162 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



sis does nothing more than " transport the conception of 

 life's origin to an indefinitely distant past." 



Those who hold the doctrine of Evolution are by no 

 means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they 

 yield no more to it than a provisional assent. They regard 

 the nebular hypothesis as probable, and in the utter absence 

 of any evidence to prove the act illegal, they extend the 

 method of Nature from the present into the past. Here the 

 observed uniformity of Nature is their only guide. Within 

 the long range of physical inquiry, they have never dis- 

 cerned in Nature the insertion of caprice. Throughout 

 this range the laws of physical and intellectual continuity 

 have run side by side. Having thus determined the ele- 

 ments of their curve in a world of observation and experi- 

 ment, they prolong that curve into an antecedent world, 

 and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of develop- 

 ment from the nebula to the present time. You never hear 

 the really philosophical defenders of the doctrine of Uni- 

 formity speaking of impossibilities in Nature. They never 

 say, what they are constantly charged with saying, that it 

 is impossible for the Builder of the universe to alter His 

 work. Their business is not with the possible, but the 

 actual — not with a world which might be, but with a world 

 that is. This they explore with a courage not unmixed 

 Avith reverence, and according to methods which, like the 

 quality of a tree, are tested by their fruits. They have but 

 one desire — to know the truth. They have but one fear — 

 to believe a lie. And if they know the strength of science, 

 and rely upon it with unswerving trust, they also know the 

 limits beyond which science ceases to be strong. They best 

 know that questions offer themselves to thought which 

 science, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency to 

 solve. They keep such questions open, and will not toler- 

 ate any unnecessary limitation of the horizon of their souls. 

 They have as little fellowship with the atheist who says 



