EDITOR'S TABLE. 



753 



the action of gravity, in a way to ex- 

 cite the astonishment of whole circles. 

 And this miraculous prerogative, we are 

 told, is, itself, but an exemplification of 

 natural law. But, assuming the truth 

 of the spiritualist's view, we have sim- 

 ply come to an end of natural law. If 

 the wonders alleged be true, where is 

 the basis of trust in the regular course 

 of Nature? If the uniformities of phe- 

 nomena that science assumes to have 

 discovered can, as a matter of fact, be 

 disturbed by the capricious incursions 

 of unseen beings, then there are no 

 such uniformities; and the conception 

 of law, instead of being the most fun- 

 damental conviction of the scientific 

 mind, is an illusion to be abandoned. 

 Anxiety about the constancy of these 

 laws is, however, the last thing that 

 troubles scientific men, and their repose 

 of mind upon this subject sufficiently 

 accounts for their general indifference 

 to the claims of spiritualism. 



INDICATION'S OF PROGRESS. 



Ottr readers will well remember the 

 row occasioned last year when Prof. 

 Huxley said that the evidence of the 

 truth of evolution must be accepted as 

 demonstrative. "We mark with interest 

 the decisive indications that are accumu- 

 lating in confirmation of Prof. Huxley's 

 position. Another President of the 

 British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science has spoken upon the 

 subject, under the responsibilities of 

 his distinguished position, and in entire 

 corroboration of the avowals of former 

 presidents of that body for the last 

 dozen years in relation to this question. 

 His indorsement of evolutionary doc- 

 trine is emphatic and unqualified. Prof. 

 Allen Thomson has been well known 

 as an eminent cultivator of biology ; 

 but he comes forward now as a new 

 authority, and will be listened to with- 

 out the prejudice which attaches to the 

 names of those men who have been in 

 VOL. XI. 48 



the thick of the fight for the last twenty 

 years. The topic of the presidential 

 address is the " Development of the 

 Forms of Animal Life," and we here 

 quote the opening passages, describing 

 the remarkable change in the manner 

 of viewing biological questions which 

 has taken place during the last half- 

 century. President Thomson says : 



" In the three earlier decades of this cen- 

 tury it was the common belief, in this coun- 

 try at least, shared by men of science as 

 well as by the larger body of persons who 

 had given no special attention to the sub- 

 ject, that the various forms of plants and 

 animals recognized by naturalists in their 

 systematic arrangements of genera and spe- 

 cies were permanently fixed and unalter- 

 able ; tliat they were not subject to greater 

 changes than might occur as occasional va- 

 riations, and that such was tlie tendency to 

 the maintenance of uniformity in tlieir spe- 

 cific characters that, when varieties did 

 arise, there was a natural disposition to the 

 return, in the course of succeeding genera- 

 tions, to the fixed form and nature supposed 

 to belong to the parental stock ; and it M'as 

 also a necessary part of tliis view of the per- 

 manency of species that eacliwas considered 

 to have been originally produced from an 

 individual having the exact form which its 

 descendants ever afterward retained. To 

 this scientific dogma was further added the 

 quasi-religious view that, in the exercise of 

 infinite wisdom and goodness, the Creator, 

 when he called the successive species of 

 plants and animals into existence, conferred 

 upon each precisely the organization and 

 the properties adapting it best for the kind 

 of life for which it was designed in the gen- 

 eral scheme of creation. This was the older 

 doctrine of ' Direct Creation,' of ' Teleologi- 

 cal Eolation,' and of 'Final Causes;' and 

 those only who have known the firm hold 

 wliich such views had over the public mind 

 in past times can understand tlie almost i;n- 

 qualified approbation with which the reason- 

 ing on these questions in writings like the 

 ' Bridgewater Treatises' (not to mention 

 older books on natural theology) was re- 

 ceived in their time, as well as the very op- 

 posite feelings excited by every work which 

 presented a different view of the plan of 

 creation. 



" On the Continent of Europe, it is true, 

 some bold speculators, such as Goethe, 

 Oken, Lamarck, and Geoflfroy St.-Hilaire, 

 had in the end of the last and commence- 



