RELIGION AND THE DOCTRINE OF EVOLUTION. 24 1 



introduces the possibility of an entirely new history of the material 

 universe. For this universe, as we see it, is almost entirely made up 

 of composite and not of simple substances. We have been able to 

 analyze all the substances that we know into a comparatively small 

 number of simple elements — some usually solid, some liquid, some 

 gaseous. But these simple elements are rarely found uncombined with 

 others ; most of those which we meet with in a pure state have been 

 taken out of combination and reduced to simplicity by human agency. 

 The various metals that we ordinarily use are mostly found in a state 

 of ore, and we do not generally obtain them pure except by smelting. 

 The air we breathe, though not a compound, is a mixture. The water 

 which is essential to our life is a compound. And, if we pass from 

 inorganic to organic substances, all vegetables and animals are com- 

 pound, sustained by various articles of food which go to make up their 

 frames. Now, how have these compounds been formed ? It is quite 

 possible that some of them, or all of them to some extent, may have 

 been formed from the first. If Science could go back to the beginning 

 of all things, which it obviously can not, it might find the composi- 

 tion already accomplished, and be compelled to start with it as a given 

 fact — a fact as incapable of scientific explanation as the existence of 

 matter at all. But, on the other hand, composition and decomposition 

 is a matter of every-day experience. Our very food could not nourish 

 us except by passing through these processes in our bodies ; and by 

 the same processes we prepare much of our food before consuming it. 

 May not Science go back to the time when these processes had not yet 

 begun ? May not the starting-point of the history of the universe be 

 a condition in which the simple elements were still uncombined ? If 

 Science could go back to the beginning of all things, might we not find 

 all the elements of material things ready indeed for the action of the 

 inherent forces which would presently unite them in an infinite vari- 

 ety of combinations, but as yet still separate from each other? Scat- 

 tered through enormous regions of space, but drawn together by the 

 force of gravitation ; their original heat, whatever it may have been, 

 increased by their mutual collision ; made to act chemically on one 

 another by such increase or by subsequent decrease of temperature ; 

 perpetually approaching nearer to the forms into which, by the inces- 

 sant action of the same forces, the present universe has grown — these 

 elements, and the working of the several laws of their own proper na- 

 ture, may be enough to account scientifically for all the phenomena 

 that we observe. We do not even then get back to regularity. Why 

 these elements, and no others ; why in these precise quantities ; why so 

 distributed in space ; why endowed with these properties: still are ques- 

 tions which Science can not answer, and there seems no reason to ex- 

 pect that any scientific answer will ever be possible. Nay, I know 

 not whether it may not be asserted that the impossibility of answering 

 one at least among these questions is capable of demonstration. For 



TOL. XXVI. — 16 



