1 1 o DISCRIMINATIONS CHAP. 



These, however, are not the only 

 difficulties which beset any intelligent 

 acceptance of the theory of purely me- 

 chanical and mindless evolution through 

 changes infinitesimal and fortuitous. 

 There is another difficulty much more 

 fundamental. That theory, in all its 

 forms, involves always one assumption, 

 which, so far as I have observed, is 

 never expressly stated. It is the assump- 

 tion that organic life never could have 

 been introduced, or multiplied, except by 

 the processes of parental reproduction or 

 of ordinary generation, such as we see 

 them now. Yet if we only think of it 

 this is an assumption which not only 

 may be wrong, but which cannot pos- 

 sibly be true. We know as certainly 

 as we know anything in the physical 

 sciences, that organic life must have had 

 a definite beginning, in time, upon this 

 globe of ours. If so, then of course that 



