appearance ends and
begins an epoch of evolution. That is a consummation nothing can
delay. We need not fret or hurry. We have only to work on silently at
the foundations. The city, it is true, seems to be rising apart from
our labours. There, in the distance, are the stately buildings, there
is the noise of the masons, the carpenters, the engineers. But see!
the whole structure shakes and trembles as it grows. Houses fall as
fast as they are erected; foundations sink, towers settle, domes and
pinnacles collapse. All history is the building of a dream-city,
fantastic as that ancient one of the birds, changeful as the sunset
clouds. And no wonder; for it is building on the sand. There is only
one foundation of rock, and that is being laid by science. Only wait!
To us will come sooner or later, the people and the architects. To us
they will submit the great plans they have striven so vainly to
realize. We shall pronounce on their possibility, their suitability,
even their beauty. Caesar and Napoleon will give place to Comte and
Herbert Spencer; and Newton and Darwin sit in judgment on Plato and
Aquinas."

WITH that he concluded. And as he sat down a note was passed along to
me from Ellis, asking permission to speak next. I assented willingly;
for Ellis, though some of us thought him frivolous, was, at any rate,
never dull. His sunburnt complexion, his fair curly hair, and the
light in his blue eyes made a pleasant impression, as he rose and
looked down upon us from his six feet.

"This," he began, "is really an extraordinary discovery Wilson has
made, that fathers have children, and children fathers! One wonders
how the world has got on all these centuries in ignorance of it. It
seems so obvious, once it has been stated. But that, of course, is the
nature of great truths; as soon as they are announced they seem to have
been always familiar. It is possible, for that very reason, that many
people may under-estimate the importance of Wilson's pronouncement,
forgetting that it is the privilege of genius to formulate for the
first time what everyone has been dimly feeling. We ought not to be
ungrateful; but perhaps it is our duty to be cautious. For great ideas
naturally suggest practical applications, and it is here that I foresee
difficulties. What Wilson's proposition in fact amounts to, if I
understand him rightly, is that we ought to open as wide as possible
the gates of life, and make those who