IX 



SCIENTIFIC FAITH 



I FIND myself accepting certain things on the 

 authority of science which so far transcend my 

 experience, and the experience of the race and all 

 the knowledge of the world, in fact which come so 

 near being unthinkable, that I call my acceptance 

 of them an act of scientific faith. One's reason may 

 be convinced and yet the heart refuse to believe. 

 It is not so much a question of evidence as a ques- 

 tion of capacity to receive evidence of an unusual 

 kind. 



One of the conclusions of science which I feel 

 forced to accept, and yet which I find very hard 

 work to believe, is that of the animal origin of man. 

 I suppose my logical faculties are convinced, but 

 what is that in me that is baffled, and that hesitates 

 and demurs? 



The idea of the origin of man from some lower 

 form requires such a plunge into the past, and such 

 a faith in the transforming power of the biological 

 laws, and in the divinity that lurks in the soil under- 

 foot and streams from the orbs overhead, that the 

 ordinary mind is quite unequal to the task. For the 

 book of Genesis of the old Bible we have substituted 



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