IDEAS OF THE AGE.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 2979, 12 January 1881, Page 3

IDEAS OF THE AGE.

The London Daily Telegraph of Nov. 3rd drops into a v ein of metaphysical die quieition in the terminal paragraph of an article upon the Parisian fours tie rnorts, with a case that is forcibly suggestive of the dominance of latter day scepticism and its hand maiden searching investigation. Taking up a scientific view of the position the Telegraph says :—Science in its recent triumphal progress claims to have discovered two facts the one more than probable, the other certain. The

first is that man has " developed" from primordial type, which may have been monkey, or dog, or jellyfish, bub which was certaiuly not man to begin with. We fear that this interesting theory can hardly be said as yet to have risen to the rank of an accepted doctrine. Then there is a second discovery of the myriad other worlds which, in the shade of systems, galaxies, and " nebulas," are revealed to us through the telescope, all of them probably as large as and many much more important than the solar system, which we used to flattorourselves was the centre of created universe. How do these scientific considerations affect the question of the uiiFeen world? "Evolution," be it true or not, is sometimes blamed as if it must have a bad effect on men's morals, tending to mke ever>body materialistic. Yet it is difficult to understand why the dignity of man should be in anyway lowered by the fact that he has men to his present high estate through infinite modifications, instead of being jreated just as he now is from the first beginning of things, for if his origin was low, his uprise has been wonderful, and his future is boundless. Bat the astronomical doctrine to which we have alluded may very well have an important effest on our ideas of a future life. Some day it may seem more probable than now that the habitable planets are actually inhabited ; and, if so, by whom ? There is here an infinite field for speculation as to whether it be impossible that some of the shining orbs of night may not be the homes of departed spirits. Every generation about a thousand million human beings die ; so that we'ean realise the truth of that expression which speaks of the dead as the " majority." Compared with that vast army of the departed, the living are, indeed, an infinitesimal minority; the dead are many, but the living few." Glad trust, not despondency, is the proper attitude of mind with respect to the dead. Death has been described by various titles, as the Liberator, the Avenger, the Reaper, the Arch-Foe, the Merciful Friend; in presence of his mysterious kingdom solemnity ia never out of place, and grief becomes irresistible when the fell King exercises his awful powers. There is comfort, however, in the thought, which many philosophic minds entertain, that the dead are merely the advanced guard of an army of explorers, not really lost, but gone before, and in the idea of that final reunion which pffbrds the ground work of all religious consolations.