194 SCIENCE AND IMMORTALITY 



in the warm silt of the circumpolar seas, and the 

 gradual apparition of reptiles and roses ! With 

 what amazement must we decipher in the embryo 

 of man the bold signatures of man's ancestry ! 



The conception is so colossal as to be almost 

 incredible, yet so correlated and so corroborated 

 as to be almost irresistible. 



Yet though the conception is so wonderful and 

 so wide, it is rejected by many and feared by many 

 as a base and unprofitable creed. To certain timid 

 minds there is something profane in the idea of the 

 evolution of matter. Yet where is the profanity ? 

 Where is the cause of fear ? Why, the theory is 

 not even new ; it is as old as philosophy. Many 

 an old Greek philosopher cried, " Give me matter 

 and I will make the world." Thales realised that 

 everything was always becoming something else, 

 and found the beginning of all things in water. 

 Heraclitus also discerned the evolution of things, 

 and chose fire as the origin of the world. Anaxi- 

 mander taught that there was " one eternal inde- 

 structible substance out of which everything arises, 

 and into which everything once more returns," and 

 that " things arose by separation from a universal 

 mixture of all " (quite Spencer's definition of 

 evolution as the production of heterogeneity from 

 homogeneity), and he even guessed that man began 

 in muddy water as a fish. What would he have 



