. EVIDENCE OF DESIGN. 139 
verse of chance, not of a plan’ which spans the remotest 
star and the soul of the new-born infant in one tremen- 
dous arc. But it is highly instructive to observe how the 
scientists in 1903 met Wallace’s argument. One very 
distinguished reviewer said: 
“Too little is known, the most essential astronomical 
theories are too much a matter of conjecture, to give much 
strength to a theory built up entirely of such conjectural 
materials. The argument from probabilities can easily 
be turned against the author, for when a chain of reason- 
ing depends upon a long series of problematic premises, 
the doubt of these premises increases in a mathematical 
ratio. Weakness in an argument is as cumulative as 
strength and while such of Dr. Wallace’s conclusions tak- 
en separately may receive the support of eminent scien- 
tists, hardly any of them has received such demonstra- 
tion as to entitle it to unreserved credence.” 
This, at last, is a frank admission. Wallace quoted 
the generally accepted results of scientific calculation and 
research. On the basis of these results he demonstrates 
that the entire object of Evolution (to demonstrate the 
development of all things by natural causes, without a 
directing Intelligence), is negatived by a proper con- 
sideration of “ascertained data,’—since these data, taken 
all together, prove a stupendous plan behind all na- 
tural phenomena, and the end of this plan, the human 
soul. In rebuttal we are now told that “the most essential 
astronomical theories’’—as e. g. the Copernican System, 
Herschel’s laws, the Newtonian theory of gravitation,— 
“are matter of conjecture” (in plain\English, are blind 
guesses), are “problematic,” and “hardly any entitled 
to unreserved credence.” 
Thus do we find, that the greatest of Darwinians, 
on a mature consideration of the subject, reached a con- 
clusion which makes evolution as a theory quite unnec- 
