SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION. 131 



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 

 phenomena were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely 

 the mere statement of such a notion is more than a 

 refutation. But the hypothesis would probably go 

 even farther than this. Many who hold it would 

 probably assent to the position that, at the present 

 moment, all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our 

 science, and all our art Plato, Shakspeare, Newton,^ 

 and Eaphael are potential in the fires of the sun. 

 We long to learn something 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 Eelativity, of which we have 

 previously spoken, may find its application here. These 

 Evolution notions are absurd, monstrous, and fit only 

 for the intellectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas con- 

 cerning matter which were drilled into us when young. 

 Spirit and matter have ever been presented to us in 

 the rudest contrast, the one as all-noble, the other 



