220 The Bible of Nature 



verse — the belief, in other words, that we are living 

 in a cosmos, not a chaos, the belief that the Power 

 at work in the Universe will not put us to per- 

 manent intellectual confusion. This is an ultimate 

 trust, which is not capable of demonstration, 

 though progressively verified and justified by every 

 step we take in the intellectual conquest of the world J^ 



Again, looking at the Evolution-idea quite gen- 

 erally as the largest contribution which Natural 

 Science has made to human thought, may we not 

 aKgue to some purpose in this fashion ? Science 

 looks backward to a beginning, and saj^s there is 

 nothing in the end which is not also in the begin- 

 ning. Philosophy looks forward to an end which 

 illustrates the significance of the whole. Science 

 uses the amoeba in its interpretation of man, 

 philosophy uses man in its interpretation of the 

 amoeba. There are doubtless difficulties in both 

 interpretations; we have seen that the scientific one 

 is far from easy. But they are not opposed to 

 one another and they seem equally natural to all 

 of us, though we may not be expert in following 

 up either of them. We cannot mix them up to- 

 gether, but neither can we hold them in insulation 

 in our thinking. They are complementary out- 

 looks on the world. 



The embryologist describes the development of 

 an individual bird, he uses the fertilized egg-cell 

 as his starting-point, he believes that this in some 



