Scientific Sophisms. 167 



No conclusion of modern science is more 

 widely received or more confidently maintained 

 than that which teaches that in the early history 

 of our planet life was unknown. Not only was 

 it not actual : it was not possible. Life f hen 

 was not. But now life is. Life, then, had a 

 beginning. What was that beginning ? And 

 whence ? 



" If," says Professor Huxley, 1 " the hypo- 

 thesis of Evolution be true, living matter must 

 have arisen from not-living matter, for, by the 

 hypothesis, the condition of the globe was at one 

 time such that living matter could not have 

 existed on it, life being entirely incompatible 

 with the gaseous state." And he adds that, 

 even if we adopt Sir William Thomson's theory, 

 that life on this planet may have been derived 

 from life on some other, the difficulty of 

 accounting for its origination is as great as 

 ever. For the nebular theory, which is a part 

 of the hypothesis of Evolution, asserts that all 

 the worlds were once in " the gaseous state." 



"But," he continues, "living matter once 

 originated, there is no necessity for another 

 origination, since the hypothesis postulates the 

 unlimited, though perhaps not indefinite, 

 modifiability of such matter." Waiving, for 

 1 Encyclopedia Britannica, Article "Biology." 



