ime
appears to have ended on the ground.

Of course all that has long passed by. Of late years Haeckel has been
crying out that all his old friends have deserted him and have gone over
to the spiritual side--a cry which reminds one of the familiar juryman
who finds his fellows the eleven most obstinate men he has ever known.
The conception of evolution has long since been taken over by the
idealists, and has become perhaps the most splendidly Christian and
idealistic idea of the new age. When Darwin published his _Origin of
Species_, Hegel cried out in Germany, "Darwin has destroyed design."
To-day Darwin and Hegel stand together as the prophets of the
unconquerable conviction of the reality of spirit. From the days of
Huxley and Haeckel we have passed over to the days of Bergson and Sir
Oliver Lodge.

The effect of all this upon individuals is a very interesting phenomenon
to watch. Every one of us has been touched by the pagan spirit which has
invaded our times at so many different points of entrance. It has become
an atmosphere which we have all breathed more or less. If some one were
to say to any company of British people, one by one, that they were
pagans, doubtless many of them would resent it, and yet more or less it
would be true. We all are pagans; we cannot help ourselves, for every
one of us is necessarily affected by the spirit of his generation.
Nobody indeed says, "Go to, I will be a pagan"; but the old story of
Aaron's golden calf repeats itself continually. Aaron, when Moses
rebuked him, said naively, "There came out this calf." That exactly
describes the situation. That calf is the only really authentic example
of spontaneous generation, of effect without cause. Nobody expected it.
Nobody wanted it. Everybody was surprised to see it when it came. It was
the Melchizedek among cattle--without father, without mother, without
descent. Unfortunately it seems also to have been without beginning of
days or end of life. Every generation simply puts in its gold and there
comes out this calf--it is a way such calves have.

Thus it is with our modern paganism. We all of us want to be idealists,
and we sometimes try, but there are hidden causes which draw us back
again to the earth. These causes lie in the opportunities that occur one
by one: in politics, in industrial and commercial matters, in scientific
theories, or by mere reaction. The earth is more habitable than once it
was, and we all desire it. It mast