15 
themselves to their hosts, wuose tissues they waste away with 
suffering and disease. It is with reference to these creatures that 
the argument from design is scarcely applicable, except from the 
creature’s own point of view, it being, as I said, well adapted for 
its vicious career. We shrink from saying, even with such an 
authority as Van Beneden, that ‘all these mutual adaptations are 
pre-arranged.” No one can have his attention drawn to them 
without asking involuntarily, Why were they created? How came 
they, part and parcel as they are of evil things, into existence at 
all? By no answer that I am acquainted with can the difficulties 
be completely cleared away ; but they are not so insuperable when 
viewed in the light of the Development Theory. I shall not forget 
the relief that came to my mind when I found it possible to regard 
them (as I find all great authorities regard them) as creatures that 
have missed their way in the world; that were started with good 
opportunities and advantages, but somehow or other have gone off 
the right track. It is much easier to believe this than that they 
were designed for the work they are now doing. 
If you ask me how or why they got off the track, how or why 
they missed their way, I have no reply. The existence of physical 
evil is a greater mystery to me than that of moral evil. The diffi- 
culties of the two run to a certain extent in parallel lines. To a 
certain extent only, for we can easily see how moral evil might 
come in connection with a being possessing a free will to choose 
his own path ; but it is not so with physical evil and the lower 
animals. For the solution of problems like these we must be 
content to work and wait. | 
In the short discussion which followed, 
The President took exception to the statement that nations 
might lose any arts of civilization which had once been found 
. advantageous. ; 
‘Mr. Walton believed man to have been originally highly 
endowed, and that he had gradually degenerated in the case of 
savages. Tnat possibly there had been a pre-Adamite race, which 
had become extinct before the appearance of the Biblical man. 
Referring to the early free-moving condition of many animals 
which are fixed in their adult stage, he thought that it was an 
arrangement for ensuring their dispersion. 
Dr. T. Eastes in reference to bacilli, &c., said they seemed to be 
_ agents appointed to clear away dead hurtful matter, being always 
present in putrefaction ; and that when found in man, asin certain 
diseases, they had, like some of the creatures mentioned by the 
lecturer, missed their vocation. 
