ON MAN AND HIS DEVELOPMENT. 69 



former who have struck a new and different shaft into 

 the previously unsounded depths of the soul, and have 

 found a language for its previously unexpressed but real 

 emotions; and the latter who have made colours and 

 lines instead of words and sounds, into a language that 

 powerfully speaks to, ennobles, and stirs the soul ; have 

 not these also enlarged our spiritual life ? 



And the Keplers and Newtons, the Lyells and Dar- 

 wins, the labourers in one grand division of the field' of 

 truth, the wide and ever-increasing province of scientific 

 knowledge ; the men who, after prolonged thought, at 

 length extorted from Nature, despite her many masks 

 and disguises, the long-kept secrets of the laws 'of her 

 mighty and mysterious movements, in the heavens above 

 and in the earth beneath, in sustaining and moving the 

 spheres, in sculpturing the outlines of the earth, in the 

 production and differentiating the forms of life ; these 

 men at least, the great geniuses in science must not the 

 apostles of science and evolution allow ? have aided in 

 the development and elevation and civilization of man- 

 kind, apart from any operation of natural selection. And 

 the Platos, and Spinozas, and Kants, and Hegels, the 

 daring leaders of that ever-existing, never-disheartened 

 company of searchers, sworn to fathom the secret of the 

 universe, resultless as their labours have been as regards 

 their final aim, have yet been of incalculable service in 

 the culture and education of the race. ' Nay more, these 

 lonely thinkers, after long beating against the bars of 

 their own great minds, seem at last almost to break 

 down the barrier between themselves and the Infinite ; 

 they actually seem to catch a glimpse, in some supreme 

 moment of revelation were it only for a moment of 

 the final secret of the world, which in a measure they 

 can darkly symbolize to us. And at the lowest estimate 



