THE DARWINIAN THEORY 



yet framed to account for them. The 

 only objection which has been advanced to 

 orthogenesis is that it is unsatisfactory to 

 confess ignorance instead of trying to 

 guess what we are ignorant of. But as all 

 admit that the territory of the Unknown 

 in biology is great, and its boundaries not 

 even discernible, this objection does not 

 seem sensible. 



But the general reader should be on his 

 guard now against too hasty conclusions. 

 When he compares the confident tone with 

 which Tyndall, in 1874, speaks of matter 

 as eternal, and containing in it the prom- 

 ise and potency of life, with the words of 

 Sir George Darwin, uttered from the same 

 chair of president of the British Associa- 

 tion of Science in 1905, that the elements 

 of matter have had neither an eternal past, 

 nor will they have an eternal future, and 

 that the mystery of life is as impenetrable 

 as ever, he may suppose that these learned 

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