PROFESSOR V IRC HOW AND EVOLUTION 433 



own powers can resound. If, then, at a moment when he 

 finds himself placed on a pinnacle from which he is called 

 upon to take a perspective survey of the range of science, 

 and to tell us what he can see from his vantage-ground; 

 if, at such a moment, after straining his gaze to the very- 

 verge of the horizon, and after describing the most distant 

 of well-defined objects, he should give utterance also to 

 some of the subjective impressions which he is conscious 

 of receiving from regions beyond; if he should depict 

 possibilities which seem opening to his view ; if he should 

 explain why he thinks this a mere blind alley and that an 

 open path; then the fault and the loss would be alike ours 

 if we refused to listen calmly^ and temperately to form our 

 own judgment on lohat we hear; then assuredly it is we who 

 would he committing the error of 'confounding matters of fact 

 with matters of opinion^ if we failed to discriminate betiueen 

 the various elements contained in sxich a discourse^ arid as' 

 sumed that they had been all put on the same footing, ^^ 



While largely agreeing with him I cannot quite accept 

 the setting in which Professor Yirchow places the con- 

 fessedly abortive attempts to secure an experimental basis 

 for the doctrine of spontaneous generation. It is not a 

 doctrine *'so discredited" that some of the scientific think- 

 ers of England accept "as the basis of all their views of 

 life. ' ' Their induction is by no means thus limited. They 

 have on their side more than the "reasonable probability'* 

 deemed sufficient by Bishop Butler for practical guidance 

 in the gravest affairs, that the members of the solar systeni 

 which are now discrete once formed a continuous mass; 

 that in the course of untold ages, during which the work 



of condensation, through the waste of heat in space, went 



Science— YI— 19 



