforts to offer a framework of theological ideas for his theory. Moore also brings to light Thomas Huxley's rather remarkable statements about Providence and orthodox theology.

Some Closing Remarks

As far as I can tell, Moore has not answered one question that might occur to some readers. Why did the Christian Anti-Darwinians resort to Greek thought in rejecting Darwinian evolution? While we are not surprised that some of the orthodox Christians at the time should have rejected Darwinian evolution by whatever means, Moore has shown how other orthodox Christians, equally zealous and sincere in their devotion to the Bible, did cast out Greek ideas. It is therefore curious, at least to me, that the special creationists should have fallen back on the Greeks for an exegesis of their view of creation. On the other hand, I do not wonder that the Greek components in special creationism are not recognized today-considering education today with the classics dismissed and history in general neglected. But certainly Charles Hodge knew his Plato and Aristotle, and he knew his Bacon, who reviled them. He must have realized that the source of his arguments was non-biblical.

Or did he? Moore is well-equipped, if anyone is, to throw light for us on the significant question of why the special creationists of the nineteenth century should have embraced Greek philosophy in the first place. Here is a-subject for a fine paper! Most of his attention is devoted to the other two groups of Protestant responses, and his treatment is also fresh and striking. Of these two he tells us that (p. 303):

I was relieved to find that Moore does not stray into side issues, like Noah's flood, missing links, and the primate ancestry of man, and I therefore gather that his Protestants steered clear as well.

If anyone seeks a polemic against the special creation movement of today, he would do well to look elsewhere. The current controversy is never mentioned. On the contrary, a special creationist of today will find in this book a lucid exposition of his position, as it was promulgated at its apogee in the nineteenth century. On the other hand, those who are concerned about the increasing attention enjoyed by special creationism today, will be able to ponder the trenchant asseverations of the conservative English theologians James Iverach and Aubrey Moore, and of the American Christians Asa Gray and George Wright.

Indeed, the serious student of Darwin of whatever persuasion will find in the extensive bibliography and footnotes a mine of rich information for further inquiries-topics galore: term papers for the harried graduate student, published articles for the worried tenure seeker. Special creationists can hardly do better than to look to Louis Agassiz, that special creationist par excellence, or to Charles Hodge, who brought fixity to Princeton and kept it there for a half century. Those of more liberal bent have the richest lode of sources. If anyone suspects that the value of a scientific theory is to be judged by the number of its adherents, resulting from a kind of public referendum or poll (that sort of thing has been known to happen), then he will surely cast his lot with the liberals, for they carried the field in Darwin's day, at least in numbers. Henry Drummond wants looking at, and so does Joseph Le Conte, I should think. As for the Christian Darwinians, they were in the minority, all right, but perhaps their erudition leavened the whole lump. Still, it is possible to wish that Moore might have located another Christian or two to join his four Darwinians in the wilderness. I think he could have put George Romanes here, instead of simply describing his career as an example of dissonance reduction (p 106-109). While remaining a Darwinian, Romanes moved from the faith of his youth to unbelief and back to Anglican orthodoxy at life's end. And does not James Orr deserve analysis somewhere? I've always thought that Gray's Darwiniana still makes good reading even after all these years, and in future I intend to dip into some Wright or Aubrey Moore.

The Judaeo-Christian idea of linear time was not an explicit theme in these Protestant writings. Still, the Darwinisticism people certainly were possessed of this idea, though implicitly; their evolution surged exuberantly straight toward a glorious denouement, for they thought progress was inevitable; that the inevitability of progress was not an inevitable result of Judeao-Christian thought was no obstacle to them. The Christian Anti-Darwinians could not accommodate linear time, because they were enamored of the Greeks, for whom time was circular. Possibly because the Christian Darwinians did not hold that progress was inevitable, they did not seem to deal with linear time per se in their deliberations. Without this idea, of course, the theory of evolution could never have been invented.

They asserted that natural law was the human description of God's orderly action.

