PROFESSOR CLIFFORD REFERS TO DR. ELAM. 



2S7 



still more beautiful and touching because they 

 recall a whole history of Johnson's goodness, 

 tenderness, and charity. Human dignity, on the 

 other hand, he maintained, we all know how well, 

 through the whole long and arduous struggle of 

 his life, from his servitor days at Oxford down to 

 the Jam moriturus of his closing hour. His 

 faults and strangenesses are on the surface, and 

 catch every eye. But, on the whole, we have in 

 him a good and admirable type, worthy to be kept 

 in our view forever, of " the ancient and inbred 



integrity, piety, good-nature, and good-humor, of 

 the English people." 



A volume giving us Johnson's lives of Milton, 

 Dryden, Swift, Addison, Pope, Gray, would give 

 us, therefore, the compendious story of a whole 

 important age in English literature, told by a 

 great man, and in a performance which is itself a 

 piece of English literature of the first class. If 

 such a volume could but be prefaced by Lord 

 Macaulay's " Life of Johnson," it would be per- 

 fect. — MacmiUan's Magazine. 



PROFESSOR CLIFFOED EEFEKS TO DR. ELAM. 



A LETTER. 1 



DEAR MR. EDITOR : Being now forced to be 

 idle for a time, I may send you a note upon 

 something on which those who are able to work 

 will probably not waste their time. 



In your last number I find these words : 



" With respect to the infinitely varied forms of 

 animals and vegetables, science tells us that neither 

 by observation nor by experiment has the transi- 

 tion from one species to another been witnessed, 

 and that, therefore, the ' indisputable conclusion 

 of experience ' is that the physiological characters 

 of species are absolutely constant. Philosophy 

 'generalizes' this statement by setting it aside 

 altogether, teaching us that these characters are 

 plastic, that species are not fixed, but always be- 

 coming something else ; and that all living beings 

 have been derived from one or a few original forms 

 of the simplest kind" (Elam's " Man and Science : 

 A Reply"). 



The writer thinks that what he calls science is 

 right, and that what he calls philosophy is wrong. 

 He has, however, failed to understand something 

 which I will endeavor to state very shortly. 



If you measured the height of an oak every 

 day for a week, and found it always forty feet 

 high, that observation would not prove that it 

 always had been and always would be forty feet 

 high. It would only prove that whatever change 

 of height took place in a week was too small to 

 be found out by your way of measuring it. 



Now, we know that the oak was once an acorn, 



1 This should have been published last month, so as 

 to follow Dr. Elam's paper. 



so that it has passed from one condition to the 

 other. That which makes us think that it has 

 done this gradually, by tiny steps, and not by 

 great jumps, is common-sense, whether we like to 

 call it science, or philosophy, or ananthropomor- 

 phitanianism, or any other hard name. Nobody 

 has ever sat and watched an oak all its life, to 

 make sure that it never took a jump of a foot or 

 so in height. 



Just so, when observation shows that certain 

 species have not changed perceptibly during the 

 period of human records, this does not prove that 

 " their physiological characters are absolutely 

 constant," but that whatever change has taken 

 place in them is too small to be found out by the 

 ways in which we have looked at them. 



Now, we know that all the living matter on 

 the earth was once inorganic, so that it has 

 passed from one condition to the other somehow. 

 That which makes us think that it has done this 

 gradually, by tiny steps, and not by great jumps, 

 is common-sense, reflecting on the innumerable 

 traces of this gradual change which are found in 

 all living things. 



The same writer says also : 



" The human muscle differs essentially from all 

 machines. All machines develop more or less in- 

 ternal heat, according as they perform less or more 

 external work. With muscle it is not so : the more 

 external work is done, the more heat is developed in 

 the muscle." 



Here also he has failed to understand something. 

 When a railway-engine is driven along by the 



