actions might possibly be wrong- or misguided. And 

 yet he differs from a very large number of divines, in 

 supposing that the prophets, for instance, knew all 

 that their own prophecies portended ; so that if all those 

 worthy divines be right in assuming that the inspired 

 writers did not always ' know what they wrote about/ 

 then your correspondent, who makes the contrary sup- 

 position, must be wrong, and there will still be some 

 hope for Darwinism. 



It is scarcely fair to ask for space to answer his 

 momentous challenge about the first vertebrate, or to 

 explain the thoroughly sceptical form which the chal- 

 lenge assumes. When the Apostle Thomas said, ' except 

 I see the print of the nails, I will not believe/ he had 

 no logical claim to receive the proof of the resurrection 

 which he demanded,, because a priori it would have been 

 quite fair to suppose our Lord's resurrection-body would 

 retain no such signs of previous outrage ; and it is a 

 kindred mistake to suppose that the truth of the 

 development-theory in any way hinges upon the pos- 

 sibility of constructing an effigy of the first vertebrate 

 either as it actually was, or to suit an anti-Darwinian's 

 notions of what it ought to have been. According to 

 the development-theory, it must have been the product 

 of innumerable antecedent factors, itself the heir of 

 many far-descended and often modified characters ; and 

 yet, for all that, it will probably have been a far simpler 

 organism than the simplest modern vertebrate. It 

 is well known by what insensible gradations the natural 

 kingdoms and the classes in those great divisions pass, 



