17 



development, is certainly not in keeping with any theory of 

 special and separate creation of living forms. _ 



And, as a final argument, I would ask, if species did not 

 arise by evolution, what is their origin ? As Mr. Herbert 

 Spencer has pertinently inquired, if not by evolution, how ? 

 Did they wriggle up from the ground; or fall from the 

 skies ; or did their parts assemble together, borne by the 

 four winds; or were they separately created in order to 

 demonstrate the foolishness of philosophers and the delu- 

 siveness of logical proof ? 



And now our time is getting so short that I must reluc- 

 tantly bring my remarks to a close. But before doing so, 

 I should like to point out that it is no small confirmation 

 of a theory if, besides illuminating one fact, it also explains 

 many. Newton's theory is proved doubly true when it 

 explains the mechanism of the heavens as well as the fall 

 of an apple. Now I care not what branch of study you 

 may take— mental or moral science, or history, or practical 

 politics— and you shall find the strong electric light of 

 evolution making the dark way plain and the intricate 

 paths clear. He was no fool who said in that parliament 

 of mixed races, the Eeichstag of Vienna, "The first thing 

 we have to do is to ask ourselves, ' Is Darwinism true ? ' " 

 I would that I had time, or that it came within the liniits 

 of a Natural History Society, to show how the application 

 of what we know of evolution removes many of those diffi- 

 culties which encumber the explanation of the origin, 

 scientific basis, and true reason for right-doing; how it 

 demonstrates the essential nature and reasonableness of 

 morals in their widest and highest sense. I can do no 

 more than allude to the further problem of the first appear- 

 ance of life on our globe. I may, however, state that the 

 theory of a vital force is finally abandoned by the physiolo- 

 gist, and that the recent production of organic compounds in 

 the laboratory and the indisputable evidence that organic 

 operations are purely mechanical, physical, or chemical in 

 nature, have paved the way to an understanding of the 

 genesis of protoplasm. I think I have, at aU events, by 

 many lines of converging evidence, proved the truth of a 

 proposition which no man of healthy intellect and unbiassed 

 judgment can well attempt to controvert. If he does, he 

 violates that logical law of parsimony which accepts the 

 simplest as the truest explanation, and by reason of which 

 thinkers of the past abandoned Kepler's theory, that each 



