CHAPTER XI 



PSEUDO-PHILOSOPHIC VIEWS OF EVOLUTION 



Having surveyed the animal and vegetable kingdoms, 

 as coming into existence as soon as protoplasm with the 

 nucleus appeared upon this earth, by Evolution ; it is 

 necessary to pay some attention to what certain Ration- 

 alists and others have to say upon the subject. 



Being profoundly impressed by the continuity which 

 pervades Nature, many eminent scientists, as Huxley, 

 Tyndall, Herbert Spencer as well as Haeckel and 

 Biichner, would see no " break " at the origin of life 

 in organisms ; which, to satisfy the law of continuity, 

 7nust, according to their views, have proceeded from the 

 inorganic world. 



When, however, we read what those philosophers 

 have to say on the subject, we find nothing beyond 

 suggestions, or what they imagine, on a priori grounds, 

 as to what was the case. Not one can be accepted as a 

 scientific truth based on inductive evidence. 



Dr. Tyndall, for example, wrote ^ as follows : he saw 

 in matter, "the promise and potency of all terrestrial 

 life " ; " Life under all its forms has arisen by an un- 

 broken evolution, and through the instrumentality of 

 what are called natural causes ". First there is " a 

 nebular haze," then this becomes a " molten mass," 

 wherein are all forms of life, man included, " potentially " 



^ The following references are to his Fragments of Science. 



(107) 



