36 



I believe, for I have confessed it, that my theory is based on 

 imagination, not on proved fact. I have no faith in inductive reasoning, 

 as I think you will allow I have shown all along. 



I believe that there is no Supreme Governour of the Universe, though 

 Laplace has shown by the calculation of probabilities that it is four 

 millions to a unit that the motions of the planets have been directed 

 by a "First Great Cause," and nearly two millions to one that there 

 was such, rather than that the sun will rise at a given moment of any 

 given day. I have spoken. 



I believe, because Huxley says so, that the Pyramids were built on 

 the mud of the Nile deposited at a very slow rate, the fact being that 

 it is deposited in enormous quantities in a short space of time. 



I believe that the horse was tamed 19337 years B.C., though history 

 relates that it was not introduced into Egypt till the era of the 

 Shepherd Kings. 



I believe that religion is a novelty, though in the " Book of the 

 Dead," perhaps the oldest book in the world, the future life is clearly 

 spoken of as well as the doctrine of a future state of rewards and 

 punishments. 



I believe what I have just said, although the Sphinx, "the father 

 of terror," is found to have belonged to a range of temples, looking out 

 as it does on the vast desert around with its cold impassive face, un- 

 moved by the wreck and ruin of the world, age after age. 



I believe so, I say, although it is shown that Horus was, in those 

 ancient days, a type of the Kesurrection, as Osiris restored to life by 

 Isis, a symbol from the sun settling down in darkness and rising up 

 again in glory. 



I believe so, although there are some most excellent precepts of 

 morality in the Papyrus Prisse, in the Koyal Library of Paris, written 

 between 3300 and 3400 B.C. 



I believe, for I cannot help it, that the proportion throughout the 

 whole of nature, between males and females, is very wonderful, and if 

 you ask me what natural selection has had to do with it, all I can say is 

 Excuse me you understand Excuse me. 



I believe that the bright colours in snakes may " perhaps " be due 

 to the admiration of the male for the female, or of the female for the 

 male. You may ask me what evidence I have to prove this? What 

 is evidence good for unless it proves my theory? That is the way I 

 answer one question by another. 



I believe that the beautiful eyes in the wing of the Argus pheasant 

 were produced by the desire of the male bird to exhibit himself to 

 advantage before the female, and "in HO other way." You may 

 think that the oblong spots which (on my theory) gave way in the 

 course of " billions " of years to the round ones, for this end and 

 object, even more beautiful than the eventual rounded ones. Let 

 the bird be the judge about that. " Tastes differ," you know. 



I believe, with Lucretius, that the Queen of Beauty was thus 

 the creative power of the world. You may consider it a gross and 

 degrading idea, worthy only of the Heathen Poet. That I cannot 

 help. 



I believe, as I have all along said, in the "survival" of the 

 stronger creatures, and the " extermination " of all the weaker ones. 

 You ask me how I can reconcile this doctrine with the disappearance 

 from the earth of the Mammoth, whose skull alone, without the 

 tusks, which were nine feet long, weighed four hundred pounds, ; of the 

 Mastodon, the mightiest animal known to have lived ; of the Mega- 

 therium, that "great beast," as Professor Sedgwick called it at the 



