NOTES BY THE EDITOR. XI 



cies by modified descent, and what evidence have the advocates 

 of the opposite theory to advance in its favor? Indeed, it is dif- 

 ficnlt to find out what their theory really is, or, rather what their 

 theories are, for it would hardly be possible to find half-a-dozen An- 

 ti-Darwinians who, if they think at all, think alike. . . But with the 

 exception of a few thinking observers, the measure of whose in- 

 formation is only exceeded by their caution, which prevents them 

 from accepting the new theory, the large majority of its oppo- 

 nents are really such reasoners as we have described. And it ap- 

 pears to us that the acceptance of the theory will depend more 

 upon the decline of superstition than upon the ascendancy of 

 knowledge." 



"Though the author doubts the constant interposition of a de- 

 signing mind in nature," a careful reading of his works will show 

 "how thoroughly ungenerous, or how utterly ignorant, are those 

 who brand his theory as atheistical and him as an atheist." Mr. 

 Darwin's theory relates only to the form of life, not to the princi- 

 ple of life, still less to the moral f>rinciple or the soul. Says Dr. J. 

 D. Hooker, in his address as President before the British Associa- 

 tion m 1868, *' So far from natural selection being a thing of the 

 past, it is an accepted doctrine with every philosophical naturalist, 

 including, it will be always understood, a considerable proportion 

 who are not prepared to admit that it accounts for all Mr. Darwin 

 assigns to it." 



Says Prof. Tyndall, in his address before the British Association 

 in 1868, "The process of things upon this earth has been one 

 of amelioration. It is a long way from the iguanodon and its con- 

 temporaries to the members of this association. And whether we 

 regard the improvement from the scientific or the theological point 

 of view, as the result of progressive development, or as the result 

 of successive exhibitions of creative energy, neither view entitles 

 us to assume that man's present faculties end the series, — tliat the 

 process of amelioration stops at him. A time may therefore come 

 when this ultra-scientific region by which we are now enfolded 

 may offer itself to terrestrial, if not to human, investigation. Two- 

 thirds of the rays emitted by the sun fail to arouse in the eye the 

 sense of vision. The rays exist, but the visual organ requisite for 

 their translation into light does not exist. And so from this region 

 of darkness and mystery which surrounds us, rays may now be 

 darting which require but the development of the proper intel- 

 lectual organs to translate them into knowledge as far surpassing 



