heory proved because the fabricated link fits perfectly the gap it was
created for, is equally vicious scientifically whether the fabrication
be the work of a physicist of renown or a linguistic theorizer. Let it
simply be agreed, as it now is by all science, that the _evolution of
form_ is a universal and well evidenced principle, working out through
the various well established and comprehensible incidents, such as
natural selection, adaptation to environment, and so on--yet this
statement of the fact is not an explanation of its cause. And every
scientific and logical requirement will be equally, and better, met by
regarding all forms, whether physical, linguistic, or of any kind, as
coming, or rather brought, into being by the force of a consciousness
which needs them as the vehicles of its expanding activity. That this is
absolutely true in language, anybody can see. That it is true in every
department of daily life about us, everybody _does_ see. That it should
be equally true in biology and physics, would not affect the standing or
verity of a single _observed_ fact.

There was, along about the beginning of the Christian era, and for some
time before and after, a very curious movement, which seemed to spread
itself over nearly the entire world, east and west. It is told of the
early Aztecs that "they destroyed the records of their predecessors, in
order to increase their own prestige." It is related that writing once
existed in Peru, but was entirely wiped out, and the Inca records
committed to quipus alone. The "burning of the books" under Tsin Chi
Hwangti in B. C. 213 sought to do the same for China. The times of Akbar
witnessed much of the same in India. And in Europe almost nothing was
left to tell the tale of the great pre-Christian eastern empires and
systems of thought; so that from the establishment of State Christianity
under Constantine, and the final settlement of the Canon at the Council
of Nicaea, an impenetrable veil was drawn over the achievements and
greatness of the Past, and all connexion therewith broken off. It was
some time after this that we find the heliocentric theory, as well as
that of other habitable worlds, denied (in Europe), because "it would
deprive the Earth of its unique and central eminence." Just as we also
today are served up with prehistoric savage and animal ancestors, to the
greater glory of our own present-day magnificence. But it really is in
sober truth only a question of