200 
I think, will account for Darwinism being excogitated, and for the 
character of its assumptions, as well as for other characteristics of 
modern science ; tor instance, the postulation by geologists of 
enormously extended periods of operations on the superficial 
materials of the earth, little ditferent from those going on at the 
present time ; the throwing back the beginning of the existing 
order of the external world to an immeasurable past, and placing 
the epoch of its termination in an immeasurable future ; and the 
materialistic view which ascribes “potency” to atoms. 
10. To show that in what I have said above I have not mis- 
represented the object and character of the modern phase of natural 
philosophy, I beg to refer to a work recently published, entitled 
‘ ke Unseen Universe , which may be regarded as exhibiting the 
latest development of the consequences to which that philosophy 
conducts. In page 132 the following passage occurs : “ We think 
it is not so much the right or privilege as the bounden duty of the 
man of science to put back the direct interference of the Great 
hirst Cause— -the unconditioned — as far as he possibly can in time. 
1 his is the intellectual, or rather theoretical, work which he is 
called upon to do, the post that has been assigned to him in the 
economy of the universe.” It does not seem likely that a man of 
science who has this preconceived view of “bounden duty” can 
devote himself to the pursuit of science with his mind unbiassed, 
and free from the influence of pre-judgment. Surely the man of 
science has nothing to do but to make use of all available means of 
acquiring knowledge, apart from anticipations of results, or obliga- 
tions of duty. ° 
11. Ihe passage in the same work next after the one above 
quoted is this : — “ If, then, two possible theories of the production 
of any phenomenon are presented to the man of science, one of 
these implying the immediate operation of the unconditioned, and 
the other the operation of some cause existing in the universe we 
conceive that he is called upon by the most profound obligations of 
his nature to choose the second in preference to the first.” There 
is nothing in this assertion, taken in its literal sense, that any 
physicist can object to. The case, however, has another aspect 
after ascertaining what the authors intend to include under the 
expression “ the operation of some cause existing in the universe ” 
and discovering that the assertion is not of so^imple a character 
as at first sight it seems to be. From other parts of the work as 
especially the latter portion of Chapter II., it appears that the 
causation referred to is subject to a “Principle of Continuity” 
the meaning and the reality of which may be called in question 
For authority for the existence of this principle Groves' book 
