SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 131 



Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide 

 between this hypothesis and another; and public 

 thought generally will afterwards be called upon to do 

 the same. But, however the convictions of individuals 

 here and there may be influenced, the process must be 

 slow and secular which commends the hypothesis of 

 Natural Evolution to the public mind. For what are 

 the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it 

 naked, and you stand face to face with the notion that 

 not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or 

 animal life, not alone the nobler forms of the horse 

 and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful 

 mechanism of the human body, but that the human 

 mind itself emotion, intellect, will, and all their phe- 

 nomena were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the 

 mere statement of such a notion is more than a refuta- 

 tion. But the hypothesis would probably go even farther 

 than this. Many who hold it would pro 1 bly assent 

 to the position that, at the present moment, all our 

 philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, and all our 

 art Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael are 

 potential in the fires of the sun. We long to learn some- 

 thing of our origin. If the Evolution hypothesis be 

 correct, even this unsatisfied yearning must have come 

 to us across the ages which separate the primeval mist 

 from the consciousness of to-day. I do not think that 

 any holder of the Evolution hypothesis would say that I 

 overstate or overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it 

 of all vagueness, and bring before you, unclothed and 

 unvarnished, the notions by which it must stand or fall. 



Surely these notions represent an absurdity too 

 monstrous to be entertained by any sane mind. But 

 why are such notions absurd, and why should sanity 

 reject them ? The law of Relativity, of which we have 

 previously spoken, may find its application here. These 



