EVOLUTION AND THE PRESENT AGE 283 
I have been speaking is that this scrappy, dry-as-dust 
method of studying things is falling into comparative 
disfavour. It was a very prompt and striking result of 
the publication of Darwin’s “ Origin of Species” that 
it supplied a new stimulus to all the naturalists in the 
world. Immediately their studies of plants and ani- 
mals were brought to bear upon the question, whether 
the facts known to them tended to prove or disprove 
Darwin’s views; and they suddenly found that nature 
had become far more interesting than when studied in 
the spirit of the stamp collector. 
But still more, the vast sweep of Spencer’s inquiries 
has brought it home to us at every turn that the os- 
trich method of hiding our heads and pretending that 
we see all that there is to be seen is no longer tenable. 
Many a time I have heard Spencer conclude some dis- 
cussion by saying, “ Thus you see it is ever so; there 
is no physical problem whatever which does not soon 
land us in a metaphysical problem that we can neither 
solve nor elude.” In this last word we have the justifi- 
cation for those younger thinkers who are not con- 
tented to stop just where Spencer felt obliged to. As 
the startling disclosures of the past century become 
assimilated in our mental structure, we see that man is 
now justified in feeling himself as never before a part 
of nature, that the universe is no inhospitable wander- 
ing-place, but his own home; that the mighty sweep 
of its events from age to age are but the working out 
of a cosmic drama in which his part is the leading one; 
and that all is an endless manifestation of one all-per- 
vading creative Power, Protean in its myriad phases, 
yet essentially similar to the conscious soul within us. 
To these views Darwinism powerfully contributed 
