76 Scientific Sophisms. 



among the ranks of those most eminent for 

 scientific attainment there are not wanting ear- 

 nest and enlightened seekers after truth, who 

 have not only refused to accept this new doc- 

 trine with its " logical consequences," but who 

 have based their refusal on this explicit ground, 

 that agnostic Evolution is " nothing more than 

 a flimsy framework of hypothesis constructed 

 upon imaginary or irrelevant facts, with a com- 

 plete departure from every established canon of 

 scientific investigation." 



In his Review of Professor Haeckel's 

 " Natural History of Creation," or, as he would 

 prefer to call it, " The History of the Develop- 

 ment or Evolution 01 Nature," Professor Hux- 

 ley has expressly formulated " the fundamen- 

 tal proposition of Evolution." " That proposi- 

 tion is," he tells us, " that the whole world, 

 living and not living, is the result of the 

 mutual interaction, according to definite laws, 

 of the forces possessed by the molecules of 

 which the primitive nebulosity of the universe 

 was composed." J And he adds, " If this be 

 true, it is no less certain that the existing 

 world lay potentially in the cosmic vapour." 



In this, of course, he agrees with Haeckel, by 



1 " Critiques and Addresses," Macmillan, 1873 (xii. 

 " The Genealogy of Animals "), p. 305. 



