RELATIONS OF SCIENCE TO SPECULATION. 145 



only as distinct as one species from another, but are distinct as genera, families, 

 orders, classes, and even kingdoms ; that according to our present experience any- 

 new specific form would make its appearance during the period of embryonic life, 

 and that such variations are capable of being transmitted to the offspring of the 

 animals in which they first arise; that at various stages of individual evolution, 

 sudden changes, caused by an acceleration or by an arrest of the development 

 process, or even by some retogressive action, may have resulted not merely in the 

 production in the concrete of new species, but even for a new genus, family or 

 order ; that the changes of development in all animals and plants are not carried 

 on by a fortuitous concourse of influences, or by minute hap-hazard variations in 

 all directions, but by a definite system of internal law, aided and influenced in the 

 past as now by the action of incident forces operating according to law, and re- 

 sulting in due and orderly specific genesis ; that in the process of evolution we have 

 constant evidence of a Great First Cause, ever and always operating throughout 

 nature in a manner hidden from the eye of sense, but clearly manifested to the 

 intellectual vision; that a belief in evolution, far from leading to a denial of 

 "creation," distinctly affirms it, and that a candid study of merely ojganic life 

 makes evident the logical need which exists for the Theistic conception. — Harper's 

 Monthly for July, i88t. 



RELATIONS OF SCIENCE TO SPECULATION. 



PRINCIPAL J W. DAWSON, LL. D. 



"Do we really exist? If we do, what is the thing called life?" Such are 

 the problems that were discussed by Principal Dawson, of Montreal, a Fellow of 

 the Royal Society and one of the best living scientists in the study of biology, in 

 his lecture at Association hall, Philadelphia. It was the first of a series of gra- 

 tuitous Lectures on "The Relations of Natural Science to Monastic and Agnostic 

 Speculations," given under the auspices of the Crozier Theological Seminary. 



If we ask, said the lecturer, what is science in relation to nature, we have 

 before us all that men have observed of the workings and objects of nature and 

 the deductions therefrom. But added to this is something of another sort, some- 

 times called philosophy, which is really a mass of material, the growth of the 

 thoughts of the times, and this is that troublesome commodity — modern specula- 

 tion. Evolutionists need the less complain of this view, as it is the natural out- 

 growth of their theory. It by no means follows that our knowledge of recent dis- 

 coveries equals the extent of their practical application. Take, for instance, 

 electricity. Its application in a variety of ways is almost general, and yet there 

 are very few things we know less about, either as to its laws or by what it is reg- 

 ulated. There is so much discovery that men are in danger of thinking them- 

 selves omniscient, but in reality the most of the accomplishments of science 

 remain mysteries to mankind. The tendancy to mad specialties of study, too, 



