OBJECTIONS AGAINST EVOLUTION. 141 



The distinguished French savant, Dr. Charles 

 Robin, is even more pronounced in his views. Evo- 

 lution, he asserts, is at best but "a poetical accumu- 

 lation of probabilities without proofs, of seductive 

 explanations without demonstration." 



As to the defenders of the theory of Evolution, 

 they are accused of drawing universal conclusions 

 from particular premises ; of mistaking resemblance 

 for blood relationship; of confounding variability 

 with transmutability, and of falsely proclaiming the 

 existence of a genealogical succession where there is 

 nothing more than a hierarchy of organic forms. 

 Anti-evolutionists may not, indeed, deny the possi- 

 bility of the derivation of higher from lower forms 

 of life ; they impugn the reality of such derivation. 

 They love to descant on the dictum of the Scholas- 

 tics, a possibili ad actum non valet consecutio possi- 

 bility is far from implying existence. They charge 

 their opponents with making species of what are 

 only races, and confidently challenge them to indi- 

 cate a single instance in which one species has been 

 changed into another species, either in historic or in 

 geologic time. 1 Species, they insist on it, are Divine 



1 A few years ago, in 1888, M. Emile Blanchard, a distin- 

 guished naturalist and a member of the French Institute, wrote 

 as follows in the preface to his interesting work, " La Vie des 

 Etres Animes : " " J'ai souvent declare autour de inoi que si un 

 investigateur parvenait a faire la demonstration scientifique 

 d'une certaine transformation chez quelques repre"sentants d'un 

 groupe du regne animal, je me tenais a sa disposition pour pre- 

 senter ce resultat a 1'Academie des Sciences, pour affirmer, pour 

 proclamer le triomphe de 1'auteur." So far, it seems, no one 

 has accepted his challenge; a challenge made not in the spirit 

 of animosity or party, but solely in the interests of truth. For 

 as yet, the eminent savant contends, the theory of transformism 

 is not supported by a single serious and logical argument. And 



