such a thing as the "pride of
Science," it is obviously exceeded by the pride of Theology. I fail to
perceive humility in the belief that the human mind is able to
comprehend that which is behind appearances; and I do not see how piety
is especially exemplified in the assertion that the Universe contains
no mode of existence higher in Nature than that which is present to us
in consciousness. On the contrary, I think it quite a defensible
proposition that humility is better shown by a confession of
incompetence to grasp in thought the Cause of all things; and that the
religious sentiment may find its highest sphere in the belief that the
Ultimate Power is no more representable in terms of human consciousness
than human consciousness is representable in terms of a plant's
functions.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 37: _Principles of Biology_, Sec.Sec. 159-168.]

[Footnote 38: _First Principles_, second edition, Sec. 97.]

[Footnote 39: _Principles of Psychology_, second edition, vol. i., Sec.
63.]

[Footnote 40: Ibid., Sec. 272.]

THE FACTORS OF ORGANIC EVOLUTION.

[_First published in_ The Nineteenth Century_, for April and May_,
1886.]

I.

Within the recollection of men now in middle life, opinion concerning
the derivation of animals and plants was in a chaotic state. Among the
unthinking there was tacit belief in creation by miracle, which formed
an essential part of the creed of Christendom; and among the thinking
there were two parties, each of which held an indefensible hypothesis.
Immensely the larger of these parties, including nearly all whose
scientific culture gave weight to their judgments, though not accepting
literally the theologically-orthodox doctrine, made a compromise between
that doctrine and the doctrines which geologists had established; while
opposed to them were some, mostly having no authority in science, who
held a doctrine which was heterodox both theologically and
scientifically. Professor Huxley, in his lecture on "The Coming of Age
of the Origin of Species," remarks concerning the first of these parties
as follows:--

"One-and-twenty years ago, in spite of the work commenced by Hutton
and continued with rare skill and patience by Lyell, the dominant
view of the past history of the earth was catastrophic. Great and
sudden physical revolutions, wholesale creations and extinctions of
living beings, were the ordinary machinery of the geological epic