TIME AND CHANGE 



The theory of evolution as appHed to the whole 

 universe and its inevitable corollary, the animal 

 origin of man, is now well established in most of the 

 leading minds of the world, but it is still rejected by 

 many timid and sensitive souls, and it will be a long 

 time before it becomes universally accepted. 



Doubtless one source of the trouble we have in 

 accepting the theory comes from the fact that our 

 minds have not been used to such thoughts; in the 

 mind of the race they are a new thing : they are not 

 in the literature nor in the philosophy nor in the 

 sacred books in which our minds have been nurtured; 

 they are of yesterday; they came to us raw and un- 

 hallowed by the usage of ages ; more than that, they 

 savor of the materialism of all modern science, 

 which is so distasteful to our finer ideals and religious 

 sensibilities. In fact, these ideas are strangers of an 

 alien race in our intellectual household, and we look 

 upon them coldly and distrustfully. But probably 

 to our children, or to our children's children, they will 

 wear quite a different countenance; they will have 

 become an accepted part of the great family of ideas 

 of the race. 



Another hindrance is the dullness and opacity of 

 our own minds. We are slow to wake up to a sense 

 of the divinity that hedges us about. The great 

 oflBce of science has been to show us this universe as 

 much more wonderful and divine than we have been 

 wont to believe; shot through and through with celes- 



198 



