46 Scientific Sophisms. 



afterwards grouped into tissues, and the tissues 

 are associated into organs. The "indifferent" 

 matter is differentiated in various degrees, and 

 the animal and vegetable series show many 

 grades of difference. 



Thus .the Protamoeba never reaches to the 

 formation of tissues ; the Hydra has tissues, 

 but few organs ; and, ascending in the series, the 

 sharks, complex as is their organization, exhibit 

 a less thorough differentiation of their hard 

 parts, which are chiefly cartilaginous, than do 

 mammals, in which cartilage is subordinate to 

 bone. But the evolution of the more complex 

 from the more simple organisms does not neces- 

 sarily form a linear series ; probably it never 

 does so. Nor does evolution imply change of 

 matter as well as of the relations of its parts ; 

 fresh matter is not essential to it, since the 

 phenomena which it includes are, as matter of 

 fact, rearrangements of that which was already 

 existing. 



Such are the principal facts regarding evolu- 

 tion ; and from these it is evident that the 

 phenomena themselves are absolutely indepen- 

 dent of any and of every theory as to their 

 cause. Thus understood and thus limited, 

 Evolution, i.e., the phenomenal sequence, not 

 the ideal hypothesis is a law the operation 



