240 TEE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



it is full of changes ; and these changes, when patiently and perse- 

 veringly examined, are found to be subject to invariable, or almost in- 

 variable, laws. But the things themselves which thus change are as 

 multifarious as the changes which they undergo. They vary infinitely 

 in quantity, in qualities, in arrangement throughout space, possibly in 

 arrangement throughout time. Take a single substance such, say, as 

 gold. How much gold there is in the whole universe, and where it is 

 situated, we not only have no knowledge, but can hardly be said to 

 be on the way to have knowledge. Why its qualities are what they 

 are, and why it alone possesses all these qualities ; how long it has 

 existed, and how long it will continue to exist, these questions we are 

 unable to answer. The existence of the many forms of matter, the 

 properties of each form, the distribution of each : all this Science 

 must in the last resort assume. 



But I say in the last resort. For it is possible, and Science soon 

 makes it evident that it is true, that some forms of matter grow out 

 of other forms. There are endless combinations. And the growth 

 of new out of old forms is of necessity a sequence, and falls under 

 the law of invariability of sequences, and becomes the subject-matter 

 of science. As in each separate case Science asserts each event of 

 to-day to have followed by a law of invariable sequence on the events 

 of yesterday ; the earth has reached the precise point in its orbit 

 now which was determined by the law of gravitation as applied to its 

 motion at the point which it reached a moment ago ; the weather of 

 the present hour has come by meteorological laws out of the weather 

 of the last hour ; the crops and the flocks now found on the surface 

 of the habitable earth are the necessary outcome of preceding harvests 

 and preceding flocks, and of all that has been done to maintain and 

 increase them ; so, too, if we look at the universe as a whole, the 

 present condition of that whole is, if the scientific postulate of in- 

 variable sequence be admitted, and in as far as it is admitted, the 

 necessary outcome of its former condition ; and all the various forms 

 of matter, whether living or inanimate, must, for the same reason and 

 with the same limitation, be the necessary outcome of preceding forms 

 of matter. This is the foundation of the doctrine of evolution. 



Now, stated in this abstract form, this doctrine will be, and indeed 

 if science be admitted at all must be, accepted by everybody. Even 

 the Roman Church, which holds that God is perpetually interfering 

 with the course of nature, either in the interests of religious truth or 

 out of loving-kindness to his creatures, yet will acknowledge that the 

 number of such interferences almost disappears in comparison of the 

 countless millions of instances in which there is no reason to believe 

 in any interference at all. And, if we look at the universe as a whole, 

 the general proposition as stated above is quite unaffected by the 

 infinitesimal exception which is to be made by a believer in frequent 

 miracles. But when this proposition is applied in detail it at once 



