THE HAMILTON ASSOCIATION. 45 



the brief but majestic statement, " And He said, let it be, and it was." 

 Now here we are at the starting point in an endless controversy. 

 Reject this statement, and we are agnostics on the whole subject, 

 not from any superior wisdom or intellectual abihty, not even of 

 choice, but from very necessity ; accept it, and we get an efficient 

 and satisfactory cause to account for the most profound and perplex- 

 ing mysteries that meet us in our investigations of nature. Now, it 

 does not require a cultivated intellect to accept the word of another. 

 It is a well-known fact, that the ignorant and uncultivated are far 

 more likely to accept a bare statement than those that are well in- 

 formed. No matter what unfair use may be made of it in argument, 

 it is an undeniable principle of human nature ; all that can be reason- 

 ably demanded is an assurance that the speaker is honest, and that 

 he knows that whereof he speaks ; and on a matter beyond his reach, 

 the most cultivated can demand no more. If we accept this partic- 

 ular statement as coming from the source it claims, we cannot doubt 

 the one or question the other ; if we accept it hypothetically, then 

 the probability of its truth has to be learned from its merits. 



Now it has been laid down as an axiom in scientific discussion, 

 that a hypothesis, to be worthy of consideration, must be in harmony 

 with all known facts, and be^ble to explain difficulties more satis- 

 factorily than any other; let us then try that statement by this test 

 and see how it works. At once we find that it conveys to us a 

 piece of information, that the labors of thousands of generations 

 have made plain to us can be obtained with certainty in no other 

 way. 



In the biography of the great naturalist, whose name is used to 

 designate a particular system of scientific philosophy, and to whose 

 life's labors the world is so much indebted for the vast increase to 

 its knowledge of natural subjects, as well as for the immense im- 

 pulse which he gave to a more correct method of studying them, 

 we are told that he became so impressed with the idea of man's 

 base origin, that he would not allow himself to indulge those lofty 

 sentiments that inspire the mind when it is brought into contact with 

 nature in some of its grander manifestations, and to which his nature 

 was peculiarly susceptible, as it seemed to him like a mockery for a 

 being of such an origin to indulge in aspirations not in keeping with 

 it, and, he thought, not likely to be realized ; until by their continued 

 suppression, he tells us that he became as a dried leaf to everything 



