246 PIONEERS OF E VOL UTION PART IV 



of barbaric conceptions ; their ritual is becoming an 

 archaeological curiosity. They have no answer to 

 the questions propounded by the growing intelligence 

 of our time ; neither can they satisfy the emotions 

 which they but feebly discipline. Their place is 

 being slowly, but surely, and more effectively, filled 

 by a theory which, interpreting the * mighty sum of 

 things/ substitutes clear conceptions of unbroken 

 order and relation between phenomena, in place of 

 hazy conceptions of intermittent interferences ; a 

 theory which gives more than it takes away. For 

 if men are deprived of belief in the pseudo-mysteries 

 coined in a pre-scientific age, their wonder is fed, 

 and their enquiry is stimulated, by the consciousness 

 of the impenetrable mysteries of the Universe. 



