SCIENTIFIC FAITH 
back still, till we find him in trees living like the 
anthropoid apes; then back to the earth again to 
some four-footed creature, probably of the marsu- 
pial kind; still the trail leads downward and ever 
downward, till we lose it in that maze of marine 
forms that swarm in the Paleozoic seas, or until 
the imagination is baffled and refuses to proceed. 
It certainly is a hard proposition, and it puts one 
upon his mettle to accept it. 
Should we not find equal difficulty in believing 
the life-history of each one of us, — the start in the 
germ, then the vague suggestion of fish, and frog, 
and reptile, in our foetal life, — were it not a matter 
of daily experience? Let it be granted that the race 
of man was born as literally out of the animal forms 
below him as the child is born out of these vague, 
prenatal animal forms in its mother’s womb. Yet 
the former fact so far transcends our experience, 
and even our power of imagination, that we can 
receive it only by an act of scientific faith, as our 
fathers received the dogmas of the Church by an act 
of religious faith. 
I confess that I find it hard work to get on intimate 
terms with evolution, familiarize my mind with it, 
and make it thinkable. The gulf that separates man 
from the orders below him is so impassable, his intelli- 
gence is so radically different from theirs, and his 
progress so enormous, while they have stood still, 
that believing it is like believing a miracle. 
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