ON EVOLUTION. O77 
modifying variations, in the manifold conditions under which 
its continued operation has taken place. Facts, however, 
illustrative of the genealogy of this or that organic type, 
having suggested, as the most probable account that could be 
given of its origin, the theory I have just alluded to and 
briefly sketched, the perception of their significance enlarged 
with the progress of scientific observation and research, until 
the principle to which they seemed to point came to be re- 
garded as universal, and it was believed that a scientific basis 
had been discovered, for the notion that the production of the 
countless varieties and elaborate complications of form and 
structure which constitute existing nature had its beginning 
in a movement which terminated what was imagined to be 
an original equilibrium of undifferentiated material, and has 
ever since that time proceeded in the way of continuous 
evolution. 
3. It will, I presume, be generally conceded that the acts 
which have been adduced in favour of this hypothesis are 
neither few nor unimportant; rather that they are very 
numerous and profoundly suggestive. But a theory of Evolu- 
tion, in which the fixing of the starting-point involves an 
arbitrary assumption, and a primal state of things is supposed 
for the existence of which no exigency of rational thought 
can be held to have established the necessity, is obviously 
wanting in philosophical completeness and stability, cannot 
reasonably be welcomed as the key to any of those arcana of 
knowledge which Nature has been reserving for disclosure in 
these latter days, and, indeed, if it has any significance from 
a theologian’s point of view, and comprises such assertions or 
negations as he may be expected to dispute, is destitute of the 
shghtest claim to even provisional acceptance. A hypothetical 
scheme of doctrine, of which the fundamental hypothesis is 
purely conjectural,—in other words, rests upon nothing,—is 
ill-adapted to interpret, or rather must needs fail to exhibit 
in their true aspects and relations, the facts which bear upon 
it, whether they seem to render it credible or not. 
4. Let, then, the fundamental hypothesis of the theory of 
Evolution, as that theory is commonly propounded, be atten- 
tively examined. The beginning of the Cosmos having been 
conceived as a state of things in which differentiation has as 
yet no place, there is but one way in which it can present 
itself distinctly to the imagination: it must needs be pictured 
as a system of homogeneous atoms in perfect equilibrium ; in 
other words, having room to move and fraught with tenden- 
cies to movement, which, however, so long as their assumed 
arrangement lasts, precisely neutralise one another. 
VOL, XXI. x 
