desire and endowed with scientific
capacity.

The class of investigating minds is a small one, possibly even smaller
than that of reflecting minds. Very few persons at any period are able
to find out anything whatever. There are few observers, few discoverers,
few who even wish to discover truth. In how many societies the problems
of philology which face every person who speaks English are left
unattempted! And if the inquiring or the successfully inquiring class
of minds is small, much smaller, of course, is the class of those
possessing the scientific aptitude in an eminent degree. During the last
age this most distinguished class was to a very great extent absorbed
in the study of phenomena, a study which had fallen into arrears. For
we stood possessed, in rudiment, of means of observation, means for
travelling and acquisition, qualifying men for a larger knowledge than
had yet been attempted. These were now to be directed with new accuracy
and ardour upon the fabric and behaviour of the world of sense. Our
debt to the great masters in physical science who overtook and almost
out-stripped the task cannot be measured; and, under the honourable
leadership of Ruskin, we may all well do penance if we have failed "in
the respect due to their great powers of thought, or in the admiration
due to the far scope of their discovery." ("Queen of the Air", Preface,
page vii. London, 1906.) With what miraculous mental energy and divine
good fortune--as Romans said of their soldiers--did our men of curiosity
face the apparently impenetrable mysteries of nature! And how natural
it was that immense accessions of knowledge, unrelated to the spiritual
facts of life, should discredit Christian faith, by the apparent
superiority of the new work to the feeble and unprogressive knowledge of
Christian believers! The day is coming when men of this mental character
and rank, of this curiosity, this energy and this good fortune in
investigation, will be employed in opening mysteries of a spiritual
nature. They will silence with masterful witness the over-confident
denials of naturalism. They will be in danger of the widespread
recognition which thirty years ago accompanied every utterance of
Huxley, Tyndall, Spencer. They will contribute, in spite of adulation,
to the advance of sober religious and moral science.

And this result will be due to Darwin, first because by raising the
dignity of natural science, he encouraged the development of