SCIENTIFIC FAITH 



back still, till we find him in trees living like the 

 anthropoid apes; then back to the earth again to 

 some four-footed creature, probably of the marsu- 

 pial kind; still the trail leads downward and ever 

 downward, till we lose it in that maze of marine 

 forms that swarm in the Palaeozoic seas, or until 

 the imagination is baffled and refuses to proceed. 

 It certainly is a hard proposition, and it puts one 

 upon his mettle to accept it. 



Should we not find equal difficulty in believing 

 the life-history of each one of us, — the start in the 

 germ, then the vague suggestion of fish, and frog, 

 and reptile, in our foetal life, — were it not a matter 

 of daily experience? Let it be granted that the race 

 of man was born as literally out of the animal forms 

 below him as the child is born out of these \^ague, 

 prenatal animal forms in its mother's womb. Yet 

 the former fact so far transcends our experience, 

 and even our power of imagination, that we can 

 receive it only by an act of scientific faith, as our 

 fathers received the dogmas of the Church by an act 

 of religious faith. 



I confess that I find it hard work to get on intimate 

 terms with evolution, familiarize my mind with it, 

 and make it thinkable. The gulf that separates man 

 from the orders below him is so impassable, his intelli- 

 gence is so radically different from theirs, and his 

 progress so enormous, while they have stood still, 

 that believing it is like believing a miracle. 



177 



