VI PREFACE. 



As I cannot reprint the various able compositions which I 

 have attempted to answer, it will be fair, to one at least of 

 the writers, to remark that I have personal reason to know 

 that he still retains the opinions of which I attempted to 

 disabuse him. He contrives to reconcile this obduracy to 

 his own intelligence by laying stress on the candid admission 

 made by Darwinians, that the Theory of Development is for 

 the present that which they call it, a Theory, and not a 

 demonstration. No one pretends to answer fully every 

 objection that has been urged against the Theory. The 

 evidence is as yet incomplete. By its very nature it must 

 perhaps always to some extent remain so. The proof depends 

 in part upon analogy, which leads to conclusions possible or 

 probable, rather than to what is demonstrably certain. But 

 the advocates of the Theory, remembering Bishop Butler's 

 maxim, that ' to us probability is the very guide of life,' 

 endeavour to maintain that their opinions have far more than 

 that minimum of preponderance which, in Butler's view, not 

 only justifies, but imperiously exacts, the adhesion of reason- 

 able beings. 



THOMAS E. K. STEBBING. 



Torquay, Feb. 6, 1871. 



