as Hallam proves, 'anticipated in the compass of a few pages the discoveries which made Galileo, Kepler, Maestlin, Maurolycus, and Castelli immortal,' it may well 'strike us,' he suggests 'with something like the awe of supernatural knowledge;' and in the presence of Leonardo da Vinci the modern scientist of highest rank may stand with uncovered head. "If wisdom was not born with us, neither will it die with us. There will be something left to know. Our facts will be tested, our theories probed, and our assertions exploded by better minds than ours. If it be true, as Bacon says, '_prudens interrogatio dimidium scientiæ_,' it is also true, '_imprudens assertio excidium scientiæ_.' We are in these days treated to 'demonstrations' which scarcely rise to the level of presumptions, but, rather, of presumption. There is an accumulation of popular dogmatism that is very likely doomed within a century to be swept into the same oblivion with the 'Christian Astrology,' of William Lilly and the 'Ars Magna' of Raymond Lully--a mass of rubbish that is waiting for another Caliph Omar and the bath-fires of Alexandria. "It will not answer to mistake the despotism of hypothesis for the reign of law, nor physical law for the great 'I AM.' True thinkers must respect other thinkers and God. They cannot ignore the primal utterances of consciousness, the laws of logic, nor the truths of history. Foregone conclusions are not to bar out the deepest facts of human nature, nor the most stupendous events in the story of the race. Hume may not rule out the settled laws of evidence the moment they touch the borders of religion; nor may Strauss, by the simple assertion that miracles are impossible, manacle the arm of God. Comte may not put his extinguisher upon the great underlying verities of our being, nor Tyndall jump the iron track of his own principles to smuggle into matter a 'potency and promise' of all 'life.' Huxley cannot play fast and loose with human volition, nor juggle the trustiness of memory into a state of consciousness, to save his system; nor may Haeckel lead us at his own sweet creative will through fourteen stages of vertebrate and eight of invertebrate life up to the great imaginary 'monera,' the father and mother of us all. It will be time to believe a million things in a lump when one of them is fully proved in detail. We have no disposition, even with so eminent an authority as St. George Mivart, to denominate Natural Selection 'a puerile hypothesis.' We will promise to pay our respects to our 'early progenitor' of 'arboreal habits' and 'ears pointed and capable of movement,' when he is honestly identified by his ear-marks, and even to worship the original fire-mist when that is properly shown to be our only Creator, Preserver, and Bountiful Benefactor.