402 FEAGMENTS OF SCIENCE. 



science a desire stronger than the wish to have his 

 beliefs upheld; namely, the desire to have them true. 

 And those to whom I refer as having studied this ques- 

 tion, believing the evidence offered in favour of " spon- 

 taneous generation " to be vitiated by error, cannot 

 accept it. They know full well that the chemist now 

 prepares from inorganic matter a vast array of sub- 

 stances, which were some time ago regarded as the 

 products solely of vitality. They are intimately ac- 

 quainted with the structural power of matter, as evi- 

 denced in the phenomena of crystallisation. They can 

 justify scientifically their belief in its potency, under 

 the proper conditions, to produce organisms. But, in 

 reply to your question, they will frankly admit their 

 inability to point to any satisfactory experimental proof 

 that life can be developed, save from demonstrable an- 

 tecedent life.' * 



Comparing the theory of evolution with other theo- 

 ries, I thus express myself: ' The basis of the doctrine 

 of evolution consists, not in an experimental demon- 

 stration for the subject is hardly accessible to this 

 mode of proof but in its general harmony with sci- 

 entific thought. From contrast, moreover, it derives 

 enormous relative strength. On the one side we have 

 a theory, which converts the Power whose garment is 

 seen in the visible universe into an Artificer, fashioned 

 after the human model, and acting by broken efforts, 

 as man is seen to act. On the other side we have the 

 conception that all we see around us and feel within 

 us the phenomena of physical nature as well as those 

 of the human mind have their unsearchable roots 

 in a cosmical life, if I dare apply the term, an infini- 

 tesimal span of which is offered to the investigation of 

 man.' Among thinking people, in my opinion, this 



* Quoted by Clifford, 'Nineteenth Century,' 3, p. 726. 



