But is the matter by which Mr. Spencer’s process of cosmic evolution is carried on any such principle of never-ending perfection as this?  Indeed it is not, for the future end of every cosmically evolved thing or system of things is foretold by science to be death and tragedy; and Mr. Spencer, in confining himself to the aesthetic and ignoring the practical side of the controversy, has really contributed nothing serious to its relief.  But apply now our principle of practical results, and see what a vital significance the question of materialism or theism immediately acquires.

Theism and materialism, so indifferent when taken retrospectively, point, when we take them prospectively, to wholly different outlooks of experience.  For, according to the theory of mechanical evolution, the laws of redistribution of matter and motion, tho they are certainly to thank for all the good hours which our organisms have ever yielded us and for all the ideals which our minds now frame, are yet fatally certain to undo their work again, and to redissolve everything that they have once evolved.  You all know the picture of the last state of the universe which evolutionary science foresees.  I cannot state it better than in Mr. Balfour’s words:  “The energies of our system will decay, the glory of the sun will be dimmed, and the earth, tideless and inert, will no longer tolerate the race which has for a moment disturbed its solitude.  Man will go down into the pit, and all his thoughts will perish.  The uneasy, consciousness which in this obscure corner has for a brief space broken the contented silence of the universe, will be at rest.  Matter will know itself no longer.  ‘Imperishable monuments’ and ‘immortal deeds,’ death itself, and love stronger than death, will be as though they had never been.  Nor will anything that is, be better or be worse for all that the labour, genius, devotion, and suffering of man have striven through countless generations to effect.” [Footnote:  The Foundations of Belief, p. 30.]

That is the sting of it, that in the vast driftings of the cosmic weather, tho many a jeweled shore appears, and many an enchanted cloud-bank floats away, long lingering ere it be dissolved—­even as our world now lingers, for our joy-yet when these transient products are gone, nothing, absolutely nothing remains, of represent those particular qualities, those elements of preciousness which they may have enshrined.  Dead and gone are they, gone utterly from the very sphere and room of being.  Without an echo; without a memory; without an influence on aught that may come after, to make it care for similar ideals.  This utter final wreck and tragedy is of the essence of scientific materialism as at present understood.  The lower and not the higher forces are the eternal forces, or the last surviving forces within the only cycle of evolution which we can definitely see.  Mr. Spencer believes this as much as anyone; so why should he argue with us as if we were making silly aesthetic objections to the ‘grossness’ of ‘matter and motion,’ the principles of his philosophy, when what really dismays us is the disconsolateness of its ulterior practical results?