A GLACIAL EPOCH ENDING 77 



weighty consequences to man, in departments where 

 hitherto the humanistic philosophies have been 

 supreme, the old intuitions have melted away in the 

 light of science like snow in the light of the sun. 

 In these spheres the world is, as it were, emerging 

 from beneath an accumulation of perennial snow, 

 which descended lightly, graciously and imperceptibly 

 enough, but is now compacted into unyielding fetters, 

 melting, it is true, but how reluctantly ! Granted 

 there may be heights above the snow-line which 

 the rays of the sun can only beautify and render 

 the more dazzlingly white, granted there may be 

 deep valleys penetrating down to the common level 

 to which the direct rays of the sun can never find 

 access, the kiss of science is on all the fields where- 

 in men labour and earn their bread, and it is only 

 a matter of time before the frozen grip of the past 

 relaxes for ever. An exuberance as of the Alpine 

 meadows in spring will alternate with the desola- 

 tion wrought by the avalanche, as the new influence 

 unbuttresses the old polities and brings them roaring 

 down. As the geologist of to-day will show you 

 the scars that the surface of the earth still bears 

 from the time when the glacial epoch relaxed its 

 grip, so the conflict now fairly joined between 

 the old and the new will not end without leaving 

 scars as enduring and effecting changes as great. 



The suddenness of the change would in any 

 case have created a condition of things dangerous 

 to live through. But it has been rendered im- 

 measurably more dangerous and incalculable in 

 this country by the attempt that has been made 

 to put the youth of the nation into cold storage, 

 to foster a love for a regime that is ending, never 

 to return, to sow in the cradles of the future a 

 secret contempt for and distrust of science and its 

 methods, ineradicable save by death and impotent 



M 



