TIME AND CHANGE 



son, long after Darwin had launched his revolution- 

 ary doctrine of our animal origin, putting man in the 

 same zoological scheme as the lower orders. 



We are slow to adjust our minds to the revelations 

 of science, they have been so long adjusted to a revel- 

 ation, so-called, of an entirely different character. 

 It gives them a wrench more or less violent when we 

 try to make them at home and at their ease amid 

 these new and startling disclosures. To many good 

 people evolution seems an ungodly doctrine, like 

 setting up a remorseless logic in the place of an om- 

 nipresent Creator. But there is no help for it. Sci- 

 ence has fairly turned us out of our comfortable little 

 anthropomorphic notion of things into the great 

 out-of-doors of the universe. We must and will get 

 used to the chill, yea, to the cosmic chill, if need be. 

 Our religious instincts will be all the hardier for it. 



When we accepted Newton's discovery of the 

 force called gravitation, we virtually surrendered 

 ourselves to the enemy, and started upon a road, 

 the road of natural causation, that traverses the 

 whole system of created things. We cannot turn 

 back; we may lie down by the roadside and dream 

 our old dreams, but our children and their children 

 will press on, and will be exhilarated by the journey. 



It is at first sight an unpalatable truth that evo- 

 lution confronts us with, and it requires courage 

 calmly to face it. But it is in perfect keeping with 

 the whole career of physical science, which is forever 