An analogy from Renaissance astronomy comes to mind. There you have the conception of Tycho Brahe serving as a transition between the Greek cosmology of Ptolemy and the modern-looking system of Copernicus. Similarly, we might look upon Christian Darwinisticism as a kind of transition between the Greek-oriented Christian AntiDarwinians and the more Copernican-flavored Christian Darwinians.

By now the attentive reader should be wondering why I have not disposed of Boyle's watch, which, after all, was used by the deists, although Boyle was a Christian. Scientific models come and go. Ceaseless and even directional change were found, first by astronomy in the heavens above, then by geology on the Earth beneath. And when Darwin applied the same concepts to biology, the world no longer could be regarded as a machine. Something that is undergoing directional and progressive change might make a machine, but cannot therefore be one. A world-machine is a finished product, fixed for all time, and cyclic with history repeating itself, as did the pointer on Boyle's watch. History never repeats itself in this world, and neither does evolution. Humans are excepted, of course, as they are given to repeating the past. The world is not the static thing that Boyle had in mind.

Years ago, at a writing conference of the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study in Boulder, Colorado, we had a discussion one day concerning the final sentence of the final paragraph of the second and succeeding editions of the Origins of Species. We wanted to quote this passage in the new high school biology texts, but the problem was what to do about Darwin's reference to the Deity. One faction held that the reference should be excised, because it was only an eccentricity on Darwin's part, and anyway, it certainly was not in keeping with modern science. A second faction demurred, holding that we should not tamper with what Darwin wrote, and therefore we should let the Deity be. The first faction lost, the troublesome passage survived unscathed, Deity and all, to be read by high school biology students all across the land (BSCS Blue, 1963, p 55; 1968, p 76; 1976, p 100). 1 think that Moore's book shows how mistaken we are if we suppose that Darwin was eccentric when he made all of his references to the Creator, or that, by so doing, he was only making concessions to his critics; and that we are especially mistaken if we think that those references are irrevelevant to understanding what se.-ance is all about, and how science developed through the centuries.

The strong impression arising from the whole is of the rich and diverse heritage of theological scholarship spawned by Darwinian evolution, and of the deep Christian foundation supporting Darwin's thought-which may be a surprise to biologists and theologians alike. This book is a tour deforce in studies of religion and science.

Moore sums up the Protestant controversies as follows (p 350):

Liberal Christians "tended to forget Darwinism" because, as we have argued, their theology was unable to accept it, Instead they were attracted to theories which could transform Darwinian evolution in accordance with their conception of the purposes and character of God. That the world is the outcome of God's omnipotent and beneficent design all Christians, orthodox and liberal, were agreed. Confronted with Darwinism, however, they differed over how this belief was to be maintained. Those who counted themselves members of established religious traditions, who concerned themselves with preserving historic deposits of truth, had at their disposal the unique resources for accepting evolution on Darwin's terms. Thus equipped, with Huxley they could say, "Not a solitary problem presents itself to the philosophical Theist, at the present day, which has not existed from the time that philosophers began to think out the logical grounds and logical consequences of Theism."

The strong impression arising from the whole is of the rich and diverse heritage of theological scholarship spawned by Darwinian evolution, and of the deep Christian foundation supporting Darwin's thought.

Those, on the other hand, who turned against established theological traditions, who took scant notice of historic doctrines of creation and providence, cut themselves off from Darwin's world and from the resources by which, if Darwinism were true, it could be kept a Christian world. Left to the devices of modernity, they solved their theological problems with concepts of divine immanence, human goodness, and social and religious progress, only to have their evolutionary speculations embarrassed and undermined by future turns of events.

Early on I wrote that this book flows well. The author has given thought to the uses of grammar, and to the shape and sound of sentences. This is no mean discovery in a day when the English language is under assault from all quarters by those who presumably have received the benefits of a liberal education.

