950 
ing, provided only we bear in mind that 
she is a treacherous guide and sometimes 
leads astray. Conclusions that rest only 
on analogy must be held tentatively and 
not dogmatically. Yet it would be an un- 
reasonable excess of caution that would 
refuse to recognize the direction in which 
analogy points. When we trace a continu- 
ous evolution from the nebula to the dawn 
of life, and again a continuous evolution 
from the dawn of life to the varied flora 
and fauna of to-day, crowned as it is with 
glory in the appearance of man himself, 
we can hardly fail to accept the suggestion 
that the transition from the lifeless to the 
living was itself a process of evolution. 
Though the supposed instances of spon- 
taneous generation all resolve themselves 
into errors of experimentation, though the 
power of chemical synthesis, in spite of the 
vast progress it has made, stops far short of 
the complexity of protoplasm, though we 
must confess ourselves unable to imagine 
any hypothesis for the origin of that com- 
plex apparatus which the microscope is re- 
vealing to us in the infinitesimal laboratory 
of the cell, are we not compelled to believe 
that the law of continuity has not been 
broken, and that a process of natural tran- 
sition from the lifeless to the living may 
yet be within reach of human discovery? 
Still further. Are we content to believe 
that evolution began with the nebula? 
Are we satisfied to assume our chemical 
atoms as an ultimate and inexplicable 
fact? Herschel and Maxwell, indeed, have 
reasoned, from the supposed absolute like- 
ness of atoms of any particular element, 
that they bear “the stamp of a manufac- 
tured article,’’ and must therefore be sup- 
posed to have been specially created at 
some definite epoch of beginning. But, 
when we are speaking of things of which 
we know as little as we know of atoms, 
there is logically a boundless difference be- 
tween saying that we know no difference 
SCIENCE. 
[N. 8S. Vou. X. No. 261. 
between the atoms of hydrogen, and saying 
that we know there is no difference. Is it 
not legitimate for us to recognize here again 
the direction in which analogy points, and 
to ask whether those fundamentai units of 
physical nature, the atoms themselves, may 
not be products of evolution? Thus analogy 
suggests to us the question, whether there 
is any beginning of the series of evolution- 
ary changes which we see stretching back- 
ward into the remote past; whether the 
nebule from which systems have been 
evolved were not themselves evolved; 
whether existing forms of matter were not 
evolved from other forms that we know 
not; whether creative Power and creative 
Intelligence have not been eternally imma- 
nent in an eternal universe. I cannot help 
thinking that theology may fitly welcome 
such a suggestion, as relieving it from the 
incongruous notion of a benevolent Deity 
spending an eternity in solitude and idle- 
ness. The contemplation of his own attri- 
butes might seem a fitting employment for 
a Hindoo Brahm. It hardly fits the char- 
acter of the Heavenly Father, of whom we 
are told that he ‘ worketh hitherto.’ 
In the last suggestion I have ventured 
outside the realm of science. But most 
men are not so constituted that they can 
carry their scientific and their philosophical 
and religious beliefs in compartments sepa- 
rated by thought-proof bulkheads. Scien- 
tific and philosophic and religious thought, 
in the individual and in the race, must act 
and react upon each other. It was, there- 
fore, inevitable that our century of scien- 
tific progress should disturb the religious 
beliefs of men. When conceptions of the 
cosmos with which religious beliefs had 
been associated, were rudely shattered, it 
was inevitable that those religious beliefs 
themselves should seem to be imperilled. 
And s0,in the early years of the century, 
it was said, if the world is more than six 
thousand years old, the Bible is a fraud, 
