1887] MICROSCOPICAL JOURNAL. | 113 
mass through the right ventricle, and, when full, ligaturing the pulmonary 
arteries and veins. The lungs then removed, they are distended through the 
trachea by injecting alcohol (90 per cent.), and then sunk under go per cent. 
alcohol and hardened twenty-four hours. After several changes, every five 
days, ooth of the alcohol in the air-cells and about the lung (it takes about a 
month to complete the process), the lung may then be imbedded and sliced 
as usual, and the cavities will not collapse. : 
EDITORIAL. 
Creation vs. evolution.—The Popular Science Monthly for May con- 
tains a valuable review by Professor Le Sueur of a recent work by Mr. 
Geo. T. Curtis, entitled ‘ Creation or Evolution,’ in which the author declares 
himself in favor of special creation. The key-note of the work is struck 
when he says, ‘ Ail correct reasoning on the subject of man’s descent as an ani- 
mal begins, I presume, with the postulate of an infinite Creator, having under 
His power all the elements and forms of matter, organized and unorganized, 
animate and inanimete.’ Here the author starts out with a method the con- 
trary of the scientific, and the one which, by its adoption, has the blame for 
so many human errors—the a przor¢ method. Starting, not from the facts 
but from certain conceptions of a Creator, he would reason out the method 
of man’s descent. The reviewer imputes to such a course more of arrogance 
and irreverence than to that of the much condemned scientist, who attempts, 
from the facts, to find out how God has worked, not to decide how He must 
have worked on premises which are assumed and not proven. With such a 
predetermined bias, what wonder the author pays little heed to facts! The 
facts of Darwin, Huxley, and Spencer, brought forward in their works, are 
attempted to be explained away, or they are spoken of as the mysterious and 
inexplicable by a finite mind, because the work of an Infinite Creator. Such 
writing, such speculation on matters which deserve more rational considera- 
tion, are the amusement of the great jurist’s leisure moments. They are 
natural in a mind so apt to be swayed by ‘ decisions’ as his, but they are not 
the science of to-day but of five centuries ago. The question is not what we 
think the Creator would have done, but what the facts indicate has been done. 
We once heard this absurd sentence from the lips of a scholar very eminent 
in all biblical matters: ‘ If the scientist cares to consider himself descended 
from a monkey he may do so; I don’t care to acknowledge any such ances- 
try.’ This, well enough as a mere esthetic sentiment, would hardly pass 
as a sufficient argument against man’s descent from lower forms. 
O 
The Nineteenth Century has for several months contained interesting 
articles upon not this same topic but the general principle of which this is 
but a special case. The articles form a controversy between Professor Hux- 
ley and the Duke of Argyle upon the old question of nominalism and realism, 
the existence of universals. In this controversy, which is carried on with great 
ability, Professor Huxley advocates principles which are recognized as the 
true principles of experimental science, and which, if they could gain univer- 
sal sway in all thinking minds, would make many controversies impossible. 
Law has not in itself an existence separate from its operations. The habitual 
prepossession, to the contrary, makes men seek to grasp the law without the 
laborious road to it through the facts, unmindful that it has no existence except 
as they reach it through the facts; and they are following an zens fatwas 
which they can never grasp. 
