WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 53 



Another eminent apostle of evolution, Professor 

 Tyndall, tells us, in a recent public address, that it is, 

 now very generally admitted that the man of to-day 

 is the child and product of incalculable antecedent 

 time. His physical and intellectual textures have 

 been woven for him through phases of history and 

 forms of existence which lead the mind back to an 

 abysmal past. 5 But, however generally this may be 

 1 admitted, it is nevertheless true that the oldest 

 known men are as truly human in their structures as 

 those now living, and that no link between them and 

 lower animals is known. In a previous address he 

 had gone further back still, and affirmed that in mate 

 rial atoms reside the promise and potency of life ;| 

 yet in his capacity of physicist he has by rigid ex 

 periments in his laboratory done as much as any man 

 living to convince us that science knows no possibility 

 of producing the phenomena of life from dead 

 matter. 



Perhaps no example could more vividly portray 

 the contrast between exact science and evolutionist 

 speculations than the careful experiments on germs 

 suspended in the atmosphere made by Tyndall in 

 the laboratory of the Royal Institution experiments 

 so complete, so convincing, and so eminently practical 

 in their bearing on the conditions of health and dis 

 easeas compared with the quaint and crude ima 

 ginings of the same mind when, in the presence of 

 popular audiences, it speculates on evolution. 



