44 Mr. John M. MacCormac on 



roses, strawberries, raspberries, and fruit trees, if left untended, 

 without culture, return to the briar, the wild fruit of the 

 woods, the bramble, and the useless undergrowth. Similarly 

 fancy pigeons soon revert to the plain, uniform colour of the 

 original type. The same is observable in human beings, who 

 neglect themselves, and are removed from beneficial and 

 improving influences. These considerations show how closely 

 interwoven are the laws of heredity and evolution, and afford 

 striking evidence of design. One of the greatest of naturalists, 

 Professor Agassiz maintains this, when he says : — " Nothing in 

 the organic kingdom is calculated to impress us so strongly as 

 the unity of plan, which is apparent in the structure of the most 

 various types." And after pointing out the wonderful relations 

 and admirable harmony, he says : — " If all these relations are 

 beyond man's intellectual power to grasp, if man himself is but 

 a part or fragment of the whole system, how could this system 

 have been called into being it there were not a supreme 

 intelligence the author of all things ?" Monsieur Ribot raises 

 the ascertained fact of the physiological and psychological 

 transmission of general specific characters to the dignity of a 

 law, with the necessary reservation, that heredity is twofold 

 and that the operation of the law must be in favourable 

 circumstances, otherwise the blind fatality of its laws might 

 make decadence the rule. But as universal life develops in the 

 direction of progress, heredity is not abandoned to a blind 

 fatality. There must be a presiding directing power. So 

 Darwin has taught us that the laws of evolution point to a 

 supreme intelligence. His theory, however, like those of 

 Haeckel and Spencer, is intensely materialistic. While 

 enforcing his law of the persistence of force, Spencer had to 

 admit the possible existence of an intelligent causation ; but 

 Haeckel recognised only the materialistic principle, starting 

 with the theory of spontaneous generation. Professor Tyndall 

 and Dr. Dallinger have however disproved this theory by 

 showing that life can only come from the touch of life. Dr. 

 Archdall Reid asks us to consider the vast complexity, physical 



