ON THE EVOLUTION MATERIALISM AND THEOLOGY. 341 



resulted "the shallows and miseries"' of the remainder 

 of the voyage, which the pessimist now so loudly laments ; 

 that, in fact, far greater things were in the list of possi- 

 bilities originally held in her hands, but which have 

 been for ever missed on the earth by a wrong turn taken 

 at a decisive moment, possibilities which, perhaps, nay, 

 certainly, have been realized in happier spheres, through 

 the exhaustion of chance and .errors, and by the trial of 

 ever new combinations and arrangements ? Or shall we 

 hold, with the optimist, unflinchingly, that our world is 

 as good as it could have been ; that none other or better 

 was possible under the circumstances ? The question is 

 finally a matter for faith, but faith appealing to reason, 

 and I for iny part hold to the latter view. I believe 

 that the highest things attained on the earth are equal 

 to the best anywhere attained, and further, that they 

 were intended to come out in the end, in process of time 

 and evolution. Better or worse of their kind may be 

 realized elsewhere, and even wholly different things, 

 which may be very good ; but nothing greater than the 

 finest things our own old earth has shown us virtue, 

 knowledge, affection, beauty, and the peace and joy 

 which comes from these; while nothing good has any- 

 where been arrived at by chance. 



Professor Huxley contends that the final results on 

 the earth were rigidly necessary from the inherent 

 properties of matter, and could have .been predicted by 

 an infinite intelligence, had there been any such con- 

 temporaneous with the original " cosmic vapour/' just 

 as, being given the somewhat different physical con- 

 ditions of the planet Jupiter, the same intelligence could 

 have predicted with equal certainty a different result. 

 Being given the physical conditions, there was only, 

 he thinks, a mathematical and dynamical problem to 



