78 MAN AND THE LOWER ANIMALS. n 



into the world. Most of us, shrinking from the 

 difficulties and dangers which beset the seeker 

 after original answers to these riddles, are con- 

 tented to ignore them altogether, or to smother 

 the investigating spirit under the feather-bed of 

 respected and respectable tradition. But, in every 

 age, one or two restless spirits, blessed with that 

 constructive genius, which can only build on a 

 secure foundation, or cursed with the spirit of 

 mere scepticism, are unable to follow in the well- 

 worn and comfortable track of their forefathers 

 and contemporaries, and unmindful of thorns and 

 stumbling-blocks, strike out into paths of their 

 own. The sceptics end in the infidelity which 

 asserts the problem to be insoluble, or in the athe- 

 ism which denies the existence of any orderly pro- 

 gress and governance of things: the men of genius 

 propound solutions which grow into systems of 

 Theology or of Philosophy, or veiled in musical 

 language which suggests more than it asserts, take 

 the shape of the Poetry of an epoch. 



Each such answer to the great question, in- 

 variably asserted by the followers of its pro- 

 pounder, if not by himself, to be complete and 

 final, remains in high authority and esteem, it 

 may be for one century, or it may be for twenty: 

 but, as invariably, Time proves each reply to have 

 been a mere approximation to the truth — tolerable 

 chiefly on account of the ignorance of those by 

 whom it was accepted, and wholly intolerable 



