264 WHAT DOES ^* MYSTERY** MEAN^* 



meaning of "mystery" in this instance? In a sense 

 everything is a mystery — our existence, for example, 

 a universe without beginning or end, and everything 

 in it from an atom, an electron, to a sun. We are 

 conscious of even greater mysteries than these when 

 the vast unbounded prospect lies before us, and they 

 appear to us as the clouds and shadows that rest 

 upon it. When a great scientist encounters a diffi- 

 culty, one of the ten thousand problems that lie all 

 about us challenging our attention, and after glancing 

 at it drops the word "mystery," and passes it by, 

 one would like to know if it is said to discourage 

 those who come after him, as a warning that they 

 will only break themselves against it. One can only 

 conclude that the word used in this way, without 

 explanation, is a stumbling-block and a nuisance in 

 a scientific work. 



To go back to Darwin's argument, he further says : 



Women are generally thought to possess sweeter voices than 

 men, and as far as this serves as any guide, we may infer that 

 they first acquired musical powers in order to attract the other 

 sex. But if so, this must have occurred a long time ago, before 

 our ancestors had become sufficiently human to treat and value 

 their women merely as useful slaves. The impassioned orator, 

 bard or musician, when with his varied tones and cadences he 

 excites the strongest emotions in his hearers, little suspects that 

 he uses the same means by which his half-human ancestors long 

 ago roused each other's ardent passions during their courtship 

 and rivalry. 



It is a passage one is sorry to read, because it was 

 writ by Darwin and — it is ridiculous: not the ironic 

 sentence in the middle onlv, but the whole of it. In 

 the lower animals love and courtship is an excitement 



