PRIMITIVE MAN. 317 



of spontaneous derivation connects incandescent mole- 

 cules or star-dust with the world, and with man 

 himself. 



This evolutionist doctrine is itself one of the 

 strangest phenomena of humanity. It existed, and 

 most naturally, in the oldest philosophy and poetry, 

 in connection with the crudest and most uncritical, 

 attempts of the human mind to grasp the system of 

 nature ; but that in our day a system destitute of 

 any shadow of proof, and supported merely by vague 

 analogies and figures of speech, and by the arbitrary 

 and artificial coherence of its own parts, should be 

 accepted as a philosophy, and should find able ad- 

 herents to string upon its thread of hypotheses our 

 vast and weighty stores of knowledge, is surpassingly 

 strange. It seems to indicate that the accumulated 

 facts of our age have gone altogether beyond its 

 capacity for generalisation; and but for the vigour 

 which one sees everywhere, it might be taken as an 

 indication that the human mind has fallen into a 

 state of senility, and in its dotage mistakes for science 

 the imaginations which were the dreams of its youth. 



In many respects these speculations are important 

 and worthy of the attention of thinking men. They 

 seek to revolutionise the religious beliefs of the world, 

 and if accepted would destroy most of the existing 

 theology and philosophy. They indicate tendencies 

 among scientific thinkers, which, though probably 

 temporary, must, before they disappear, descend to 

 lower strata, and reproduce themselves in grosser 



