DARWINISM AND EVOLUTION. 45 



to be a " contradiction in terms." And it must depend on the 

 mental quality of each man who believes in the necessity of a 

 first cause, whether he ascribes to It a personal and paternal 

 character swayed by a love for all creatures and employed in 

 arranging the universe for their happiness — a faith that sustains 

 and comforts a large proportion of mankind — or whether, finding 

 himself unable to cast off an anthropomorphic bondage and 

 perceiving in the phenomena which surround him a drift towards 

 the useful and the clean and the good, "a stream of tendency 

 "that makes for righteousness," he invests it with a quasi- 

 personality not without a charm of its own. 



In the story of evolution, of the struggle for existence, of the 

 survival of the fittest, can we not faintly discern — such a man 

 might say — the dim purpose of Nature and see some long, 

 patient, persistent intention pursued through that lapse of time in 

 which the whole geological record of our planet is no more than 

 a flash in the darkness ? Has it not been the unintermittent aim 

 of Nature to burst or blossom at last into conscious thought ; to 

 sow here and there in the uttermost recesses of her empire the 

 germs of life, and to nurse them through the ages into cerebral 

 organisms, by which she may, as it were, herself lie still and 

 think ? For just as surely as our brains are part of our bodies, 

 our bodies are part of the universe ; made of the same elements, 

 moved by the same forces, subject to the same change. And the 

 problems that we consider and solve Nature thinks out too, in 

 the brains that she has fashioned ; and the sorrows that we feel 

 Nature suffers also in the hearts that she has made. So then, to 

 her lover's prayer, to the cry of a weary worker, Nature may 

 answer thus : — 



INVOCATION. 



Lead me again, dear vision of delight, 

 With thy warm hand along the happy fields, 

 In sight of sombre mountains ranging round 

 The fitful gleam and glance of distant lake ; 

 Beside the tumbling brook's wild melody, 

 Deep drawing into lungs the scented air, 

 The breath of many meadows cool and sweet. 



Ah ! vision of enchantment, come once more, 

 Thrill me with touch no human contact can ; 



