140 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE 



generally will afterward be called upon to do the same. 

 But, however the convictions of individuals here and there 

 may ,be influenced, the process must be slow and secular 

 which commends the hypothesis of Natural Evolution to 

 the public mind. For what are the core and essence of 

 this hypothesis? Strip it naked, and you stand face 

 to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble 

 forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler 

 forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and 

 wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the 

 human mind itself emotion, intellect, will, and all their 

 phenomena were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the 

 mere statement of such a notion is. more than a refutation. 

 But the hypothesis would probably go even further than 

 this. Many who hold it would probably assent to the 

 position that, at the present moment, all our philosophy, 

 all our poetry, all our science, and all our art Plato, 

 Shakespeare, Newton, and Kaphael are potential in the 

 fires of the sun. "We long to learn something of our ori- 

 gin. If the Evolution hypothesis be correct, even this 

 unsatisfied yearning must have come to ua across the ages 

 which separate the primeval mist from the consciousness 

 of to-day. I do not think that any holder of the Evolu- 

 tion hypothesis would say that I overstate or overstrain 

 it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and 

 bring before you, unclothed and unvarnished, the notions 

 by which it must stand or fall. 



Surely these notions represent an absurdity too mon- 

 strous to be entertained by any sane mind. But why are 

 such notions absurd, and why should sanity reject them? 

 The law of Relativity, of which we have previously 

 spoken, may find its application here. These Evolution 



