52 LECTURES ON EVOLUTION m 



propagation of animals and plants, it is clear that 

 the consistent working-out of the uniformitarian 

 idea might lead to the conception of the eternity 

 of the world. Not that I mean to say that either 

 Hutton or Lyell held this conception assuredly 

 not ; they would have been the first to repudiate 

 it. Nevertheless, the logical development of 

 some of their arguments tends directly towards 

 this hypothesis. 



The second hypothesis supposes that the present 

 order of things, at some no very remote time, had 

 a sudden origin, and that the world, such as it 

 now is, had chaos for its phenomenal antecedent. 

 That is the doctrine which you will find stated 

 most fully and clearly in the immortal poem of 

 John Milton the English Divina Oommedia 

 " Paradise Lost." I believe it is largely to the 

 influence of that remarkable work, combined with 

 the daily teachings to which we have all listened 

 in our childhood, that this hypothesis owes its 

 general wide diffusion as one of the current beliefs 

 of English-speaking people. If you turn to the 

 seventh book of" Paradise Lost," you will find there 

 stated the hypothesis to which I refer, which is 

 briefly this : That this visible universe of ours 

 came into existence at no great distance of time 

 from the present ; and that the parts of which it is 

 composed made their appearance, in a certain 

 definite order, in the space of six natural days, in 

 such a manner that, on the first of these days, 



