But again, does that fact really cut off any great space of time from his hundreds of thousands of years?  For when the land first rose from the sea, that glen was not there.  Some slight bay or bend in the shore determined its site.  That stream was not there.  It was split up into a million little springs, oozing side by side from the shore, and having each a very minute denuding power, which kept continually increasing by combination as the glen ate its way inwards, and the rainfall drained by all these little springs was collected into the one central stream.  So that when the ground being bare was most liable to be denuded, the water was least able to do it; and as the denuding power of the water increased, the land, being covered with vegetation, became more and more able to resist it.  All this he has seen, going on at the present day in the similar gullies worn in the soft strata of the South Hampshire coast; especially round Bournemouth.

So the two disturbing elements in the calculation may be fairly set off against each other, as making a difference of only a few thousands or tens of thousands of years either way; and the age of the glen may fairly be, if not a million years, yet such a length of years as mankind still speak of with bated breath, as if forsooth it would do them some harm.

I trust that every scientific man in this room will agree with me, that the imaginary squire or ploughman would have been conducting his investigation strictly according to the laws of the Baconian philosophy.  You will remark, meanwhile, that he has not used a single scientific term, or referred to a single scientific investigation; and has observed nothing and thought nothing, which might not have been observed and thought by any one who chose to use his common sense, and not to be afraid.

But because he has come round, after all this further investigation, to something very like his first conclusion, was all that further investigation useless?  No—­a thousand times, no.  It is this very verification of hypotheses which makes the sound ones safe, and destroys the unsound.  It is this struggle with all sorts of superstitions which makes science strong and sure, and her march irresistible, winning ground slowly, but never receding from it.  It is this buffeting of adversity which compels her not to rest dangerously upon the shallow sand of first guesses, and single observations; but to strike her roots down, deep, wide, and interlaced, into the solid ground of actual facts.

It is very necessary to insist on this point.  For there have been men in all past ages—­I do not say whether there are any such now, but I am inclined to think that there will be hereafter—­men who have tried to represent scientific method as something difficult, mysterious, peculiar, unique, not to be attained by the unscientific mass; and this not for the purpose of exalting science, but rather of discrediting her.  For as long as the masses, educated or