36 Scientific Sophisms. 



"that animals have descended from at most 

 only four or five progenitors, and plants from 

 an equal or lesser number. Analogy would 

 lead me one step further, namely, to the belief 

 that all animals and plants have descended from 

 some one prototype. But analogy may be a de- 

 ceitful guide. Nevertheless ail living things have 

 much in common, . . . Therefore I should 

 infer from analogy that probably all the organic 

 beings which have ever lived on this earth have 

 descended from some one primordial form into 

 which life was first breathed." 1 



But this "belief," which Mr. Darwin thinks 

 "probable," this "inference" derived from 

 " analogy," has never been verified. How could 

 it be verified, when its most ardent apostles 

 assure us that it may, after all, " be wrong," and 

 will "certainly" have to "undergo modifica- 

 tion ?"* But even if it had been verified it is 

 not "materialism," it is not "atheism," it is 

 not "agnosticism." It is the very reverse of 

 all these, for it is a manifesto of absolute 

 "theism." 



"In my book on the 'Genesis of Species,'" 

 says Professor St. George Mivart, 3 " I had in 



1 " Origin of Species." First Edition, chap. xiv. p. 484. 



3 Prof. Tyndall, ut sup., p. 7. 



1 "Lessons from Nature." Murray, 1876, p. 429. 



