PROFESSOR HUXLEY. ON THE WAR-PATH. 61 



smile and a shrug," etc. This is quite true. But it is also true 

 that the attitude of mind thus depicted is most unsafe and most 

 unphilosophical. I confess to having myself lain under the incu- 

 bus of the same preconceptions for many years. It was of course 

 easy to take refuge in the holt-hole dug out by Lyell that if 

 there ever was a deluge it must have been 'an event so "preter- 

 natural " in all its circumstances and effects that there is no use 

 in even thinking of it in connection with any of the physical sci- 

 ences. Yet the promptings of our intellectual conscience will per- 

 force suggest that, though belief and reason are not coincident in 

 extent, they ought to be coincident in direction, and that physical 

 events of great magnitude, if they happened at all, however pre- 

 ternatural, were presumably brought about by physical agencies 

 which must have left some effects behind them, unless subsequent 

 obliteration has destroyed the evidence. This last alternative was 

 indeed easily conceivable in the abstract. It is, however, always 

 less easily conceivable in each actual case in proportion to the 

 magnitude of the supposed events and the recency of their sup- 

 posed occurrence. But this method of looking at the whole case, 

 which is purely logical and scientific this perception of alterna- 

 tives turning upon evidence, and on the possible causes of the 

 want of any evidence at all is a method which at once awakens 

 our intelligence to the testimony of facts, and breaks down the 

 stupid preconceptions which blind us to the true interpretation 

 of them. It puts an end to that irrational attitude of the mind 

 which Prof. Huxley, strange to say, seems to approve of and ap- 

 plaud, in which we can hardly be persuaded " to occupy ourselves 

 in any way " with a great problem, and in which we can only look 

 at it " with a smile and a shrug." 



Once roused from this paralysis of our reason, we soon find that 

 there are abundant materials on which to exercise its powers. I 

 live in a district of country over the whole of wbich the evidence 

 of " the great submergence " is as striking as it 'is ubiquitous. I 

 estimate the depth of it as having been at least two thousand feet. 

 Not less decisive is the evidence that it must have happened 

 among the very latest operations which have been at work upon 

 the globe. Charles Darwin saw this in 1839, when he came to the 

 West Highlands to look at the famous Parallel Roads of Glen 

 Roy. His estimate of the minimum depth of it was at least 1,280 

 feet. He saw it, and he dwelt upon it with emphasis in the cele- 

 brated paper in which he recorded his observations. No one who 

 resides in the low country where the rocks are never seen except 

 in quarries, can have any conception how clear and unmistakable 

 are the proofs of some temporary, and very recent, depression of 

 our land, with almost all its mountains, under the level of the sea. 

 Then comes corroboration after corroboration from every field of 



