134 



SIXTH DAY'S SITTING. 



The Judgment of Lord C. 



Having carefully considered the evidence that has been 

 adduced, and having also carefully examined Mr. Darwin's 

 book, I can have no hesitation in saying that his 

 hypothesis does not account for the existence of man. 

 According to that hypothesis we are to believe that all the 

 varied forms of animal life existing on this earth have been 

 produced by the action of laws now in operation around us, 

 from some one, or from a few, primary forms. "We are to 

 believe that, by minute variations of this form or forms— 

 which variations went on accumulating, generation after 

 generation, through a period of time incalculably long- 

 one species of creature after another has been produced ; 

 that the larvte of ascidians developed into fish ; fish into 

 amphibians ; amphibians into reptiles and birds ; these 

 into mammals, including the Old World monkeys, through 

 which the climax was at last reached in man. 



Such hypotheses are not new. They are as old as the 

 history of human thought. In ancient times men of specu- 

 lative tendencies discussed the origin of the universe and 

 of man ; and development and evolution, in one form or 

 another, were employed to account for what they saw around 

 them. In more recent times Lamarck supposed species to 

 have been produced by the operation on organized creatures 

 of the conditions and circumstances in which they were 

 placed— the giraffe, for example, as alluded to by Homo, 



