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pelling and controlling force which we can neither appreciate nor 
comprehend. 
I believe that in attempting to solve such problems as these, we 
may he compared to men trying in the dim twilight before dawn 
to follow a very faintly marked path over broken ground ; by 
much labour and thought we gain continually a few inches, and 
every now and then, when we think we see before us a fair stretch 
down hill, as in the first Hush of the discovery of such a doctrine 
as “ uniformitarianism ” or “natural selection,” we make a rush for- 
ward, only to overrun the path, and to have to return painfully for 
some distance, in order to pick up its traces again, in advance truly 
of the point where we began to run, but far behind that which we 
had thought to reach ; as wo travel on, the light slowly brightens ; 
but for the perfect light of day, which shall enable us to clearly 
understand these mysteries, I look not in this world. As says a 
great man, from whom I have borrowed much to-night in both 
thought and word, “ In all phenomena, the more closely they are 
investigated, the more we are convinced that, humanly speaking, 
an essential cause is unattainable — causation is the will, creation 
the act of God.” 
