8o How Theories are Manufactured 



concerning the said doctrine, it seems high time that a 

 clear understanding should be arrived at, and that we 

 should be plainly told what it really does for us, and 

 what it does not. 



"Evolution," taking the word to stand for a scientific 

 doctrine, signifies the theory that different kinds of 

 creatures have developed from the same original, and 

 that they have severally passed through sundry and 

 various modifications in the process ; that, for instance, 

 the birds of to-day are descended from birds of other 

 habits, whether we take the word to mean dress or 

 conduct, and these again from animals, not birds at all, 

 but lizards and fishes, and before these again something 

 on a par with sand-eels and slugs, and so on down to 

 "primitive Protozoa." Be it so, as perhaps it may be; 

 for evolution does undoubtedly go on in the history, not 

 of species only, but of individuals. Any one of the birds 

 we see came into existence not as a bird at all, but as 

 an egg, in which were contained none of those parts 

 muscle, nerve, or feather which we now behold. The 

 change from a Jelly-fish to an Eagle would not be one 

 whit more wonderful than that from the yolk of an 

 Eagle's egg. But what then? Evolution, at best, is 

 but a fact ; and what we want is nor a fact but a force, 

 which ten thousand facts will not supply, but only 

 demand the more as their explanation. The loco- 

 motives which race to Edinburgh, and the marine 

 engines which drive the greyhounds of the Atlantic, are 

 both, no doubt, developments of the primitive machine 

 which James Watt was called in to repair ; yet we should 

 hardly give an adequate account of the history of the 

 steam-engine by merely stating this to be the case. 

 What we want to know, and what evolutionists claim to 

 tell us, is the active agent working through all the modi- 

 fications that have been made, and in the development 

 which has been the result. In the steam-engine, the 

 improving agent has been found in the brains of various 

 men : in the modifications of organic life it has been, 

 according to evolutionists, the force of Natural Selection. 



