194 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



sidered fundamentally, then, it is by the operation of 

 an insoluble mystery that life on earth is evolved, 

 species differentiated, and mind unfolded, from their 

 prepotent elements in the immeasurable past. 



The strength of the doctrine of Evolution consists, 

 not in an experimental demonstration (for the subject 

 is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its 

 general harmony with scientific thought. From con- 

 trast, moreover, it derives enormous relative cogency. 

 On the one side we have a theory (if it could with any 

 propriety be so called) derived, as were the theories 

 referred to at the beginning of this Address, not from 

 the study of nature, but from the observation of men 

 a theory which converts the Power whose garment is 

 seen in the visible universe into an Artificer, fashioned 

 after the human model, and acting by broken efforts as 

 man is seen to act. On the other side we have the 

 conception that all we see around us, and all we feel 

 within us the phenomena of physical nature as well 

 as those of the human mind have their unsearchable 

 roots in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an 

 infinitesimal span of which is offered to the investigation 

 of man. And even this span is only knowable in part. 

 We can trace the development of a nervous system, 

 and correlate with it the parallel phenomena of sensation 

 and thought. We see with undoubting certainty that 

 they go hand in hand. But we try to soar in a 

 vacuum the moment we seek to comprehend the con- 

 nection between them. An Archimedean fulcrum is 

 here required which the human mind cannot command; 

 and the effort to solve the problem to borrow a com- 

 parison from an illustrious friend of mine is like that 

 of a man trying to lift himself by his own waist- 

 band. All that has been said in this discourse is to 

 be taken in connection with this fundamental truth. 



