ioo How Theories are Manufactured 



has a free hand the latter will appear. But is this more 

 than to say that animals clothe themselves in colour 

 because, in the much criticized words, " it is their nature 

 to " ? Because Homer and Milton showed their strength 

 of constitution by living to be old men, shall we say 

 that the production of the Iliad and Paradise Lost is 

 by that fact sufficiently explained? It would seem to 

 be much the same sort of an argument to say that 

 because a Peacock develops so stately a train we 

 understand how that train comes by its complicated 

 spangles. 



Here I must stop, but enough has, I think, been said 

 to show that, as Mr Balfour has it, 1 "although Evolu- 

 tionists also find themselves occasionally amongst the 

 prophets, some of their theories are conceived in the 

 spirit of prophecy, rather than in that of natural phil- 

 osophy." 



1 Address to Church Congress, 1 888. 



