plete, the lines of inquiry included in what may Trell be 

 called the Philosophy of Darwin. The modesty, the 

 dignity, and the forbearance with which he wrote silenced 

 even the revilings of those who hated because they feared. 

 And it is due to the calm and temperate conclusiveness of 

 his reasoning that the profoundest revolution to be found 

 in the history of thought has exhibited so little of that 

 acrimonious fervour and bitter partizanship that is so 

 painful and so injurious to the progress of truth. Alike 

 in his character and in his works Darwin was 



" Gentle and meek, and affable, and mild, 

 Patient of contradiction as a child. 

 Such ■was Sir Isjiac, and such Boyle and Lock. 

 Your blunderer is as sturdy as a rock." 



Considering the magnificence and solidity of the genius 

 of our great dead natiu-alist, and how completely it covered 

 the whole range of the Natural History Sciences, it 

 appeared to me that the annual address from the chair 

 was an opportune occasion for a review of the whole subject 

 of Evolution in its bearings on organic life. 



The present century has made even more progress in 

 ptire science than in its practical application. Striking as 

 are the steamship and the railroad, they are less striking 

 than the thoughts that shake mankind. And, what is still 

 more impressive, is that sense of transcendent order which 

 has come to occupy the void of uprooted opinion. The 

 discovery of the indestructibility of matter by the chemist, 

 the discovery of the indestructibility and transmutability 

 of force by the physicist, have paved the way to, and 

 indeed helped to suggest, the doctrine of the continuous 

 descent of living forms. We have come to regard the 

 iiniverse from a less parochial point of view. Whatever 

 philosophical speculations we may indulge in, whatever 

 may be the nature of that insoluble, awful mystery of 

 Being, this much, at least, we may safely affirm that we 

 know — that the universe is self-sufficient and self -regu- 

 lating, the aggregate phenomena of an Unbroken Order. 

 This knowledge is what we mean when we speak of evolu- 

 tion. Evolution is orderly development, while the appli- 

 cation of the doctrine of orderly development to the 

 elucidation of certain problems of organic life is spoken 

 of as Organic Evolution. 



Speculations approximating towards the idea of evolution 



