CHAPTER II. 



GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE SPECIAL-CREATION"- 

 HYPOTHESIS.* 



§ 110. Early ideas are not usually true ideas. Unde- 

 veloped intellect, be it that of an individual or that of the 

 race, forms conclusions which require to be revised and re- 

 revised, before they reach a tolerable correspondence with 

 realities. Were it otherwise there would be no discovery, no 

 increase of intelligence. What we call the progress of 

 knowledge, is the bringing of Thoughts into harmony with 

 Things; and it implies that the first Thoughts are either 

 wholly out of harmony with Things, or in very incomplete 

 harmony with them. 



If illustrations be needed the history of every science 

 furnishes them. The primitive notions of mankind as to the 

 structure of the heavens were wrong; and the notions which 

 replaced them were successively less wrong. The original 

 belief respecting the form of the Earth was wrong ; and this 

 wrong belief survived through the first civilizations. The 

 earliest ideas that have come down to us concerning the 

 natures of the elements were wrong; and only in quite 

 recent times has the composition of matter in its various 

 forms been better understood. The interpretations of me- 

 chanical facts, of meteorological facts, of physiological facts, 

 were at first wrong. In all these cases men set out with 



* Several of the arguments used in this chapter and in that which follows 

 it, formed parts of an essay on " The Development Hypothesis," originally 

 published in 1852. 



417 



