decay,
recognizing in science its material benefits only, such men have thoughts
of despair when they look forward to the times to come. But if there be
any truth in what I have attempted to urge to-night, if the intellectual,
if the moral influences of science are no less marked than her material
benefits, if, moreover, that which she has done is but the earnest of that
which she shall do, such men may pluck up courage and gather strength by
laying hold of her garment.

We men of science at least need not share their views or their fears. Our
feet are set, not on the shifting sands of the opinions and the fancies of
the day, but on a solid foundation of verified truth, which by the labors
of each succeeding age is made broader and more firm. To us the past is a
thing to look back upon, not with regret, not as something which has been
lost never to be regained, but with content, as something whose influence
is with us still, helping us on our further way. With us, indeed, the past
points not to itself, but to the future; the golden age is in front of us,
not behind us; that which we do know is a lamp whose brightest beams are
shed into the unknown before us, showing us how much there is in front,
and lighting up the way to reach it. We are confident in the advance
because, as each one of us feels that any step forward which he may make
is not ordered by himself and is not the result of his own sole efforts in
the present, but is, and that in large measure, the outcome of the labors
of others in the past, so each one of us has the sure and certain hope
that, as the past has helped him, so his efforts, be they great or be they
small, will be a help to those to come.

THOMAS HENRY HUXLEY

THREE HYPOTHESES RESPECTING THE HISTORY OF NATURE

So far as I know, there are only three hypotheses which ever have been
entertained, or which well can be entertained, respecting the past history
of nature. I will, in the first place, state the hypotheses, and then I
will consider what evidence bearing upon them is in our possession, and by
what light of criticism that evidence is to be interpreted.

Upon the first hypothesis, the assumption is, that phenomena of nature
similar to those exhibited by the present world have always existed; in
other words, that the universe has existed from all eternity in what may
be broadly termed its present condition.

The second hypothesis is, that the present state of things has had only