8 ' NATURAL SELECTION ' IMPLIED 



and transmutations of organic structure and form 

 have taken place from generation to generation, and 

 that, therefore, it has been only in the course of long 

 ages of time that the animal kingdom has attained 

 its present state of organisation, by evolution from a 

 hypothetical spontaneously generated living being, 

 consisting of no more than a structureless mass of 

 protoplasm, like a flake of the white of an egg. 



This point in the doctrine of Evolution, it is 

 obvious, renders impossible anything like a just 

 comparison of its import with the facts which our 

 minds can, in consequence of our very brief tenure 

 of existence and limited experience, properly grasp. 

 We may, however, concede to Evolutionists all the 

 millions of years which they postulate, and yet 

 decline to receive their doctrine. 



But to return to Mr. Darwin's ' Natural Selec- 

 tion.' The preservation of favourable and the decay 

 or lapse of injurious variations, constituting ' Natural 

 Selection ' by the ' Survival of the Fittest ' in the 

 ' Struggle for Existence ' seems no more than what 

 Epicurus taught in Athens, and Lucretius, after him, 

 sang in Rome, before the commencement of our era ; 

 and is a mere truism so far as there is any meaning 

 in it. The more healthy and well developed indi- 

 viduals are, they have, no doubt, a better chance 

 of surviving and continuing their kind than the 

 less well developed ; though it is difficult to perceive 

 that they would be thereby elevated above the condi- 



