APOLOGY FOR THE BELFAST ADDRESS 223 



phenomena has ever been observed. The assumption of 

 such a power to account for special phenomena, though 

 often made, has always proved a failure. It is opposed 

 to the very spirit of science; and I therefore assumed the 

 responsibility of holding up, in contrast with it, that method 

 of nature which it has been the vocation and triumph of 

 science to disclose, and in the application of which we can 

 alone hope for further light. Holding, then, that the 

 nebulae and the solar system, life included, stand to each 

 other in the relation of the germ to the finished organism, 

 I reaffirm here, not arrogantly, or defiantly, but without 

 a shade of indistinctness, the position laid down at Belfast. 

 Not with the vagueness belonging to the emotions, but 

 with the definiteness belonging to the understanding, the 

 scientific man has to put to himself these questions regard- 

 ing the introduction of life upon the earth. He will be 

 the last to dogmatize upon the subject, for he knows best 

 that certainty is here for the present unattainable. His 

 refusal of the creative hypothesis is less an assertion of 

 knowledge than a protest against the assumption of knowl- 

 edge which must long, if not forever, lie beyond us, and 

 the claim to which is the source of perpetual confusion 

 upon earth. With a mind open to conviction he asks his 

 opponents to show him an authority for the belief they 

 so strenuously and so fiercely uphold. They can do no 

 more than point to the Book of Genesis, or some other 

 portion of the Bible. Profoundly interesting, and indeed 

 pathetic, to me are those attempts of the opening mind of 

 man to appease its hunger for a Cause. But the Book 

 of Genesis has no voice in scientific questions. To the 

 grasp of geology, which it resisted for a time, it at length 

 yielded like potter's clay; its authority as a system of cos- 



