rts of the imagination, and had divided them into
factions, as adversaries in a battle of thought. Could any one of them
attempt to experiment and observe save at the risk of destroying
himself together with his adversaries, as Samson destroyed himself
with the Philistines? The possibility that there might be some truth
in what had been seen and described, and that it might recur, should
indeed have induced some one to venture upon a road which, if it
proved to be the right one, would have been a glorious path to a
future of discoveries and distinctions. But no. A dense fog obscured
all minds, and the dazzling truth could not pierce it; thus all
progress in embryology was precluded.

Fifty years had passed, and Wolff, poor and persecuted, had died at
Petrograd, an exile from his native land, when Pander and Ernest von
Baer grappled anew with the theory of "blastodermic foliation." Then
the scientific world _perceived_ the truth and accepted the evidence,
inaugurating those studies in embryology which shed so much luster on
the nineteenth century.

Why was it necessary that fifty years should elapse before men could
see what was evident? What had happened in these fifty years? The work
of Wolff, dead and forgotten, can have had no influence whatever. The
fact was merely that men saw _subsequently_ what it had been
previously _impossible for them to see_. A kind of internal maturity
must have come about in them, by virtue of which their spiritual eyes
were opened, and they saw. When _those eyes were closed_, evidence was
useless. Fifty years earlier, a direct attack would have spent itself
on insuperable obstacles; but with the lapse of time the subject
presented itself, and was simply and universally accepted, not only
without a struggle, but without any excitement.

This fact might be arguable in relation to the internal maturation of
the masses; but it is beyond question in its relation to the
individual. When an obvious truth cannot be seen, we must retire, and
leave the individual to mature. A struggle "to bring about perception
of evidence" would be bitter and exhausting. But when maturity comes,
we shall find the seer filled with enthusiasm, and bearing fruit like
the vines of the Land of Promise.

When in 1859 Charles Darwin expounded the theory of evolution in his
book, "The Origin of Species," he recognized the great influence it
had had upon the thought of his day, for he wrote in his note-book:
"My theory