Tlie President's Address. Bij L. S. Beale, F.R.S. 199 



dispositions of the material particles, whicli at length result in the 

 development of form, are made. Preparation is made for the 

 division of the mass of living matter into several portions, and for 

 the orderly disposition of these in respect of one another, as well 

 as in respect of the new masses which at some future time are to 

 be detached from them. Throughout the whole period of the life 

 of many organisms, similar wonderful changes are continually 

 taking place, at least as respects the living matter of certain parts 

 and organs; but we have no means of distinguishing the living 

 matter which continues monotonously repeating similar changes, 

 from living matter which divides and subdivides into masses, which 

 in turn give rise to successive generations of living particles, which 

 may differ fi'om one another and from all that have gone before, in 

 2)ower. 



As far as I am aware, no form of the doctrine of evolution yet 

 enunciated taies into account the phenomena of the living matter 

 in which and by which all the changes recognized and professed to 

 be explained are carried on. And yet it is only by these actions in 

 living matter that evolution can be made to appear a plausible hypo- 

 thesis. Only by carrying out very careful investigations on this 

 formless, structureless living matter can we reasonably hope to 

 obtain anything approaching an accurate conception of the wonder- 

 ful working of real living nature. It seems to me that the 

 " nature " of the evolutionist is but a fanciful and highly coloured 

 picture in which ideas suggested by investigations in stockyards 

 and shambles are depicted, with the addition of the horrible 

 scenes assumed by a vivid imagination to be enacted in the 

 supposed everlasting fight for existence and scramble for masteiy, 

 in which conquerors are always being conquered by creatures just a 

 shade more fitted to survive than themselves. Here is creation 

 by destruction in a never-ceasing scramble going on for millions 

 on millions of years, in which the only thing certain seems to be 

 that the greatest misery is assured to the greatest number; life 

 succeeding life, without good or reason or joy or hope ; peaceful 

 nature a continual massacre of experimental forms of life to be 

 soon succeeded and superseded by other experimental forms to be 

 massacred in their turn, and these by more ; a constant struggle 

 to survive, in which success is rewarded by extermination. The 

 " nature " of evolutionists is a very strange nature indeed, in which 

 oppression, destruction, and tyranny seem to be the chief agents in 

 creation and formation, development and advancement. 



But besides the evolution of living forms and of the difierent 

 organs, we are to believe in an evolution of matter, an evolution of 

 worlds, of suns, of systems. Eehgion, law, and justice, art, science, 

 and even thought are all products of this universal, never-ending 

 evolution. But what is evolution, and who has given to the term 