Printed in Great Britain, this book carries a price tag of $39.50 which surely will be more of an obstacle to dissonance reduction than any theological issue raised by Darwin. Inflation since the days of the post-Darwinian controversies will prevent this book from reaching its enormous potential audience on this side of the Atlantic-except in libraries. In October of 1981 the Cambridge University Press did help us out with an American paperbound edition, a teleos fulfulled, albeit with a majestic price of $19.95.

In addition to the reviews listed in part one (March), the book has also been reviewed in The Economist (July 21, 1979), Naturrwetenschappelik Tijdschrift (Oct., 1979), New Statesman (Oct. 12, 1979), British Book News (Nov., 1979), Lychnos (Yearbook; 1979-1980), Choice (Jan., 1980), Medical History (Jan., 1980), Search (March, 1980), Books and Bookmen (April, 1980), Revue des Questions Scientifiques (Louvain; April, 1980), LAction V6t6rinaire (May, 1980), Southwestern Journal of Theology (May, 1980), American Historical Revue (June, 1980), Expository Times (June, 1980), ADRIS Newsletter (July-Sept., 1980), Victorian Studies (Summer, 1980), American Scientist (Sept., 1980), Themelios (London; Sept., 1980), Journal of Theological Studies (Oct., 1980), La Recherche (Dec., 1980), Churchman (vol. 94, no. 4, 1980), Science, Technology, and Human Values (Fall, 1980), Religious Studies Review (Jan., 1981), Grace Theological Journal (Spring, 1981), British Journal for the History of Science (July, 198 1), History of European Ideas (vol. 2, no. 3, 198 1), National Student (Nov., 1981), and the Reformed Journal (May, 1982).

While the author's presuppositions are not veiled, he does not intend an apologetic for Christian theism. He begins by warning that "it does not at present seem obvious that Christian theology is best defended by historical accounts of its formative influence on modern science" (p 16), and he concludes by admitting that: "The struggle to come to terms with Darwin has not yet ceased" (p 351).

Because of the timeliness of the subject matter, and of the high price of the book, I have thought that a full treatment might be agreeable. The length of this essay means therefore that it is not the usual sort of book review. While striving for the balanced and authentic digest, I have not hesitated now and again to intrude my own interpretations and exegeses of Moore's point-of-view, and I have also dilated freely on particular topics that struck my fancy when they rose up before me from his pages. Thus you find my digressions on Bacon, Agassiz and Gray, the uses of language, deism, scientific method, the design argument, and assorted other interpolations, all of which I should think you can identify as my own. Although I held fast to the book at hand, from time to time while writing this essay, during the March and April weekends of 1980, 1 did repair to the bookshelf for added refreshment, and there I dipped into Agassiz's Essay on Classification (1859, 1962), the Lord Chancellor's Novum Organum (in the Spedding and Heath edition of 1863, 1960), E. A. Burtt's Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (1924, 1954), R.G. Collingwood's Idea of Nature (1945, 1960), the sixth edition of Darwin's Origin of Species (1872, 1958), A. Hunter Dupree's Asa Gray (1959, 1968), Benjamin Farrington's Francis Bacon (1949, 1961), R. Hooykaas' Principle of Uniformity in Geology, Biology and Theology (1963), and, of course, Paley's Natural Theology (1802, 1963). And I located Boyle's watch on p 245 of something of his called "A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature," which you can peruse in volume 5 of the 1772 edition of his Works. I consulted Boyle in the Newberry Library in Chicago. The Bacon presence is also my doing. He does not suffer analysis with Moore's Protestants. Of course, only the valiant of heart can write on Bacon without putting in those sprightly remarks by King James and William Blake. Farrington perpetuates the former on his p 121, and Basil Willey passes on the Blake on p 19 of his Seventeenth Century Background (1933, 1953). The snappy Bacon epigram with which I began is from his essay, "Of Studies" (probably in 1597). The Cambridge University Press kindly granted me permission to quote the numerous passages from Moore's book. No doubt I have missed my way now and again, but this is a risk happily seized when transgressing unfamiliar and altogether fascinating terrain. If you have misgivings about anything I say, fine! then you might be the more inclined to look into these matters on your own.