Part 22

I have thus led you to the outer rim of speculative science, for beyond the nebula scientific thought has never ventured hitherto, and have tried to state that which I considered ought, in fairness, to be outspoken. I do not think this evolution hypothesis is to be flouted away contemptuously; I do not think it is to be denounced as wicked. It is to be brought before the bar of disciplined reason, and there justified or condemned. Let us hearken to those who wisely support it, and to those who wisely oppose it; and let us tolerate those, and they are many, who foolishly try to do neither of these things.

The only thing out of place in the discussion is dogmatism on either side. Fear not the evolution hypothesis. Steady yourselves in its presence upon that faith in the ultimate triumph of truth which was expressed by old Gamaliel when he said: “If it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it; if it be of man, it will come to naught.” Under the fierce light of scientific inquiry this hypothesis is sure to be dissipated if it possess not a core of truth. Trust me, its existence as an hypothesis in the mind is quite compatible with the simultaneous existence of all those virtues to which the term Christian has been applied. It does not solve—it does not profess to solve—the ultimate mystery untouched. At bottom it does nothing more than “transport the conception of life’s origin to an indefinitely distant past.”

For, granting the nebula and its potential life, the question, whence came they? would still remain to baffle and bewilder us. And with regard to the ages of forgetfulness which lie between the conscious life of the nebula and the conscious life of the earth, it is but an extension of that forgetfulness which preceded the birth of us all. Those who hold the doctrine of evolution are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they yield no more to it than a provisional assent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as probable, and in the utter absence of any evidence to prove the act illegal, they extend the method of nature from the present into the past. Here the observed uniformity of nature is their only guide. Within the long range of physical inquiry they have never discerned in nature the insertion of caprice. Throughout this range the laws of physical and intellectual continuity have run side by side. Having thus determined the elements of their curve in this world of observation and experiment, they prolong that curve into an antecedent world, and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of development from the nebula to the present time.

You never hear the really philosophical defenders of the doctrine of uniformity speaking of _impossibilities_ in nature. They never say, what they are constantly charged with saying, that it is impossible for the builder of the universe to alter His work. Their business is not with the possible, but the actual; not with a world which _might_ be, but with a world which _is_. This they explore with a courage not unmixed with reverence, and according to methods which, like the quality of a tree, are tested by their fruits. They have but one desire—to know the truth. They have but one fear—to believe a lie. And if they know the strength of science, and rely upon it with unswerving trust, they also know the limits beyond which science ceases to be strong. They best know that questions offer themselves to thought which science, as now prosecuted, has not even the tendency to solve. They keep such questions open, and will not tolerate any unlawful limitation of the horizon of their souls. They have as little fellowship with the atheist who says there is no God as with the theist who professes to know the mind of God.

“Two things,” said Immanuel Kant, “fill me with awe: the starry heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man.” And in his hours of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of action has ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed by the same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering details of earth, it associates him with a power which gives fulness and tone to his existence, but which he can neither analyze nor comprehend.

● Transcriber’s Notes: ○ The first 44 footnotes are gathered together in the “NOTES AND REFERENCES” section. The following footnotes appear in the text where they are referenced. ○ The mid dot—“·” is used in numbers to separate the whole part from the decimal fraction of the number. ○ Missing or obscured punctuation was silently corrected. ○ Typographical errors were silently corrected. ○ Inconsistent spelling and hyphenation were made consistent only when a predominant form was found in this book. ○ Text that was in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_). ○ The use of a caret (^) before a letter, or letters, shows that the following letter or letters was intended to be a superscript, as in S^t Bartholomew or 10^{th} Century. ○ Superscripts are used to indicate numbers raised to a power. In this plain text document, they are represented by characters like this: “MV^2” or “10^{18}”, i.e. MV squared or 10 to the 18th power.