9 2 



HUXLEY 



probandi rests on the maker of the assertion, who 

 brings forward not a shadow of evidence in its 

 support. l 



Meantime, occasion was given to eager adversaries 

 to say, " Behold how good and how pleasant a thing 

 it is to see this discord ! " and it is not surprising that 

 the hope was nurtured in the minds of many that so 

 serious a disagreement would in some way wreck the 

 doctrine of evolution. That reluctant convert to the 

 theory of the mutability of species, Lord Salisbury, 

 did not fail to press home the difficulty in his Presi- 

 dential Address to the British Association. After re- 

 ferring to the " penurious spirit " shown by Professor 

 Tait in cutting down Lord Kelvin's estimate of one 

 hundred million years to ten million years, he chaffed 

 their opponents with revelling in the prodigality of 

 the ciphers which they put at the end of the earth's 

 hypothetical life. 



Long cribbed and cabined within the narrow bounds 

 of the popular chronology, they have exulted wantonly 

 in their new freedom. They have lavished their 

 millions of years with the open hand of a prodigal 

 heir indemnifying himself by present extravagance for 

 the enforced self-denial of his youth. But it cannot 

 be gainsaid that their theories require at least all this 

 elbow-room. If we think of that vast distance over 

 which Darwin conducts us from the jelly-fish lying 



1 Lay Sermons, p. 213. 



