84 How Accumulated. 



vocation and come to us in the name of posi 

 tive science with the prestige that science gives. 

 Darwinism, like every great principle when first 

 discovered, intoxicated and unbalanced its dev 

 otees ; with license unrestrained, it has been ap 

 plied to fundamental problems of the natural and 

 the spiritual world. But the ultimate mysteries of 

 existence forever baffle, as they ever fascinate, the 

 scientific understanding of man, and an age of confi 

 dent construction is always followed by an aveng 

 ing age of destructive criticism ; so that the high- 

 towering, w r ide-extending edifice under which but 

 yesterday intellectual mankind reposed in peace is 

 seen to-morrow as a conventional structure, whose 

 former magnitude and splendor arose solely from 

 an optical illusion distorting the perspective and 

 true relations of things. It is with such specula 

 tions as with the pandemonic councillors : 



&quot; They but now who seem d 

 In bigness to surpass Earth s giant sons, 

 Now less than smallest dwarfs, in narrow room 

 Throng numberless, like that Pygmean race 

 Beyond the Indian mount, or farey elves.&quot; 



In the march of mind, if the discovery of new 

 theories is indispensable, equally so is the reduc 

 tion of the monstrous shapes which they too soon 





