62 FOOT-NOTES TO EVOLUTION. 



vency will the " heavens roll away as a scroll," nor " the 

 universe shrivel up as a cast-off snake skin." 



In the growing recognition of law has lain the prog- 

 ress of science. From the casting aside of human no- 

 tions of chance and whim the " warfare of science " has 

 had its rise. For every fact carried over into the realm 

 of law some man has given his life. Many a time in the 

 growth of humanity it has been necessary that the wisest, 

 clearest, most humane should die on the stake or the 

 gibbet or the cross, that men should come to realize 

 the power of an idea; that they should know the mean- 

 ing of truth. 



Many men have been distressed over the insensibil- 

 ity of Nature. She goes on with her own affairs. If 



the ship leaks, she drowns a prophet as 

 The indifference ghe wQuld & ^ The stQnes in the 



of Nature. . 



street should have cried out at the mur- 

 der of Caesar. But they did not. It was only men who 

 cried. Once, when a fugitive slave was seized in Massa- 

 chusetts, there were those who felt outraged that Nature 

 did not rebel against it. It was a surprise to Thoreau 

 that the squirrels went on with their hoard and the wind 

 rustled in the trees, as though nothing had happened. 

 But what should Nature do ? She attends only to her 

 own affairs. She is only a figure of speech by which we 

 personify her affairs. Her "just keeping on the same, 

 calmer than clockwork and not caring," is the expression 

 of the solidity of the universe. She is as indifferent as 

 the multiplication table is, for the multiplication table 

 is only another expression of unchanging law. A law 

 of Nature is " no respecter of persons." A varying mul- 

 tiplication table would be the destruction of mathe- 

 matics. A varying law of Nature would be the destruc- 

 tion of the universe. 



The laws of evolution have in themselves no neces- 



