The Doctrine of Evolution. , 461 



ABSTRACT OF THE DISCUSSION. 



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MB. STARE HOYT NICHOLS: 



In opening the discussion of the able lecture of Prof. Fiske, per- 

 mit me to express the great delight with which I have listened to 

 his clear and cogent exposition of the principles of the evolutionary 

 philosophy, and of the triumph of those principles, now thoroughly 

 assured, within a marvelously brief space of time. No intelligent 

 person, I think, now doubts the facts upon which the doctrine of evo- 

 lution is based in the physical world and in biology. No one doubts 

 that the world has had a natural beginning; has been evolved out of 

 pre-existing material by the action of laws that are still operating ; that 

 it has reached its present state of relative perfection by the operation 

 of similar natural laws ; that in a like manner all forms of vegetable 

 and animal life have come into being, have developed and differen- 

 tiated into diverse species, obedient to discovered and discoverable 

 laws. Few doubt at the present day that man has had a similar 

 natural origin and life-history. It is only when we come to discuss 

 the origin and history of the mind that we find doubters whose 

 doubts, it appears to me, are not solved by the introduction of the 

 philosophical theory of the unknowable. We should not forget that 

 the doctrine of evolution is itself in process of evolution. We have 

 yet much to learn about it, to discover many new applications of its 

 principles. So wonderful has been our progress in knowledge, follow- 

 ing this clew which Darwin and others have placed in our hands, that 

 it seems to me imprudent to say of any of the problems which reason 

 proposes to the human mind : " Their answer is insolvable ; they belong 

 to the realm of the unknowable." Herein, perhaps, I should differ 

 with Mr. Spencer, and with the lecturer of the evening, whose works 

 I have read with much profit and delight 



DB. ROBEBT G. ECCLES: 



I do not agree with the last speaker in his expectation that we can 

 ever get along without the unknowable. The expression of such an 

 expectation seems to me to be an evidence of a failure to comprehend 

 the philosophic basis on which the doctrine rests. As long as the 

 human mind is finite, as its attributes are limited, real existence, 

 external to itself, must forever be unknowable in its essential charac- 

 ter. It can only be known symbolically, as conditioned by the limita- 

 tion of our knowing faculties. It is impossible to conceive mind as 



