346 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
vidual and the paleontological history of development, etc. ; 
and they ought to have some idea of the deep mechanical, 
causal connection between all these series of phenomena. 
It is self-evident that a certain degree of general culture, 
and especially a philosophical education, is requisite ; which 
is, however, unfortunately by many persons in our day, not 
considered at all necessary. Without the necessary connec- 
tion of empirical knowledge and the philosophical under- 
standing of biological phenomena, it is vmpossible to gain a 
thorough conviction of the truth of the Theory of Descent. 
Now I ask, in the face of this first preliminary condition 
for a true understanding of the Theory of Descent, what we 
are to think of the confused mass of persons who have pre- 
sumed to pass a written or oral judgment upon it of an 
adverse character? Most of them are unscientific persons, 
who either know nothing of the most important phenomena 
of Biology, or at least possess no idea of their deeper sig- 
nificance. What should we say of an unscientific person 
who presumed to express an opinion on the cell-theory, 
without ever having seen cells; or of one who presumed to 
question the vertebral-theory, without ever having studied 
comparative anatomy? And yet one may meet with such 
ridiculous arrogance any day in the history of the biological 
Theory of Descent. One hears thousands of unscientific and 
but half-educated persons pass a final judgment upon it, 
although they know nothing either of botany or of zoology, 
of comparative anatomy or the theory of tissues, of palze-— 
ontology or embryology. Hence it happens, as Huxley well 
says, that most of the writings published against Darwin 
are not worth the paper upon which they are written. 
We might add that there are many naturalists, and even 
