1881-1882.] 119 



to generation. Against Darwin and Hseckel and Vogt, and 

 such speculators, he ranged Agassiz and Cuvier and Linnaeus, 

 and such, at the head of a host of patient observers and true 

 workers. He then proceeded to give definitions of the evo- 

 lution theory from Darwin, Mivart, and Hseckel, which, sum- 

 med up in plain language and in brief, is, that instead of 

 Nature's law being, that plants and animals having their seeds 

 in themselves, after their kind, Nature's process is supposed to 

 have been conducted in the way of causing one species of living 

 organism to be the child of the nearest past, and the parent of 

 the nearest future, after another kind, all along the *' pedigree 

 of organisms," as Haeckel calls it ; so that man is the descen- 

 dant of apes, and apes of something else, and so on till we reach 

 back to the first living organism which is said to have been a 

 little microscopic speck of living slime, just living and no more, 

 which again was the child of dead matter — the chemical 

 elements. The lecturer showed this evolution theory was the 

 misguided exercise of a very excellent faculty of our nature, 

 which was ever seeking to discern the unity of things in the 

 midst of Nature's vast variety ; and that the true exercise of the 

 faculty is "to look through Nature up to Nature's God," Nature 

 is the many, He is the one. The evolution theory could not 

 but be a failure, seeing that it sought the unity only where the 

 plurality and diversity are to be found. He proceeded to show 

 from the writings of the evolutionists themselves that there has 

 been entire failure at the two most important points of the 

 evolution theory — viz., where the dead chemical elements are 

 supposed to give birth to life, and where the apes are supposed 

 to develop into man. At both these points the theorists them- 

 selves confess the gaps — that facts are entirely wanting to 

 establish the theory. They have put forth this theory and they 

 wait for the facts to come to their rescue. 



The third meeting of the session was held on Tuesday evening 

 January 24th — the president, R. Young, Esq., C.E., in the chair 



