144 Outlook to Nature 



An appeal to prophecy and belief is not de- 

 monstrable, for it does not rest on evidence. 

 Therefore it is not debatable, and is outside 

 the realm of science, and beyond the reach of 

 truth. Finding facts that must be accepted, it 

 attempts to account for them by a wholly gra- 

 tuitous assumption, and an assumption cannot 

 be disproved. If a man assumes that snow is 

 black, there is no use in trying to convince him 

 that it is white. 



Disproof by misunderstanding. 



My second observation is that such ref- 

 utations misunderstand and misinterpret what 

 evolution is. For example, they confound evo- 

 lution and Darwinism ; but every writer now 

 should know that Darwinism, or " natural 

 selection," is only one of the means of ex- 

 plaining how evolution may have taken place. 

 Many of our best evolutionists do not think 

 that Darwinism is an adequate explanation. In 

 fact, Darwin himself did not contend that it is 

 the sole method of evolution : he stated ob- 

 jections to it; and this is most significant, 



