56 THE CREED OF SCIENCE, RELIGIOUS AND MORAL. 



The full answer to this inquiry is, according to posi- 

 tive scientific thinkers, only to be obtained from a 

 variety of sciences, from psychology, physiology, anthro- 

 pology, sociology ; though the great light that has been 

 recently thrown upon the whole subject by the Darwinian 

 discovery of man's animal descent, is of itself a revela- 

 tion and, a guiding clue of immense significance in all 

 future speculations, producing as it does a total revolu- 

 tion in our point of view and in our methods of inquiry. 



It is only in our day Professor Huxley * maintains 

 that man has discovered his true place in Nature arid 

 his real relations to the rest of the animal kingdom, just 

 as three hundred years ago the true position of the earth 

 and its relations to the other heavenly bodies were dis- 

 covered by Copernicus. It is only in our more favoured 

 time Professor Haeckel *f- tells us that " the question of 

 man's position in Nature, the highest of all problems," 

 has been truly solved by Darwin's theory of descent, 

 corroborated as it so strongly is by the facts of em- 

 bryology and physiology. Indeed, it is only in our 

 generation that the question could be even approached 

 or rightly conceived, so thick a mass of fictions, illusions, 

 and deep inborn prejudices had conspired together to 

 draw an impenetrable veil round man's real nature, which 

 effectually hid him from himself. The dogmas of the- 

 ology and metaphysics, the vain imaginings of poetry, 

 man's own pride and prejudices, had each in their 

 several ways and degrees contributed to the one common 

 result of placing a monstrous distorting mirror before 

 him, which hindered him from seeing himself as he 

 really was. They had made it impossible for him to 

 get even on the right track to the wise self-knowledge 



* Huxley, Evidences as to Man's Place in Nature. 



t Haeckel, History of Creation, vol. i. p. 294 ; vol. ii. p. 368, 



