36 THE MISUSE OF METAPHORS IN 



dominion even when we do not know that they exist ; and 

 their authority over us is all the greater because it is not 

 suspected. 



Our own times exemplify these truths. Our thinking, 

 we all recognize, is ruled by the idea of Evolution. We 

 should find it difficult to say how we came to adopt it. 

 We may not be able to say precisely what it means. But 

 we employ it all the same, and employ it in different senses, 

 much to the detriment of many of our discussions, 

 especially in morals and theology. And such has been its 

 power that it has transfigured the world. All the sciences 

 have been transformed by it Geology, Biology, Physi- 

 ology, Psychology, Logic, and Metaphysics. Even 

 Theology, which, unlike all other sciences, is prone to 

 look backwards for its truths, has not been exempt from 

 its influence. Beneath the constructive conceptions proper 

 to each of these sciences, taken severally, there has been 

 this wider hypothesis, directing the method of knowing 

 of the whole age, making all the sciences move together, 

 and giving to the thought of our times a certain unity of 

 direction and of purpose. 



The history of human thought in the past is the story of 

 the succession of these great dominant conceptions ; and 

 that succession marks the true stages of human civilisation, 

 dividing it into distinct epochs. There is no event in the 

 life of the race comparable in significance to the transition 

 from one of these dominant conceptions to another ; for 

 it means a change in all its ways of thinking and acting. 



Now, it might seem that if man is always under the 

 sway of some one or other of these conceptions, which thus 

 fill his whole sky and colour his whole world, he cannot 

 know facts as they are. He must apparently observe 



