MR. HERBERT SPENCER ON RELIGION AND SCIENCE.
(To TEE EDITOR OP TUB "SPECTATOR.") Srit,—It is refreshing to find a student of Mr. Herbert Spencer's writings who is able to draw, attention to a.. diffi- culty in them without emulating 'the boisterous derision of Mr. W. James or the sneering innuendo of Mr. James Ward. Mr. Engstrom's difficulty does not seem to me as great as it seems to him. Mr. Spencer says that all religions agree in implying that there is a problem to be solved, that there is a mystery ever 'pressing for interpretation, and then states his conclusion, which Mr. Engstrom finds inconsistent-with this implication, that the problem is insoluble, the mystery un- fathomable. But is there any real inconsistency? • As it appears to me, the first statement is: to be read -with- the emphasis on the copula, "There is a problem,' and the re- maining words, "to be solved," are merely amplificatory, and do not necessarily imply that the problem is soluble. The mystery presses for interpretation, but is not necessarily in- terpretable, and Mr. Spencer's conclusion is that the problem is insoluble and the mystery unfathomable. So crowds of calculators have wearied themselves over the quadrature of the circle. To them it was a problem to be solved, a mystery that pressed for interpretation. The discovery by others that - the problem was insoluble did not alter the fact that that had been the mental attitude of the circle-squarers,—did not, in many cases, alter the mental attitude, for they still sought, and for aught I know may still be seeking, a solution of the insoluble problem.—I am, Sir, &c., cgati. M.EnoxzL Flower House, Catford.
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