26 EVOLUTION AND THE 
assumes this attitude because no “ valid or intelligible 
reason” is assigned in explanation of life-evolution, a 
belief in which would render unnecessary any appeal 
to the supernatural in the present ; though he himself 
postulates the occurrence of the same unexplained 
process in the past solely in order to avoid having 
recourse to the supernatural. Professor Huxley’s 
position in reference to this question is very puzzling, 
and one cannot help wondering through what mono- 
chromatic glass he had been taking his observations 
(from his watch-tower) in order to come to the con- 
clusion that “the present state of science” gives any 
sanction to such vacillations, or entitles him to appeal 
to a supernatural preservation of germs instead of 
trusting to the known uniformity of natural pheno- 
mena. 
Sir William Thomson was certainly much more 
consistent. He too seemed inclined to explain the 
experiments of our own day by resorting to the hypo- 
thesis of a supernatural preservation of germs, and 
similarly he seems not unwilling to explain the original 
advent of Life upon this globe, by another assumed 
process of “contagion.” He has resort neither to a 
creative hypothesis, nor to the hypothesis of a natural 
becoming of living matter, but, shelving the question 
of “origin” altogether, he suggests that our Earth 
may have become peopled with organic forms owing 
