MACHINE SCIENCE. 719 



pletely commingled with the scientific and philosophic thought of the day that 

 scarcely any investigator in natural science, especially in the domains of zoology, 

 geology, botany or anthropology, has failed to be affected by them. The phrases 

 "natural selection," "evolution," "origin by descent," " the survival of the 

 fittest," are as common as household words, and, without stopping to consider 

 the differences between these divisions of the general theory, I proceed to dis- 

 cuss the bearings of university teaching upon the questions of theistic and atheis- 

 tic evolution. The influence of the theory itself will be felt in the investigation 

 and study of almost every branch of science, and nearly every professor will be 

 compelled to give to his classes a reasonable account of the opinion he entertains 

 regarding it, and this opinion will or should naturally give. at least a bias to their 

 subsequent thought and labors. 



Now, while natural science has not yet been able to prove the correctness of 

 the evolution theory by facts, and has been obliged to call philosophy and meta- 

 physics to its aid to work out a plausible demonstration of its claims, still evolu- 

 tion is so widely admitted to be the \post probable explanation of the processes of 

 nature that it will be adopted by future scientists, at least as a guide in their in- 

 vestigations. Consequently, the question to be settled first of all seems necessa- 

 rily to be whether the true path of investigation lies in the theistic or the atheistic 

 acceptation of the theory; whether we are to regard an infinite God as the origi- 

 nator of the world and the designer of the processes of development in the organ- 

 ic and inorganic kingdoms, or whether we are to adopt the doctrine of the atheis- 

 tic evolutionists, who deny the supernatural or creative origin of man or any of 

 the animals, and account for them all by attributing their origin to spontaneous 

 generation and their subsequent development solely to the operation of law. 



Taking up first the consideration of the atheistic line of thought and argu- 

 ment, and passing over the question of spontaneous generation of life, which the 

 experiments of Tyndall, Bastian and others seem to have answered negatively, 

 but assuming it to be possible, for the sake of the subsequent argument, we come 

 to the consideration of development by law. Now law, as understood in science, 

 is inexorable and inflexible, exact and complete. The law of gravitation is so ex- 

 act in its requirements and fulfillments that the movements of the most distant 

 planets or other heavenly bodies can be calculated with the utmost accuracy, 

 whether we reckon centuries backward or forward. The laws of chemical affin- 

 ity are so precise that the most minute quantities of any given substance can be 

 detected with exact certainty, while the proportions of the constituent elements 

 of any known compound, base or acid are utterly invariable, and their combin- 

 ing equivalents unalterably fixed. Any violation of these laws, either by error in 

 calculation or misapplication of their rules, inevitably results in failure to attain 

 the object sought. Every true calculation, in the one case, or correct combina- 

 tion of chemical equivalents, in the other, will produce identically the same re- 

 sult, even if repeated a thousand or million times. This should be the case with 

 all laws ; when once discovered and formulated, they should stand forever, im- 

 mutable, invariable and unyielding. 



