But first let us remember that along with the three indispensable elements here specified, every historic Religion has also contained a quantity of cosmological speculations, metaphysical doctrines, priestly rites and ceremonies and injunctions, and a very considerable part of this structure has been demolished by modern criticism. The destruction of beliefs has been so great that we can hardly think it strange if some critics have taken it into their heads that nothing can be rescued. But let us see what the doctrine of evolution has to say. Our inquiry may seem to take us very far afield, but that we need not mind if we find the answer by and by directing us homeward. [Illustration] VIII _The Fundamental Aspect of Life_ I often think, when working over my plants, of what Linnæus once said of the unfolding of a blossom: "I saw God in His glory passing near me, and bowed my head in worship," The scientific aspect of the same thought has been put into words by Tennyson:-- "Flower in the crannied wall, I pluck you out of the crannies, I hold you here, root and all, in my hand, Little flower,--but if I could understand What you are, root and all, and all in all, I should know what God and man is." No deeper thought was ever uttered by poet. For in this world of plants, which with its magician chlorophyll conjuring with sunbeams is ceaselessly at work bringing life out of death,--in this quiet vegetable world we may find the elementary principles of all life in almost visible operation. It is one of these elementary principles--a very simple and broad one--that here concerns us.