A REPLY TO ''FALLACIES OF EVOLUTION:' 105 



organizations, ultimately owe their forms and their functions to the 

 apparently same material ; and, lastly, the fact that all specific organ- 

 isms spring from minute specks of this substance, which specks there- 

 fore contain and transmit the vital record of billions on billions of 

 hereditary qualities, specific and individual — these things show that 

 the term protoplasm must be considered as merely a general term for 

 all living matter, the constitution of which may perhaps in some cases 

 be comparatively simple, while in others it must be immensely com- 

 plex, the only common feature of protoplasmic material being that its 

 constitution is too minute for the microscope to analyze. But even if 

 we suppose that the constitution of the simplest form of existing pro- 

 toplasm — whatever that may be — is as simple as we choose to suppose, 

 it must at least be enormously complex as compared with any known 

 form of non-living matter. Therefore an evolutionist, or a man who 

 believes in the doctrine of gradual development in nature, is certainly 

 not the man who would be prepared a x^fiori to expect the spontane- 

 ous production of protoplasm within any period that it is competent 

 for experiment to span. If experiment should ever succeed in une- 

 quivocally producing protoplasm by artificial means, the fact would, 

 of course, be an immense gain to science, and by bridging the chasm 

 between the physical and the vital would be also a gain to the doctrine 

 of development. But the absence of any such experimental proof of 

 continuity is no presumption against that doctrine, so long as the pre- 

 sumption remains that if the passage from the non-living to the living 

 ever took place it must have taken place by slow degrees. 



Passing over the reviewer's comments on the theories of Lamarck 

 and the author of the " Vestiges," I shall at once proceed to examine 

 the main portion of his review, which is simply an attempt at a criti- 

 cism of Mr. Darwin's work. Here he says : " With the facts, our only 

 concern is to understand them, that we may be able to reason from 

 them. Our business is with the conclusions, to test their correctness 

 in accordance with the recognized principles of right reasoning, that 

 error may be eliminated and truth secured." "VYe shall see that it can 

 not well be said whether it is in understanding the facts, or in testing 

 the conclusions, that this writer has shown himself the more deplorably 

 incompetent. 



First, he undertakes to expound and to criticise what he properly 

 terms the distinctive " peculiarity " of Darwinism — the doctrine of 

 natural selection. It may well be thought incredible that at the pres- 

 ent day an educated man, writing in a respectable review on the sub- 

 ject of Darwinism, and introducing his criticism with all the solemn 

 floui-ishes of pedantry that I have quoted, should at once proceed to 

 show that he is entirely ignorant of what the doctrine of natural se- 

 lection is. Yet such is the fact, and the heavy charge of uninstructed 

 arrogance which I thus level at the writer in question is but too easily 

 maintained by the following quotations (pp. 225-227) : 



