482 THE HORSE'S POSITION IN THE ANIMAL WORLD 



seen, and the other to the difficulty which is based on the ground of the 

 extent of time which would necessarily be required for the development of 

 highly-organized living creatures out of a mass of jelly-like protoplasm. 



On the first point he quotes from the late Lord Salisbury's address to 

 the British Association, in which the speaker says that no man or succession 

 of men have ever observed the whole process in any single case, and cer- 

 tainly no man has recorded the observation. In reply, Herbert Spencer 

 quotes from an essay which was published many years ago in pre-Darwinian 

 days, in which the author remarks: " In a debate upon the development 

 hypothesis lately narrated to me by a friend, one of the disputants was 

 described as arguing that as, in all our experience, we know of no such 

 phenomenon as transmutation of species, it is unphilosophical to assume 

 that transmutation of species ever takes place. Had I been present, I 

 think that, passing over his assertion, which is open to criticism, I should 

 have replied that, as in all our experience we had never known a species 

 created, it was by his own showing unphilo.sophical to assume that any 

 species ever had been created." 



Thus, supposing the two hypotheses — special creation and evolution by 

 natural selection — are to be tested by the directly-observed facts assigned 

 in their support, then, if the hypothesis of evolution by natural selection is 

 to be rejected because there are no directly-observed facts which prove it, 

 the hypothesis of special creation must be rejected for the same reason. In 

 fact, it would be imjjossible to arrive at any conclusion by such a line of 

 argument. 



On the subject of the time which would be required for the evolution of 

 a living being of advanced type, the difficulty is thus cogently propounded. 

 " If we think of the vast distance over which Darwin conducts us, from the 

 jelly-fish lying on the primaeval beach to man as we know him now, if we 

 reflect that the prodigious changes requisite to transform one into the other 

 are made up of a chain of generations each advancing by a minute variation 

 from the form of its predecessor, and if we further reflect that these succes- 

 sive changes are so minute that, in the course of our historical period — say 

 three thousand years — this progressive variation has not ach^anced by a 

 single step perceptible to our eyes, in respect to man or the animals or 

 plants with which man is familiar, we shall admit that for a change so vast, 

 of which the smallest link is longer than our recorded history, the biologists 

 are making no extravagant claim when they demand at least many hundred 

 millions of years for the accomplishment of the stupendous process." In 

 reply to this Herbert SjDcncer, setting aside the .statement that the jelly- 

 fish is a remote ancestor of man, cjuotes again from a portion of the essay 

 previously referred to where the writer, after admitting that those who 



