CRITICISMS CORRECTED. 799 



equivalents of Saxon, or rather old English origin, what they regard as 

 its misleading glamour is thereby dissipated and its meaninglessness 

 made manifest. We may conveniently observe the nature of Mr. 

 Kirkman's belief by listening to an imaginary addition to that address 

 before the Literary and Philosophical Society of Liverpool in which 

 he first set forth the leading ideas of his volume ; and we may fitly, in 

 this imaginary addition, adopt the manner in which he delights : 



" Observe, gentlemen," we may suppose him saying, " I have here 

 the yolk of an egg. The evolutionists using their jargon say that 

 one of its characters is ' homogeneity ' ; and, if you do not examine your 

 thoughts, perhaps you may think that the word conveys some idea. 

 But, now if I translate it into plain English, and say that one of the 

 characters of this yolk is ' all-alikeness,' you at once perceive how non- 

 sensical is their statement. You see that the substance of the yolk is 

 not all-alike, and that therefore all-alikeness can not be one of its at- 

 tributes. Similarly with the other pretentious term, ' heterogeneity,' 

 which, according to them, describes the state things are brought to by 

 what they call evolution. It is mere empty sound, as is manifest if I 

 do but transform it, as I did the other, and say instead ' not-all-alike- 

 ness.' For, on showing you this chick, into which the yolk of the egg 

 turns, you will see that ' not-all-alikeness ' is a character which can not 

 be claimed for it. How can any one say that the parts of the chick 

 are not-all-alike ? Again, in their blatant language we are told that 

 evolution is carried on by continuous 'differentiations' ; and they 

 would have us believe that this word expresses some fact. But, if we 

 put instead of it ' somethingelseifications,' the delusion they try to 

 practice on us becomes clear. How can they say that while the parts 

 have been forming themselves the heart has been becoming something 

 else than the stomach, and the leg something else than the wing, and 

 the head something else than the tail ? The like manifestly happens 

 when for ' integrations ' we read ' sticktogetherations ' : what sense 

 the term might seem to have becomes obvious nonsense when the sub- 

 stituted word is used. For nobody dares assert that the parts of the 

 chick stick together any more than do the parts of the yolk. I need 

 hardly show you that now when I take a portion of the yolk between 

 my fingers and pull, and now when I take any part of the chick, as 

 the leg, and pull, the first resists just as much as the last, the last does 

 not stick together any more than the first ; so that there has been no 

 progress in ' sticktogetherations.' And thus, gentlemen, you perceive 

 that these big words which, to the disgrace of the Royal Society, ap- 

 pear even in papers published by it, are mere empty bladders, which 

 these would-be philosophers use to buoy up their ridiculous doctrines." 



There is a further curious mental trait exhibited by Mr. Kirkman, 

 and which Professor Tait appears to have in common with him. Very 

 truly it has been remarked that there is a great difference between dis- 

 closing the absurdities contained in a thing and piling absurdities upon 



