200 Transactions of the Society. 



an accurate definition ? We sliall be told there is evolution and 

 evolution. One man's evolution goes too far, another's not far 

 enough, and there is no general agreement as to what is meant by 

 evolution, and whether the use of the term should be restricted to 

 the living world or extended to the universe — though it must be 

 obvious to any one who considers the question that the evolution of 

 a living form and the evolution of the matter of a stone are as far 

 removed from one another as are the question of the nature and 

 scojie of Infinite Power and the nature and properties of a gas or 

 a metal. 



Herbert Spencer has defined his " evolution " to be a change 

 from an indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite coherent 

 heterogeneity, through continuous differentiations and integrations. 

 But is not every one of these polysyllabic words as elastic as the 

 word the meaning of which they are to explain ? Every assertion 

 made is wanting in proof, and most of the words may be used in 

 totally difierent and even in opposite senses. 



Any one who ventures to express a doubt concerning the 

 absolute correctness of the assemblage of vague and even contra- 

 dictory conjectures comprised in any hypothesis of evolution, is in 

 danger of being abused and called names. He may be denounced 

 to the world as a contemptible person who has made a vile and 

 abusive attack upon some infallible authority who affirms himself 

 to be the real discoverer of all the secrets of all the molecular 

 machinery of creation. We now live under the most ridiculous of 

 all forms of despotism. It has been said that we must accept such 

 and such views or be debarred from accepting anything ! But is it 

 possible for any unbiassed person to accept implicitly doubts, vague 

 suggestions of what may be, or can be, or might be, — speculations, 

 hypotheses, conjectures concerning things that lived under con- 

 ditions which are in great part only conjectural ? Probably no 

 living person accepts as it stands ' The Origin of Species,' and it is 

 doubtful whether the first chapter, or even the first sentence of the 

 first chapter, would hold its ground without considerable alteration 

 and qualification if subjected to searching critical examination. 



The facts known to microscopical observers in connection with 

 the act of living of the smallest particle of the simplest forms of 

 living matter are no more to be accounted for by any of the 

 extravagant crotchets lately advanced as explanations of the facts, 

 than are the geneial broad phenomena of nature which are under 

 the observation of all. Evolution is a wholly satisfactory explana- 

 tion only to those whose minds have been trained to submission to 

 evolutional authority, and who have brought themselves to regard 

 things as they have been told they ought to regard them, instead of 

 venturing to use their senses, and reasoning on the facts presented 

 to their observation — and indeed see for themselves with their own 



