l86 LIFE OF PROFESSOR HUXLEY chap, xm 



atom of one element for an atom of another element. You may 

 in this way produce a vast series of modifications — but each 

 modification is definite in its composition, and there are no tran- 

 sitional or intermediate steps between one definite compound and 

 another. I have a sort of notion that similar laws of definite 

 combination rule over the modifications of organic bodies, and 

 that in passing from species to species " Natura fecit saltum." 



All my studies lead me to believe more and more in the 

 absence of any real transitions between natural groups, great 

 and small — but with what we know of the physiology of con- 

 ditions [ ?] this opinion seems to me to be quite consistent with 

 transmutation. 



When I say that no evidence, or hardly any, would justify 

 one in believing in the view of a new species of Elephant, e.g. 

 out of the earth, I mean that such an occurrence would be so 

 diametrically contrary to all experience, so opposed to those 

 beliefs which are the most constantly verified by experience, 

 that one would be justified in believing either that one's senses 

 were deluded, or that one had not really got to the bottom of 

 the phenomenon. Of course, if one could vary the conditions, 

 if one could take a little silex, and by a little hocus-pocus a la 

 crosse, galvanise a baby out of it as often as one pleased, all 

 the philosopher could do would be to hold up his hands and cry, 

 " God is great." But short of evidence of. this kind, I don't mean 

 to believe anything of the kind. 



How much evidence would you require to believe that there 

 was a time when stones fell upwards, or granite made itself by a 

 spontaneous rearrangement of the elementary particles of clay 

 and sand? And yet the difficulties in the way of these beliefs 

 are as nothing compared to those which you would have to over- 

 come in believing that complex organic beings made themselves 

 (for that is what creation comes to in scientific language) out 

 of inorganic matter. 



I know it will be said that even on the transmutation theory, 

 the first organic being must have made itself. But there is as 

 much difference between supposing the passage of inorganic 

 matter into an amoeba, e.g., and into an Elephant, as there is 

 between supposing that Portland stone might have built itself 

 up into St. Paul's, and believing that the Giant's Causeway may 

 have come about by natural causes. 



True, one must believe in a beginning somewhere, but sci- 

 ence consists in not believing the having reached that beginning 

 before one is forced to do so. 



