e lectures. My
purpose has been, not to enable those among you who have paid no
attention to these subjects before, to leave this room in a condition to
decide upon the validity or the invalidity of the hypothesis of
evolution; but I have desired to put before you the principles upon
which all hypotheses respecting the history of Nature must be judged;
and furthermore, to make apparent the nature of the evidence and the
amount of cogency which is to be expected and may be obtained from it.
To this end, I have not hesitated to regard you as genuine students and
persons desirous of knowing the truth. I have not shrunk from taking you
through long discussions, that I fear may have sometimes tried your
patience; and I have inflicted upon you details which were
indispensable, but which may well have been wearisome. But I shall
rejoice--I shall consider that I have done you the greatest service,
which it was in my power to do--if I have thus convinced you that the
great question which we have been discussing is not one to be dealt with
by rhetorical flourishes, or by loose and superficial talk; but that it
requires the keen attention of the trained intellect and the patience of
the accurate observer.

When I commenced this series of lectures, I did not think it necessary
to preface them with a prologue, such as might be expected from a
stranger and a foreigner; for during my brief stay in your country, I
have found it very hard to believe that a stranger could be possessed of
so many friends, and almost harder that a foreigner could express
himself in your language in such a way as to be, to all appearance, so
readily intelligible. So far as I can judge, that most intelligent, and,
perhaps, I may add, most singularly active and enterprising body, your
press reporters, do not seem to have been deterred by my accent from
giving the fullest account of everything that I happen to have said.

But the vessel in which I take my departure to-morrow morning is even
now ready to slip her moorings; I awake from my delusion that I am other
than a stranger and a foreigner. I am ready to go back to my place and
country; but, before doing so, let me, by way of epilogue, tender to you
my most hearty thanks for the kind and cordial reception which you have
accorded to me; and let me thank you still more for that which is the
greatest compliment which can be afforded to any person in my
position--the continuous and undisturbed attention which