The case is not otherwise with science or evolution itself. From primitive times man has always used his knowledge (however imperfect) of what is as the basis of speculations as to what has been. It would, however, be absurd to take the puerile and barbarous cosmogonies of the savage as adequate expressions of the scientific ideal, or to imagine that it is from them that we can judge what science is. It is no less unreasonable to judge the theory of evolution by its present, passing phase. In the first place, there are facts in its history which show that it naturally started with a partial and one-sided view of the facts. In the next place, we must judge it not by what it may be at its worst, but by what it is capable of becoming at its best; and it is by the latter that we must decide what evolution truly is, not by the former. At its worst the theory of evolution may require us to believe that the whole process of evolution is essentially irrational--being the outcome of unintelligent forces operating on reasonless matter--and that the theory of evolution, accordingly, if faithful to the facts, is as irrational as they; or, if rational, is a misleading account of the real universe in which we live and move and have our being. On the other hand, the theory at its best may require us to believe that it reveals a universe run on rational principles, a real world perfectly intelligible to perfect reason, and partially intelligible even to beings who share but partially in the Divine reason that animates the whole. Both theories, however, base themselves upon what is, and profess that their conclusions follow logically from it. If, then, they differ in their conclusions it is because they differ in their diagnosis of what is. Both admit the existence of faith; but one regards faith as a fact in the pathology of human reason, the other regards it as the normal mode of our common reason's operation. The latter, therefore, requires to postulate causes which will account for the correctness of the common faith of mankind; the latter, causes which have resulted in the common illusion of mankind. It seems, then, that even in evolution we do not escape after all from the indeterminate and conditional knowledge, which science offers, to the absolute certainty of accomplished fact. Every theory of the past history of the world is just as conditional, just as much dependent on an "if," as the hypothetical laws of science, for any such theory is dependent on the view it takes of what is, and is correct only if that view is correct.