22 JOURNAL OF THE [January, 



indifference to changing conditions arises that sensitiveness to 

 the environment which is the very essence of the evolution 

 hypothesis. 



To my mind, the only escape for out-and-out evolutionists 

 from this contradictory position is in admitting that life and 

 living things are originating by some process to-day ; — that the 

 principal notes in the evolutionary chord are all still sounding, 

 from the lowest to the highest. If one cannot accept the doc- 

 trine of spontaneous generation as formerly advocated by Buf- 

 fon and Needham, and m;jre recently by Doctor Bastian, and 

 still desires to stand by the general theory of evolution, it seems 

 to me he must adopt the idea implied in Herbert Spencer's 

 essay from which I have just quoted ; — that inorganic matter 

 is now evolving into organic substances, just as it has always 

 done ; that organic substances are acquiring vital functions and 

 rising to the grade of organized forms at the present time, ex- 

 actly as they have been doing through all time. I am not sure 

 that Mr. Spencer distinctly avows this belief, but it appears to 

 be a natural inference from his teaching on the subject. 



.But, whether he is actually convinced that the evolution of 

 life is and always has been continuous, or holds to the view, 

 more generally accepted by evolutionists, that the vital series 

 began but once, his definition of evolution, as we have seen, 

 provides for the accomplishment of its results by insensible 

 gradations ; by which I suppose he means changes immeasure- 

 ably, or perhaps infinitely, small and gradual : — transitions 

 which we not only cannot accurately calculate but probably 

 cannot even imagine. This introduces into the process an oc- 

 cult quality which to most minds will not seem strictly scien- 

 tific, and I fail to find that any of the other advocates of the 

 evolution hypothesis have fully grasped and adopted this con- 

 ception. Although Mr. Spencer propounded his theory of the 

 matter some twenty years ago, there has been a singular silence 

 with reference to it by other scientific philosophers. In fact, 

 most of them have dropped the discussion of the subject, as if 

 all theories'of spontaneous generation had been exploded, ex- 

 cept such as are built upon faith in what may have happened 

 naturally in the primaeval past, or upon hope of what may be ac- 

 complished artificially in the far distant future. Amongst all 

 the scientists and philosophers with whose writings I am famil- 



