THE PLACOID BRAIN. 153 



viewer may say to the contrary ; — tliey are the characters 

 which, above all, I am chiefly concerned in looking to, for 

 they are the features of embryonic progress, and embryonic 

 progress is the grand key to the theory of development." 

 Yes ; the grand key to the theoiy oi foetal development ; for 

 embryonic progress is foetal development. But on what is 

 the assertion based that they form a key to the history of 

 creation ? Aurelia are not human bodies laid out for the se- 

 pulchre, nor are butterflies human souls ; as certainly gesta- 

 tion is not creation, nor a life of months in the uterus a suc- 

 cession of races for millions of ages outside of it. On what 

 grounds, then, is the assertion made % Does it embody the 

 result of a discovery, or announce the message of a revelation ? 

 Did .he author of the " Yestiges" find it out for himself, or 

 did an angel from heaven tell it him ? If it be a discovery, 

 show us, we ask, the steps through which you have been con- 

 ducted to it ; if a revelation, produce, for our satisfaction, the 

 evidence on which it rests. For we are not to accept as data, 

 in' a question of science, idle comparisons or vague analogies, 

 whether produced through the intentional juggling of the 

 sophist, or involuntarily conjured up in the dreamy delirium 

 of an excited fancy. 



It is one of the difficulties incident to the task of replying 

 to any dogmatic statement of error, that every mere annun- 

 ciation of a false fact or false principle must be met by ela- 

 borate counter-statement or carefully constructed argument, 

 and that prolixity is thus unavoidably entailed on the contro- 

 versialist who labours to set right what his antagonist has set 

 wi'ong. The promulgator of error may be lively and enter- 

 taining, whereas his painstaking confutator runs no small risk 

 of being tedious and dull. May I, however, solicit the for- 

 bearance of the reader, if, after already spending much time 

 in skirmishing on ground taken up by the enemy, — one of 

 the disadvantages incident to the mere defendant in a contro 



