PROFESSOR HUXLEY'S LECTURES. 47 



Pasturing at once, and in broad hoards upsprung. 



The grassy clods now calved ; now half appears 



The tawny lion, pawing to get free 



His hinder parts, -then springs, as broke from bonds, 



And rampant shakes his brinded mane ; the ounce, 



The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole 



Kising, the crumbled earth above them threw 



In hillocks ; the swift stag from underground 



Bore up his branching head; scarce from his mould 



Behemoth, biggest born of earth, upheaved 



His vastness ; fleeced the flocks and bleating rose 



As plants ; ambiguous between sea and land, 



The river-horse and scaly crocodile. 



At once came forth whatever creeps the ground, 



Insect or worm." 



There is no doubt as to the meaning of this statement, or as to 

 what a man of Milton's genius expected would have been actually 

 visible to one who could witness the process of the origination of liv- 

 ino; things. 



The third hypothesis, or the hypothesis of evolution, supposes that 

 at any given period in the past we should meet with a state of things 

 more or less similar to the present, but less similar in proportion as 

 we go back in time ; that the physical form of the earth could be 

 traced back in this way to a condition in which its parts were sepa- 

 rated, as little more than a nebulous cloud making part of a whole in 

 which w T e should find the sun and the other planetary bodies also re- 

 solved ; and that, if we traced back the animal world and the vege- 

 table woi'ld, we should find preceding what now exist animals and 

 plants not identical with them, but like them, only increasing their 

 differences as Ave go back in time, and at the same time becoming 

 simpler and simpler, until finally we should arrive at that gelatinous 

 mass which, so far as our present knowledge goes, is the common 

 foundation of all life. 



The hypothesis of evolution supposes that in all this vast progres- 

 sion there would be no breach of continuity, no point at which we 

 could say " This is a natural process," and " This is not a natural pro- 

 cess," but that the whole might be compared to that wonderful series 

 of changes which may be seen going on every day under our eyes, in 

 virtue of which there arises, out of that semifluid, homogeneous sub- 

 stance which we call an egg, the complicated organization of one of 

 the higher animals. That, in a few words, is what is meant by the 

 hypothesis of evolution. 



I have already suggested that in dealing with these three hypoth- 

 eses, in endeavoring to form a judgment as to which of them is the 

 more worthy of belief; or whether none is worthy of belief and our 

 condition of mind should be that suspension of judgment which is so 

 difficult to all but trained minds we should be indifferent to all a 



