Modern scientific thought is called upon to decide between this hypothesis and another: and public thought generally will afterwards be called upon to do the same. You may, however, rest secure in the belief that the hypothesis just sketched can never be stormed, and that it is sure, if it yield at all, to yield to a prolonged siege. To gain new territory modern argument requires more time than modern arms, though both of them move with greater rapidity than of yore. But however the convictions of individuals here and there may be influenced, the process must be slow and secular which commends the rival hypothesis of Natural Evolution to the public mind. For what are the core and essence of this hypothesis? Strip it naked and you stand face to face with the notion that not alone the more ignoble forms of animalcular or animal life, not alone the nobler forms of the horse and lion, not alone the exquisite and wonderful mechanism of the human body, but that the human mind itself--emotion, intellect, will, and all their phenomena--were once latent in a fiery cloud. Surely the mere statement of such a notion is more than a refutation. But the hypothesis would probably go even further than this. Many who hold it would probably assent to the position that at the present moment all our philosophy, all our poetry, all our science, and all our art--Plato, Shakspeare, Newton, and Raphael--are potential in the fires of the sun. We long to learn something of our origin. If the Evolution hypothesis be correct, even this unsatisfied yearning must have come to us across the ages which separate the unconscious primeval mist from the consciousness of to-day. I do not think that any holder of the Evolution hypothesis would say that I overstate it or overstrain it in any way. I merely strip it of all vagueness, and bring before you unclothed and unvarnished the notions by which it must stand or fall.