116 A Century of Science 



accounts for everything (he has got it all cut and 

 dried and settled ; he knows all about it, so that 

 there is really no need of discussing the subject !) ; 

 if you ask the question whether it was his scientific 

 study of evolution that really led him to such a dog- 

 matic conclusion, or whether it was that he started 

 from some purely arbitrary assumption, like the 

 French materialists of the eighteenth century, I 

 have no doubt the latter would be the true expla- 

 nation. There are a good many people who start 

 on their theories of evolution with these ultimate 

 questions all settled to begin with. It was the 

 most natural thing in the world that after the first 

 assaults of science upon old beliefs, after a cer- 

 tain number of Bible stories and a certain number 

 of church doctrines had been discredited, there 

 should be a school of men who in sheer weariness 

 should settle down to scientific researches, and say, 

 " We content ourselves with what we can prove 

 by the methods of physical science, and we will 

 throw everything else overboard." That was very 

 much the state of mind of the famous French 

 atheists of the last century. But only think how 

 chaotic nature was to their minds compared to 

 what she is to our minds to-day. Just think how 

 we have in the present century arrived where we 

 can see the bearings of one set of facts in nature 



