CHASM BE TWEEN DEAD AND LIVING. r 2 1 



those who have had a scientific training, and who ought, there- 

 fore, to be more cautious and slow to commit themselves. 



The form in which many of the most untenable doc- 

 trines ever invented have been lately expressed, has been 

 regarded as almost faultless, and praised for being eminently 

 philosophical. But of the assertions just now adverted to, 

 it may be said that every one is misleading, and of some of 

 them that the contrary of what is affirmed would be at least 

 as near to the truth as the statement actually made. 



To prove trie doctrine of evolution would, no doubt, be 

 an easy task if only you can be prevailed upon at the 

 outset to admit that the difference between the changes 

 occurring in matter that lives and those which proceed 

 in matter that is not living, is a difference not of kind 

 but only one of degree. Such an admission, however, could 

 not be justified by facts. Although I may, perhaps, be 

 called both foolish and savage, or something worse, I shall 

 ask the reader to bear in mind that, up to this time, neither 

 Mr. Herbert Spencer, nor any one else, has succeeded in 

 obtaining or forming a particle of non-living matter of any 

 kind that manifests, in the slightest degree any phenomena 

 which approach, or in any sense at all resemble those which 

 are peculiar to and characteristic of every kind of living 

 matter that is known. Such non-living matter, however, 

 ought to have been discovered, as its existence is a neces- 

 sity if evolution is true. The chasm between the living and 

 the dead is neither filled up nor bridged over. It is as 

 wide and as deep as ever, but the evolutionist is not con- 

 scious of any chasm at all. 



Again, many popular writers discourse concerning the 

 process of thought, as if we knew all about it, and were able 



