ACCEPTANCE OF HYHOTHESES. 209 



nothing in its character to put it beyond the pale of such 

 investigation. Where, then, so little is positively known, 

 and so much merely tentative and temporary, no one has a 

 right to dogmatise* far less to treat the earnest opinion 

 of another otherwise than in the spirit of candour and re- 

 spect. Argument is weak if it cannot divest itself of acri- 

 mony truth is half shorn of her lustre when surrounded 

 by a medium of angry invective. The development hy- 

 pothesis, when pursued in a right spirit in the spirit of 

 inductive research and logical interpretation is entitled to 

 a fair hearing, even should it startle our accustomed beliefs 

 and offend our prejudices. Science, confident in its strength, 

 grapples with the argument j prejudice, feeling her weak- 

 ness, avoids the combat, and, assassin-like, launches those 

 infernal missiles " sceptic," " infidel," and " atheist." But 

 whatever the uneasy tenderness with which the theme of 

 Life is usually treated, its origin and progress, its incomings 

 and outgoings, are questions which meet us at every turn in 

 geology, and themes which no scientific naturalist can pos- 

 sibly ignore. Year after year they are being more forcibly 

 pressed upon our attention, and no geologist can afford to 

 stand by while the brunt of the battle must be met on the 

 ground of his own special science. Lamarck's well-known 

 hypothesis the Vestiges of Creation, which stands bas- 

 tardised by the moral cowardice that shrinks from avow- 

 ing its paternity and Mr Darwin's Origin of Species have 

 each given a fresh impetus to the question ; and though 

 our limits debar any further discussion of the question, we 

 may be permitted to express our opinion, that be it " trans- 



* " In respect to very many questions, a wise man's mind rests long 

 in a state neither of belief nor of unbelief. But your intellectually short- 

 sighted people are apt to be preternaturally clear-sighted, and to find 

 their way very plainly to positive conclusions upon one side or the other 

 of every mooted question." Dr ASA GRAY, in his Review of the Dar- 

 winian Hypothesis. 



