or under an ice sheet, during the
long ages of the glacial epoch? And if you say--Who is sufficient for
these things?--Who can answer these questions? I answer--Who but you, or
your pupils after you, if you will but try?

And if any shall reply--And what use if I do try? What use, if I do try?
What use if I succeed in answering every question which you have
propounded to-night? Shall I be the happier for it? Shall I be the
wiser?

My friends, whether you will be the happier for it, or for any knowledge
of physical science, or for any other knowledge whatsoever, I cannot
tell: that lies in the decision of a Higher Power than I; and, indeed, to
speak honestly, I do not think that bio-geology or any other branch of
physical science is likely, at first at least, to make you happy. Neither
is the study of your fellow-men. Neither is religion itself. We were
not sent into the world to be happy, but to be right; at least, poor
creatures that we are, as right as we can be; and we must be content with
being right, and not happy. For I fear, or rather I hope, that most of
us are not capable of carrying out Talleyrand's recipe for perfect
happiness on earth--namely, a hard heart and a good digestion. Therefore,
as our hearts are, happily, not always hard, and our digestions,
unhappily, not always good, we will be content to be made wise by
physical science, even though we be not made happy.

And we shall be made truly wise if we be made content; content, too, not
only with what we can understand, but, content with what we do not
understand--the habit of mind which theologians call--and rightly--faith
in God; the true and solid faith, which comes often out of sadness, and
out of doubt, such as bio-geology may well stir in us at first sight. For
our first feeling will be--I know mine was when I began to look into
these matters--one somewhat of dread and of horror.

Here were all these creatures, animal and vegetable, competing against
each other. And their competition was so earnest and complete, that it
did not mean--as it does among honest shopkeepers in a civilised
country--I will make a little more money than you; but--I will crush you,
enslave you, exterminate you, eat you up. "Woe to the weak," seems to be
Nature's watchword. The Psalmist says, "The righteous shall inherit the
land." If you go to a tropical forest, or, indeed, if you observe
carefully a square acre of any English land, cultivated or uncultiva