2 PIONEERS OF EVOLUTION PART 



fix their beginnings. Moreover, charged, as they are, 

 with many crudities, they are not detachable from 

 the barbaric conceptions of the Universe which are 

 the philosophies of past, and the legends of present, 

 times. 



Fontenelle, a writer of the last century, shrewdly 

 remarked that ' all nations made the astounding part 

 of their myths while they were savage, and retained 

 them from custom and religious conservatism.' For, 

 as Walter Bagehot argues in his brilliant little book 

 on Physics and Politics ', and as all anthropological 

 research goes to prove, the lower races are non- 

 progressive both through fear and instinct. And the 

 majority of the members of higher races have not 

 escaped from the operation of the same causes. Hence 

 the persistence of coarse and grotesque elements in 

 speculations wherein man has made gradual approach 

 to the truth of things ; hence, too, the like pheno- 

 mena having to be interpreted, the similarity of 

 the explanation of them. And as primitive myth 

 embodies primitive theology, primitive morals, and 

 primitive science, the history of beliefs shows how 

 few there be who have escaped from the tyranny of 

 that authority and sanctity with which the lapse of 

 time invests old ideas. 



Dissatisfaction is a necessary condition of pro- 

 gress ; and dissatisfaction involves opposition. As 

 Grant Allen puts it, in one of his most felicitous 

 poems : 



If systems that be are the order of God, 

 Revolt is a part of the order. 



Hence a stage in the history of certain peoples 

 when, in questioning what is commonly accepted, 



