354 PRESENT-DAY RATIONALISM 



turn to geology. Geologists tell us that the crust of the 

 earth is composed of " aqueous strata " and " igneous 

 rocks," etc. How do they know that these descriptive 

 adjectives are applicable and correct ? Solely by analogy 

 with existing processes going on in the world. As 

 geology represents past history, it cannot be recalled 

 and tested experimentally. And so we remain perfectly 

 satisfied with inductive evidence. The same reasoning 

 applies to the fossils upon which palaeontological evolu- 

 tion is based, and Hu.xley's interesting genealogy of the 

 horse from a small animal with five toes on each foot to 

 our own one-toed useful animal is entirely based on 

 inductive reasoning. 



The establishment of Evolution generally is as largely 

 founded on inductive evidence as that of man is, by 

 embryology and anatomy ; but this great doctrine is 

 equally well based on experimental evidences of culti- 

 vation and domestication, and so when we have to draw 

 conclusions about prehistoric remains, we conclude that 

 flint weapons were made artificially by the flat facets or 

 planes all over them, even on the rudest palaeolithic ones, 

 showing longitudinal surf aces ; which cannot be accounted 

 for by the action of running water or other physical 

 forces in Nature. 



We can imitate them closely, as the celebrated " Flint 

 Jack " did, who used to impose upon the unwary, but still 

 the conviction that they were artificially made by man out- 

 weighs any improbability that might rise in some people's 

 minds in consequence of their vast antiquity — as seen in 

 their being associated with the sub-glacial mammoth and 

 woolly rhinoceros, etc., etc. 



I hardly think the author of ATr. Balfour's Apologetics 

 will deny that these conclusions of science are as perfectly 

 sound and acceptable as if they were the " evidences of 



