58 REV. CHANCELLOR LIAS, M.A., ON 



respect Avliicli was due to j\Ir. Darwiu's amazing knowledge, 

 untiring industry, and insatiable thirst for truth. 



The tendency towards premature acceptance of residts is 

 to be found in various departments of thought to a greater 

 extent, I fancy, than has ever been the case before. It was 

 so in the case of Mr. Darwin. He was not only, as has just 

 been said, a man of character, of principle, of remarkable 

 acuteness, and of the most extraordinary industry, but he 

 had been unjustly attacked. Consequently the theories of 

 Evolution by natural selection, the struggle for existence, 

 and the survival of the fittest, were enthusiastically hailed 

 a,s the final results of science by a host of scientific 

 investigators. I cannot pretend to speak as an expert in 

 this matter. But my experience tells me that in the early 

 stages of scientific investigation the opinion of an impartial 

 outsider is not to be despised. I Avill not say that 

 I am an impartial outsider. But I may at least be allowed 

 to express my conviction that the evolutionists of the 

 last century were in too great a hurry to announce the 

 settlement of a great question. ^J'he most careful and 

 industrious investigator might have hesitated to proclaim 

 any results of his generalizations from the mighty host cf 

 facts which stared him in the face. He might have been 

 pretty sure, one might think, that he had omitted one or 

 two factors — possibly a good many more — which were of 

 infinite importance in solving the problem of the universe. 

 I never, when I try to study the demonstrations of scientific 

 hypotheses, can resist the impression that there is too 

 frequently a tendency to jump to conclusions unwarranted 

 by the premisses, and that to establish conclusions from 

 those premisses is a far more difficult task than many of 

 those who have attempted it imagine. It will be a long 

 time yet before Ave know all the causes which contribute to 

 the evolution of species. Impatience is the parent of error. 

 We must be content to wait, it may be for ages, before we 

 have collected, marshalled, and generalized correctly from, 

 all the vast store of materials before us. 



]\Ieanwhile evolution, in the sense of a power working 

 from within, as distinguished from interferences from 

 without, is confessed on all hands. We cannot deny that 

 it is by forces working Avithin, not by interferences from 

 Avithout, that the material universe, as Avell as plant, animal, 

 human life, is produced. Evolution is plainly a laAv of 

 the universe at the present moment. There is, therefore, no 



