er. He moves over the subject with the passionless
strength of a glacier; and the grinding of the rocks is not always
without a counterpart in the logical pulverisation of the objector.
But though in handling this mighty theme all passion has been stilled,
there is an emotion of the intellect, incident to the discernment of
new truth, which often colours and warms the pages of Mr. Darwin.

His success has been great; and this implies not only the solidity of
his work, but the preparedness of the public mind for such a
revelation. On this head, a remark of Agassiz impressed me more than
anything else. Sprung from a race of theologians, this celebrated man
combated to the last the theory of natural selection. One of the many
times I had the pleasure of meeting him in the United States was at
Mr. Winthrop's beautiful residence at Brookline, near Boston. Rising
from luncheon, we all halted as if by common consent, in front of a
window, and continued there a discussion which had been started at
table. The maple was in its autumn glory, and the exquisite beauty of
the scene outside seemed, in my case, to interpenetrate without
disturbance the intellectual action. Earnestly, almost sadly, Agassiz
turned, and said to the gentlemen standing round, 'I confess that I
was not prepared to see this theory received as it has been by the
best intellects of our time. Its success is greater than I could have
thought possible.'

7.

In our day grand generalisations have been reached. The theory of the
origin of species is but one of them. Another, of still wider grasp
and more radical significance, is the doctrine of the Conservation of
Energy, the ultimate philosophical issues of which are as yet but
dimly seen--that doctrine which 'binds nature fast in fate,' to an
extent not hitherto recognised, exacting from every antecedent its
equivalent consequent, from every consequent its equivalent
antecedent, and bringing vital as well as physical phenomena under the
dominion of that law of causal connection which, so far as the human
understanding has yet pierced, asserts itself everywhere in nature.
Long in advance of all definite experiment upon the subject, the
constancy and indestructibility of matter had been affirmed; and all
subsequent experience justified the affirmation. Mayer extended the
attribute of indestructibility to energy, applying it in the first
instance to inorganic, and afterwards with profound insight to org