Now, evolution is no new thing, but an old familiar truth; but, coming now in a new and questionable shape, lo, how it startles us out of our propriety! Origin of forms by evolution is going on everywhere about us, both in the inorganic and the organic world. In its more familiar forms, it had never occurred to most of us that it was a scientific refutation of the existence of God, that it was a demonstration of materialism. But now it is pushed one step farther in the direction it has always been going--it is made to include also the origin of species--only a little change in its form, and lo, how we start! To the deep thinker, now and always, there is and has been the alternative--materialism or theism. God operates Nature or Nature operates itself; but evolution puts no new phase on this old question. For example, the origin of the individual by evolution. Everybody knows that every one of us individually became what we now are by a slow process of evolution from a microscopic spherule of protoplasm, and yet this did not interfere with the idea of God as our individual maker. Why, then, should the discovery that the species (or first individuals of each kind) originated by evolution destroy our belief in God as the creator of species? 3. It is curious and very interesting to observe the manner in which vexed questions are always finally settled, if settled at all. All vexed questions--i. e., questions which have tasked the powers of the greatest minds age after age--are such only because there is a real truth on both sides. Pure, unmixed error does not live to plague us long. Error, when it continues to live, does so by virtue of a germ of truth contained. Great questions, therefore, continue to be argued _pro_ and _con_ from age to age, because each side is in a sense--i. e., from its own point of view--true, but wrong in excluding the other point of view; and a true solution, a true rational philosophy, will always be found in a view which combines and reconciles the two partial, mutually excluding views, showing in what they are true and in what they are false--explaining their differences by transcending them. This is so universal and far-reaching a principle that I am sure I will be pardoned for illustrating it in the homeliest and tritest fashion. I will do so by means of the shield with the diverse sides, giving the story and construing it, however, in my own way. There is, apparently, no limit to the amount of rich marrow of truth that may be extracted from these dry bones of popular proverbs and fables by patient turning and gnawing.