ts of our
world, but away down among the colloids; and the beginning of life was
not a fortuitous event occurring millions of years ago and never again
repeated, but one which in its primordial stages keeps on repeating
itself all the time in our generation. So that if all intelligent
creatures were by some holocaust destroyed, up out of the depths in
process of millions of years, intelligent beings would once more
emerge." This passage shows what a speculative leap or flight the
scientific mind is at times compelled to take when it ventures beyond
the bounds of positive methods. It is good philosophy, I hope, but we
cannot call it science. Thrilled with cosmic emotion, Walt Whitman made
a similar daring assertion:--

"There is no stoppage, and never can be stoppage,
If I, you, and the worlds, and all beneath or upon their surfaces,
were this moment reduced back to a pallid float, it would
not avail in the long run,
We should surely bring up again where we now stand,
And surely go as much farther, and then farther and farther."

II

Evolution is creative, whether it works in matter--as Bergson describes,
or whether its path lies up through electrons and atoms and molecules,
as Professor Moore describes. There is something that creates and makes
matter plastic to its will. Whether we call matter "the living garment
of God," as Goethe did, or a reservoir of creative energy, as Tyndall
and his school did, and as Professor Moore still does, we are paying
homage to a power that is super-material. Life came to our earth, says
Professor Moore, through a "well-regulated orderly development," and it
"comes to every mother earth of the universe in the maturity of her
creation when the conditions arrive within suitable limits." That no
intelligent beings appeared upon the earth for millions upon millions of
years, that for whole geologic ages there was no creature with more
brains than a snail possesses, shows the almost infinitely slow progress
of development, and that there has been no arbitrary or high-handed
exercise of creative power. The universe is not run on principles of
modern business efficiency, and man is at the head of living forms, not
by the fiat of some omnipotent power, some superman, but as the result
of the operation of forces that balk at no delay, or waste, or failure,
and that are dependent upon the infinitely slow ripening and
amelioration of both cosmic and terrestrial con