390 DARWINIANA. 



ing, and leaving the questions we are concerned with 

 just where they were. For it is still to ask : whence 

 this rich endowment of matter ? Whence comes that 

 of which all we see and know is the outcome ? That 

 to which potency may in the last resort he ascribed, 

 Prof. Tyndall, suspending further judgment, calls 

 mystery — using the word in one of its senses, namely, 

 something hidden from us which we are not to seek 

 to know. But there are also mysteries proper to be 

 inquired into and to be reasoned about ; and, although 

 it may not be given unto us to know the mystery of 

 causation, there can hardly be a more legitimate sub- 

 ject of philosophical inquiry. Most scientific men 

 have thought themselves intellectually authorized to 

 have an opinion about it. " For, by the primitive 

 and very ancient men, it has been handed down in 

 the form of myths, and thus left to later generations, 

 that the Divine it is which holds together all Na- 

 ture ; " and this tradition, of which Aristotle, both 

 naturalist and philosopher, thus nobly speaks 1 — con- 

 tinued through succeeding ages, and illuminated by 

 the Light which has come into the world — may still 

 express the worthiest thoughts of the modern scien- 

 tific investigator and reasoner. 



1 riopa5e5oTot Se wrb tu>v apxafcuj/ /cot traixTcaKaiav iv fxvdov trx^aTj 

 KaraKeKeifiiva reus varepov, on Trepte'xet TO ©EION t))v oXrjv tpvenv.— 

 Arist. Metaphys., xi. 8, 19. 



