39 
there would be no valid induction until the theistic cause was 
positively excluded by a demonstration of atheism. And to 
offer the conclusion which would flow from such an induction, 
when completed, as sufficient for that atheistic demonstration 
of the non-existence of a Creator, which alone would complete 
the induction ; this would plainly be “‘ reasoning in a, circle.” 
The conclusion would have to be assumed, in order to make 
out the process leading to it. But supposing there may be 
a Creator of perfect wisdom and power and full sovereignty, 
it is always supposable that he may have seen reasons for 
clothing his creatures with those very qualities on which 
evolution argues against a Creator. Is itsaid that the regular 
gradations of organised life suggest the belief that the higher 
forms were evolved from the lower, along the stages of this 
ladder? But the theistic hypothesis suggests, with more pro- 
bability, the belief that the Creator had reasons for filling all 
the stages of this ascending scale with genera and species 
which are yet distinct. To lift the former surmise to the 
faintest approach to an induction, the latter hypothesis must 
be precluded. 
Once more, the scheme is fatally defective in that it has 10 
verification. Not a single new genus, or even individual, has 
been presented, or can be evolved by experiment, to confirm 
the hypothesis. Indeed, it is impossible, from the nature of 
the case, that there can be a verification, since the advocates 
of the scheme admit that the latest evolution, that of man, 
was completed long before the earliest human history. ‘The 
most that can be said for this theory is, that it is an ingenious 
collection of guesses, which bear a fanciful but deceptive 
likeness to real analogies. 
So far the pretended argument goes in its simpler form. 
Its manifest invalidity constrains some evolutionists, as Le 
Comte, to surrender it. But these assert that deeper researches 
into the parallelisms of organic relations give a truly induc- 
tive ground for their theory. It is claimed that the likeness 
between the stages which Agassiz (chiefly) disclosed in em- 
bryology, paleontology, and our existing gradations im natural 
history, now called the ontogenic, the phylogenic, and the 
taxonomic gradations, establishes evolution by a solid induc- 
tion. The animals now upon the earth form a gradation, 
through the four grand divisions of radiates, molluscs, articu- 
lates, and vertebrates, from the lowest and simplest up to the 
most complicated and highest. So, evolutionists assert, the 
living creatures made known by the fossils as once having 
lived in paleontologic ages, show the same gradation. And 
third, the transformations through which the foetal organisms, 
