MODERN EVOLUTION. 2 r, 



only because it enables them to speak with authority 

 in philosophy and religion." In a letter to the writer, 

 wherein Huxley refers to his retirement from official 

 life, he says: 



I was so ill that I thought with Hamlet, " the rest is silence." 

 But my wiry constitution has unexpectedly weathered the storm, 

 and I have every reason to believe that with renunciation of the 

 devil and all his works (i. e., public speaking, dining, and be- 

 ing dined, etc.) my faculties may be unimpaired for a good 

 spell yet, And whether my lease is long or short, I mean to 

 devote them to the work I began in the paper on the Evolu- 

 tion of Theology. 



That essay was first published in two sections in 

 the Nineteenth Century, 1886, and was the sequel 

 to the eighth chapter of his Hume. The Romanes 

 Lecture supplemented the last chapter of that book. 

 All these are accessible enough to render superfluous 

 any abstract of their contents. But the tribute due 

 to David Hume, who may well-nigh claim place 

 among the few but fit company of Pioneers, war- 

 rants reference to his anticipation of accepted theo- 

 ries of the origin of belief in spiritual beings in his 

 Natural History of Religion, published in 1757. He 

 says : " There is an universal tendency among man- 

 kind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to 

 transfer to every object those qualities with which 

 they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they 

 are intimately conscious. . . . The unknown causes 

 which continually employ their thought, appearing 

 always in the same aspect, are all apprehended to 

 be of the same kind or species. Nor is it long be- 



