physical science--notably those of embryology--go only to justify that
old and general belief of man. If man be told that the microscope and
scalpel show no difference, in the first stage of visible existence,
between him and the lower mammals, then he has a right to answer--as he
will answer--So much the worse for the microscope and scalpel: so much
the better for my old belief, that there is beneath my birth, life,
death, a substratum of supernatural causes, imponderable, invisible,
unknowable by any physical science whatsoever. If you cannot render me a
reason how I came hither, and what I am, I must go to those who will
render me one. And if that craving be not satisfied by a rational theory
of life, it will demand satisfaction from some magical theory; as did the
mind of the eighteenth century when, revolting from materialism, it fled
to magic, to explain the ever-astounding miracle of life.

The old Regime. Will our age, in its turn, ever be spoken of as an old
Regime? Will it ever be spoken of as a Regime at all; as an organised,
orderly system of society and polity; and not merely as a chaos, an
anarchy, a transitory struggle, of which the money-lender has been the
real guide and lord?

But at least it will be spoken of as an age of progress, of rapid
developments, of astonishing discoveries.

Are you so sure of that? There was an age of progress once. But what is
our age--what is all which has befallen since 1815--save after-swells of
that great storm, which are weakening and lulling into heavy calm? Are
we on the eve of stagnation? Of a long check to the human intellect? Of
a new Byzantine era, in which little men will discuss, and ape, the deeds
which great men did in their forefathers' days?