SCIENTIFIC USE OF THE IMAGINATION 



75 



Plato, Shakespeare, Newton, and Raphael 

 are potential in the fires of the sun. 

 We long to learn something of our origin. 

 If the Evolution hypothesis be correct, 

 even this unsatisfied yearning must have 

 come to us across the ages which separate 

 the primeval mist from the consciousness 

 of to-day. I do not think that any holder 

 of the Evolution hypothesis would say 

 that I overstate or overstrain it in any 

 way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, 

 and bring before you, unclothed and 

 unvarnished, the notions by which it 

 must stand or fall. 



Surely these notions represent an 

 absurdity too monstrous to be enter- 

 tained by any sane mind. But why are 

 such notions absurd, and why should 

 sanity reject them ? The law of Rela- 

 tivity, of which we have previously 

 spoken, may find its application here. 

 These Evolution notions are absurd, 

 monstrous, and fit only for the intel- 

 lectual gibbet, in relation to the ideas 

 concerning matter which were drilled 

 into us when young. Spirit and matter 

 have ever been presented to us in the 

 rudest contrast, the one as all-noble, the 

 other as all-vile. But is this correct? 

 Upon the answer to this question all 

 depends. Supposing that, instead of 

 having the foregoing antithesis of spirit 

 and matter presented to our youthful 

 minds, we had been taught to regard 

 them as equally worthy, and equally 

 wonderful ; to consider them, in fact, as 

 two opposite faces of the self-same 

 mystery. Supposing that in youth we 

 had been impregnated with the notion 

 of the poet Goethe, instead of the notion 

 of the poet Young, and taught to look 

 upon matter, not as " brute matter," but 

 as the " living garment of God "; do you 

 not think that under these altered cir- 

 cumstances the law of Relativity might 

 have had an outcome different from its 

 present one? Is it not probable that 

 our repugnance to the idea of primeval 

 union between spirit and matter might 

 be considerably abated ? Without this 

 total revolution of the notions now preva- 

 lent, the Evolution hypothesis must stand 



condemned ; but in many profoundly 

 thoughtful minds such a revolution has 

 already taken place. They degrade neither 

 member of the mysterious duality referred 

 to ; but they exalt one of them from its 

 abasement, and repeal the divorce hitherto 

 existing between them. In substance, if 

 not in words, their position as regards 

 the relation of spirit and matter is : 

 " What God hath joined together, let not 

 man put asunder." 



You have been thus led to the outer 

 rim of speculative science, for beyond 

 the nebulae scientific thought has never 

 hitherto ventured. I have tried to state 

 that which I considered ought, in fair- 

 ness, to be outspoken. I neither think 

 this Evolution hypothesis is to be flouted 

 away contemptuously, nor that it ought 

 to be denounced as wicked. It is to be 

 brought before the bar of disciplined 

 reason, and there justified or condemned. 

 Let us hearken to those who wisely sup- 

 port it. and to those who wisely oppose 

 it; and let us tolerate those, whose 

 name is legion, who try foolishly to do 

 either of these things. The only thing 

 out of place in the discussion is dogma- 

 tism on either side. Fear not the- 

 Evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves, 

 in its presence, upon that faith in the 

 ultimate triumph of truth which was 

 expressed by old Gamaliel when he said : 

 " If it be of God, ye cannot overthrow 

 it ; if it be of man, it will come to 

 nought." Under the fierce light of 

 scientific inquiry, it is sure to be dissi- 

 pated if it possess not a core of truth. 

 Trust me, its existence as a hypothesis 

 is quite compatible with the simultaneous 

 existence of all those virtues to which 

 the term " Christian " has been applied. 

 It does not solve it does not profess to 

 solve the ultimate mystery of this uni- 

 verse. It leaves, in fact, that mystery 

 untouched. For, granting the nebula 

 and its potential life, the question, 

 whence they came, would still remain to 

 baffle and bewilder us. At bottom, the 

 hypothesis does nothing more than 

 " transport the conception of life's origin 

 to an indefinitely distant past." 



