440 FRAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



gun; until the eroding forces of the atmosphere had 

 weathered and decomposed the molten rocks so as to form 

 soils; until the sun's rays had become so tempered by 

 distance, and by waste, as to be chemically fit for the 

 decompositions necessary to vegetable life? Having 

 waited through these aeons until the proper conditions had 

 set in, did it send the fiat forth, "Let there be Life?" 

 These questions define a hypothesis not without its diffi- 

 culties, but the dignity of which in relation to the world's 

 knowledge was demonstrated by the nobleness of the men 

 whom it sustained. 



Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide be- 

 tween this hypothesis and another; and public thought 

 generally will afterward be called upon to do the same. 

 But, however the convictions of individuals here and there 

 may be influenced, the process must be slow and secular 

 which commends the hypothesis of Natural Evolution to 

 the public mind. For what are the core and essence of 

 this hypothesis? Strip it naked, and you stand face to 

 face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms 

 of animalcular or 'animal life, not alone the nobler forms 

 of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonder- 

 ful mechanism of the human body, but that the human 

 mind itself emotion, intellect, will, and all their phe- 

 nomena were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the 

 mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation. 

 But the hypothesis would probably go even farther than 

 this. Many who hold it would probably assent to the 

 position that, at the present moment, all our philosophy, 

 all our poetry, all our science, and all our art Plato, 

 Shakspeare, Newton, and Raphael are potential in the 

 fires of the sun. We long to learn something of our origin. 

 If the Evolution hypothesis be correct, even this unsatis- 

 fied yearning must have come to us across the ages which 

 separate the primeval mist from the consciousness of to-day. 

 I do not think that any holder of the Evolution hypothesis 

 would say that I overstate or overstrain it in any way. I 

 merely strip it of all vagueness, and bring before you, un- 

 clothed and unvarnished, the notions by which it must 

 stand or fall. 



Surely these notions represent an absurdity too mon- 

 strous to be entertained by any sane mind. But why are 

 such notions absurd, and why should sanity reject them? 



