262 THE DEVELOPMENT HYPOTHESIS 



tion bore witness, may be traced, in consequence, with a dis- 

 tinctness and certainty which we in vain seek in the cases of 

 presumed development which he would so fain establish, — 

 has in its bearing exactly the same effect. His development 

 hypothesis was complete at a time when his geology and 

 zoology were rudimental and imperfect. Give me your facts, 

 said the Frenchman, that I may accommodate them to my 

 theory. And no one can look at the progress of the La- 

 marckian hypothesis, with reference to the dates when, and 

 the men by whom, it was promulgated, without recognising 

 in it one of perhaps the most striking embodiments of the 

 Frenchman's principle which the world ever saw. It is not 

 the illiberal religionist that rejects and casts it off; — it is the 

 inductive philosopher. Science addresses its assertors in the 

 language of the possessed to the sons of Sceva the Jew : — 

 " The astronomer I know, and the geologist 1 know ; but who 

 are ye V 



One of the strangest passages in the " Sequel to the Ves- 

 tiges," is that in which its author carries his appeal from the 

 tribunal of science to " another tribunal," indicated but not 

 named, before which "this new philosophy" [remarkable 

 chiefly for being neither philosophy nor new] "is to be truly 

 and righteously judged." The principle is obvious, on which, 

 were his opponents mere theologians, wholly unable, though 

 they saw the mischievous character and tendency of his con- 

 clusions, to disprove them scientifically, he might appeal from 

 theology to science : "it is with scientific truth," he might 

 urge, "not with moral consequences, that I have aught to 

 do." But on what allowable principle, professing, as he does, 

 to found his theory on scientific fact, can he appeal from 

 science to the want of it ? " After discussing," he says, " the 

 whole arguments on both sides in so ample a manner, it may 

 be hardly necessary to advert to the objection arising from 

 the mere fact, that nearly all the scientific men are opposed 



