78 Scientific Sophisms. 



our science, and all our art Plato, Shakespeare, 

 Newton, Raphael." All that has been ; all that 

 is ; nay even all that is imagined only ; was 

 once, to the scientific eye, "in a fine frenzy 

 rolling," "potential in the fires of the sun ;" 1 

 just as those fires themselves had no existence 

 (other than " latent and potential ") until they 

 were kindled by the condensation of " the 

 cosmic vapour." 



These quotations, and such as these for they 

 might be indefinitely extended enable us to 

 sum up the doctrine of Agnostic Evolution in 

 two short propositions : 



First, " That the earliest organisms were the 

 natural product of the interaction of ordinary 

 inorganic matter and force." 



Second, "That all the forms of animal and 

 vegetable life, including man himself, with all 

 his special and distinctive faculties, have been 

 slowly, but successively and gradually developed 

 from the earliest and simplest organisms." 



But when we proceed to examine the 

 scientific pretensions of the theory thus suc- 

 cinctly stated, we find, on Professor Tyndall's 

 own showing, that they are worthless. Worth- 

 less, because unverified, and incapable of veri- 

 fication. "The strength of the doctrine of 



1 " Scientific Use of the Imagination," p. 453. 

 I 



