32 EVOLUTION AND THE 
now as they have been in past ages. So that if living 
matter has once arisen naturally and independently, 
and if it still continues to “grow” freely under the 
most varied conditions upon and beneath the Earth’s 
surface, the laws of uniformity alone, upon which all 
Science is based, should lead us to expect that it 
would continue to have a similar independent ‘ origin.’ 
These conditions being fulfilled, we have, there- 
fore, the best possible @ przort warrant for the belief 
that living matter is continually coming into being 
by virtue of the operation of the same ‘laws’ or 
molecular properties as suffice to regulate its growth. 
Let the Evolutionist attempt to deny it, and see 
what other difficulties and contradictions he plunges 
into, in addition to that lack of consistency which 
I have already pointed out. 
If an evolution of living matter occurred only far 
back beyond the depths of geologically recorded time, 
and if, as Mr. Darwin* would have us believe, “all 
the living forms of life are the lineal descendants of 
those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch,” 
how is the Evolutionist to explain the existence of the 
multitudinous myriads of lowest and almost structure- 
less organisms which exist at the present day? He 
starts in his argument in favour of Evolution from the 
fact that the condition of homogeneity is one of neces- 
* Origin of Species, 6th edit. p, 428. 
