Wellington Philosophical Society. 0)^1 



first, and afterwards the dry land ; and this is the view held 

 by some evolutionary biologists. But to believe in miracles 

 unsupported by any evidence, and from these assumed and 

 uuauthenticated miracles to argue that others occur, is neither 

 reasonable nor scientific. That evolution, in some sense of 

 the word, is as true of the animate world as it is of the inani- 

 mate, I suppose we are now most of us persuaded. The well- 

 attested observations and researches of modern scientists have 

 taught us that our world has been slowly moulded into its 

 present forms and conditions by the constant operation of 

 forces with which we are in some degree familiar ; and the laws 

 governing these forces have now been fairly well ascertained 

 as far as they refer to inorganic matter, though even here we 

 are still, as regards details, in the regions of hypothesis, and 

 geologists differ considerably in their views as to the ways 

 in which our earth has been moulded into its present form. 

 Some hold chiefly to denudation, some to glaciation, some to 

 volcanic agency, some to crumpling and cracking by shrinkage 

 in cooling, and each has facts to support his theories ; but so 

 have the others, and no doubt all these causes have been 

 operative. But the statement made by Lyell, in his "Prin- 

 ciples of Geology," " The forces now operating upon earth are 

 the same in kind and in degree as those which, in the remotest 

 times, produced geological changes," is no longer accepted as 

 a truth. As Professor Tait"'- says, " We have also recently ob- 

 tained positive assurance that our globe was in the remotest 

 times so hot as to be at least plastic — a condition, fortunately, 

 not now prevailing either in kind or in degree." And Pro- 

 fessor Huxleyf speaks of "a very remote period when the 

 earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions 

 which it can no more see again than a man can recall his in- 

 fancy." Nevertheless, the great principles of geology so ably 

 enunciated by Lyell have been abundantly established : the 

 forces by means of which the surface of our earth has been 

 moulded are still in action, if in a more moderate way than at 

 first, and we can reason upon the facts we observe with con- 

 siderable certainty and approximate accuracy. 



We are in a different position, however, in regard to organic 

 matter. Life is a new force which at some early period of 

 the world's history first appeared, and which ever since has 

 been present on earth, manifesting itself in endless varieties of 

 plant and animal life. The succession of these varied forms of 

 life, recorded in the strata of the earth, shows a progress or 

 evolution, the earlier forms being generally simple, the modern 

 forms in many cases very highly differentiated. The hypo- 



* Tait's Lectures, p. 165. 

 t " Critiques and Addresses," p. 239. 

 41 



