BIRD LIFE 229 



ment to hope : for, if in the past and present are to be 

 seen things which it could not have entered into the 

 heart of man to conceive, no promise for the future can 

 be beyond possibility of belief, only because the con- 

 ception of its fulfilment may be beyond our present 

 powers. 



But imagination fails : and this is why good men 

 in the past have shrunk from inquiry, and too often 

 sought refuge from doubts in abuse of inquirers. 



It was only by publicly recanting the blasphemous 

 heresy that it was the earth that moved and not the 

 sun, and by undertaking to repeat once a week for 

 three weeks the seven Penitential Psalms, that Galileo 

 escaped from the torture-chamber of the Inquisition. 

 ' The thumb-screw and the stake, for the glory of the 

 Lord.' 



' It moves all the same, 1 was his whispered aside to 

 the friend and disciple who stood by him as he rose 

 from his knees. 



We can, after a fashion, picture to ourselves a six- 

 day creation of perfected forms, and poets such as 

 Milton may even venture to fill in grotesque details : 



' The tawny lion ' 



like a great Daddy Long-legs escaping from its under- 

 ground nymph case, 



' pawing to free its hinder parts,' 



and birds bursting full fledged from eggs. 



But the grander idea of a creation of infinite pro- 

 gression such as that of which from their different 



