17 



Laws out of some other species which preceded it, and that the 

 same process, having regard to the age of Matter, has been going 

 on from all eternity, and is at work still. I do not know whether 

 I am justisiied in talking of the " theory " of Evolution, since Pro- 

 fessor Huxley in his article " On the Coming of Age of the Origin 

 of Species," says " Evolution is no longer a speculation, but a 

 statement of historical fact" ! How that can be an historical i.Q,ci 

 which has never yet been known spontaneously and naturally to 

 occur, and which no man, living or dead, has ever pretended to see 

 or hear of, passes (I must confess) my apprehension. Some evolu- 

 tionists deny an original creation, or any special creation at all [h). 

 Others seem disposed to allow an original creation, but reject a 

 present Creator, or Superintendent of any kind. Nothing, they 

 say, shows any design in the mode of its formation ; animals and 

 plants were not made as they are to suit the circumstances in which 

 they are placed, but the circumstances themselves have made them 

 what they are. We have been created by our environment. No 

 matter how intricate, even microscopically, any structure may be, 

 all its intricacies have been evolved by the force of circumstances, 

 not by a controlling mind. The eye with its various coats and 

 lenses, its delicate meshwork of nerves and vessels to receive 

 external impressions, was not m&de for seeing, nor the ear for hear- 

 ing ; nor, say they, is it in accordance with scientific thought to 

 judge that the complexity of either shows any trace of design. It 

 has all grown up piecemeal through the long eternity of ages. The 

 apparent improbability of this is to a certain extent acknowledged. 

 " To suppose " says Darwin, " that the eye with all its inimitable 

 contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances for 

 admitting different amounts of light, and for the correction of 

 spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by 

 natural selection, seems, I confess, absurd in the highest degree." 

 But he then goes on to show how highly probable it is that such was 

 the case. You would perhaps like to know how the formation of 

 the eye has been accounted for by scientific men. I will give it you 

 in Professor Tyndall's own words. 



" The action of light in the first instance, appears to be a 

 mere disturbance of the chemical processes in the animal 

 organism, similar to that which occurs in the leaves of plants. 

 By degrees the action becomes localized in a few pigment cells 

 more sensitive to light than the surrounding tissues. The eye 

 is here incipient. At first it is merely capable of revealing 

 differences of light and shade produced by bodies close at hand. 

 Followed as the interception oi light is in almost all cases by 



h) "No one " says Herbert Spencer " ever saw a special creation." To which the 

 tu quo que reply has been made, "No one ever saw an evolution," 



