CHAPTER 11. 



GENERAL ASPECTS OF THE SPECIAL-CREATION-HYPOTHESIS* 



§ 110. Early ideas are not usually true ideas. Unde- 

 veloped intellect, be it that of an individual or that of the 

 race, forms conclusions which require to be revised and re- 

 revised, before they reach a tolerable correspondence v^ith 

 realities. Were it otherwise, there would be no discovery, 

 no increase of intelligence. What we call the progress of 

 knowledge, is the bringing of Thoughts into harmony with 

 Things ; and it implies that the first Thoughts are either 

 wholly out of harmony with Things, or in very incomplete 

 harmony with them. 



If illustrations be needed, the history of every science 

 furnishes them. The primitive notions of mankind as to the 

 structure of the heavens, were wrong ; and the notions 

 which replaced them were successively less wrong. The 

 original belief respecting the form of the Earth was wrong ; 

 and this wrong belief survived through the first civilizations. 

 The earliest ideas that have come down to us concerning the 

 natm*es of the elements were wrong ; and only in quite 

 recent times has the composition of matter in its various 

 forms been bettei understood. The interpretations of me- 

 vihanical facts, of meteorological facts, of physiological facts, 



* Several of the arguments used in this chapter and in that which follows it, 

 formed parts of an essay on " the Development Hypothesis," originally published 

 in 1852 



