8 9 



schools to-day. In one instance Huxley him 

 self maintained twenty years later that there 

 was a notable exception, but the evidence 

 seemed to be wanting to prove its authentic 

 ity and the exception has fallen into innocuous 

 desuetude. What, then, are we to think of 

 Father Wasmann's evolution, which postulates 

 advance from one generation to another and 

 advance from the simple to the complex as 

 constant and continuous P 1 



Father Wasmann says, with considerable 

 naivete, that evolution is not an experimental 

 science. We quite agree with him ; but it is 

 not an experimental science for the simple and 

 conclusive reason that it is not a science at all. 

 It deserves to be ranked as a science no more 

 than the cooling theory of La Place and Kant 

 can be regarded as a science, or than Christian 

 Science can be regarded as a science. Indeed, 

 Father Wasmann himself admits all this, for 

 he shows with much circumlocution that it is 



1 It is remarkable that in his own argument from the whalebone- 

 whale (page 80) Father Wasmann has failed to notice the contradiction 

 on this point in his own contention. He assumes the evolution of the 

 whalebone-whale from the toothed whale with, of course, all the advance 

 which the term implies, yet he quite naively, but truly, says: the 

 supposed development of the tefcth into whalebone is degeneration not 

 advance. 



