Ix 
SCIENTIFIC FAITH 
FIND myself accepting certain things on the 
authority of science which so far transcend my 
experience, and the experience of the race and all 
the knowledge of the world, in fact which come so 
near being unthinkable, that I call my acceptance 
of them an act of scientific faith. One’s reason may 
be convinced and yet the heart refuse to believe. 
It is not so much a question of evidence as a ques- 
tion of capacity to receive evidence of an unusual 
kind. 
One of the conclusions of science which I feel 
forced to accept, and yet which I find very hard 
work to believe, is that of the animal origin of man. 
I suppose my logical faculties are convinced, but 
what is that in me that is baffled, and that hesitates 
and demurs? 
The idea of the origin of man from some lower 
form requires such a plunge into the past, and such 
a faith in the transforming power of the biological 
laws, and in the divinity that lurks in the soil under- 
foot and streams from the orbs overhead, that the 
ordinary mind is quite unequal to the task. For the 
book of Genesis of the old Bible we have substituted 
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