248 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



part and function of a Higher Life, as the living 

 moving blood is subordinate to the living man. I resist 

 no such idea as long as it is not dogmatically imposed. 

 Left for the human mind freely to operate upon, the 

 idea has ethical vitality ; but, stiffened into a dogma, 

 the inner force disappears, and the outward yoke of a 

 usurping hierarchy takes its place. 



The problem before us is, at all events, capable of 

 definite statement. We have on the one hand strong 



O 



grounds for concluding that the earth was once a 

 molten mass. We now find it not only swathed by an 

 atmosphere, and covered by a sea, but also crowded 

 with living things. The question is, How were they 

 introduced ? Certainty may be as unattainable here as 

 Bishop Butler held it to be in matters of religion ; but 

 in the contemplation of probabilities the thoughtful 

 mind is forced to take a side. The conclusion of 

 Science, which recognises unbroken causal connection 

 between the past and the present, would undoubtedly be / 

 that the molten earth contained within it elements of 

 life, which grouped themselves into their present forms 

 as the planet cooled. The difficulty and reluctance 

 encountered by this conception, arise solely from the 

 fact that the theologic conception obtained a prior footing 

 in the human mind. Did the latter depend upon reason- 

 ing alone, it could not hold its ground for an hour 

 against its rival. But it is warmed into life and 

 strength by associated hopes and fears and not only by 

 these, which are more or less mean, but by that lofti- 

 ness of thought and feeling which lifts its possessor 

 above the atmosphere of self, and which the theologic 

 idea, in its nobler forms, has engendered in noble 

 minds. 



Were not man's origin implicated, we should accept 

 without a murmur the derivation of animal and vege- 



