200 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



which are as direct as those which are furnished by the physical sci- 

 ences, instead of the general and circumstantial evidence which you 

 adduce. The student of physics does not ask us to believe that all 

 bodies attract each other according to the law of inverse squares until 

 he has shown us that he is able to prove that every body we bring 

 him does behave in this way ; and the chemist shows us that he can 

 separate every specimen of pure w T ater which we furnish into oxygen 

 and hydrogen before he expects us to believe that all water is com- 

 pounded of these two substances. This is the sort of proof we want ; 

 something exact and specific in place of your generalizations. When 

 you can trace back the ancestry of any man we bring you with what 

 you call negro characteristics, tell us who his father and grandfather 

 were, and so on, until you reach one of your negro immigrants when 

 you can do tbis with all our inhabitants, and show us that every man 

 with these characteristics is the descendant of one of these immigrants, 

 and that every man with European characteristics has some of the 

 blood of one of your European immigrants in his body, you may claim 

 that you have given us scientific proof of your hypothesis. 



If that is too much to ask, trace one of our people back in this 

 way, for it must be plain to you that, if you are not able to do this, 

 your hypothesis is only a probability. 



You trace us back for a generation or two with some exactness, 

 but then you make a great leap to some one w T hom you find mentioned 

 in history, and you trace his ancestors and descendants for a genera- 

 tion or two, and then comes another break. There is no certainty 

 that he has any living descendants, nor is there any certainty that he 

 is at all related to any of your immigrants. We acknowledge your 

 proofs of a negro immigration, and we know that a few other negroes 

 have come to our country from time to time, but their race soon dies 

 out, and you must remember that w T e have satisfactory evidence that 

 our race had its present character long before the time when you say 

 the foreign elements were introduced. 



Even if we grant the accuracy of all the facts which you claim to 

 have discovered, they only show that the history wdiich you have 

 traced out is such a history as your hypothesis would lead you to ex- 

 pect, but this does not prove the truth of the hypothesis. You have 

 only got at a few facts here and there, and future discoveries may 

 show that you are wrong. We are glad to know about the foreign 

 settlers, but you have by no means proved that they were ancestors of 

 ours. 



I think that this illustration gives us a fair statement of the value 

 of the evidence for evolution which is furnished by paleontology. 

 There is an absolute and total lack of direct proof, and there must be 

 by the nature of the case, so there is no room to hope for the con- 

 version of any one who is determined to reject the theory as long as 

 doubt is possible; but the end of science is not to proselyte but to dis- 



