ADDRESS. CV 



immemorial, many worlrls of life besides our own, wc must rcp,'ard it as pro- 

 bable in the highest degree that there are countless seed-bearing meteoric 

 stones moving about through space. If at the present instant no life existed 

 upon this Earth, one such stone falling upon it might, by what we blindly 

 call natural causes, lead to its becoming covered with vegetation. I am fully 

 conscious of the manj'^ scientific objections which may be urged against this 

 hypothesis ; but I believe them to be all answerable. I have already taxed 

 your patience too severely to allow me to think of discussing any of them on 

 the present occasion. The hypothesis that life originated on this Earth 

 through moss-grown fragments from the ruins of another world may seem 

 wild and visionarj^ ; all I maintain is that it is not unscientific. 



From the Earth stocked with such vegetation as it could receive meteorieally, 

 to the Earth teeming with all the endless variety of plants and animals which 

 now inhabit it, the step is prodigious ; yet, according to the doctrine of conti- 

 nuity, most ably laid before the Association by a predecessor in this Chair 

 (Mr. Grove), all creatures noAV living on earth have proceeded by orderly 

 evolution from some such origin. Darwin concludes his great work on ' The 

 Origin of Species ' with the following words : — " It is interesting to contem- 

 " plate an entangled bank clothed with many plants of many kinds, with 

 '' birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with 

 " worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elabo- 

 " rately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on 

 *' each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting 

 " around us." . . . . " There is grandeur in this view of life with its 

 " several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few 

 " forms or into one ; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on accord- 

 " ing to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms, 

 " most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being evolved." 

 With the feeling expressed in these two sentences I most cordially sympathize. 

 I have omitted two sentences which come between them, describing briefly 

 the hypothesis of " the origin «f species by natural selection," because I 

 have always felt that this hypothesis does not contain the true theory of 

 evolution, if evolution there has been, in biology. Sir John Herschcl, in 

 expressing a favourable judgment on the hypothesis of zoological evolution 

 (with, however, some reservation in respect to the origin of man), objected to 

 the doctrine of natural selection, that it was too like the Laputan method of 

 making books, and that it did not sufficiently take into account a continually 

 guiding and controlling intelligence. This seems to me a most valuable and 

 instructive criticism. I feel profoundly convinced that the argument of 

 design has been greatly too much lost sight of in recent zoological specula- 

 tions. Eeaction against the frivolities of teleology, such as are to be found, 

 not rarelj% in the notes of the learned commentators on Paley's ' Natural 

 Theology,' has I believe had a temporary eftcct in turning attention from the 

 solid and irrefragable argument so well put forward in that excellent old book. 

 But overpoweringly ■•■trong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie 

 all round us ; and if ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn 

 us away from them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible 

 force, showing to us through Kature the influence of a free will, and teaching 

 us that all living beings depend en one ever-acting Creator and Euler. 



