THE PHENOMENA OF ORGANIC NATURE. 143 



When we see how capricious and uncertain this 

 sterility is, how unknown the conditions on which it 

 depends, I say that we have no right to affirm that 

 those conditions will not be better understood by and 

 by, and we have no ground for supposing that we may 

 not be able to experiment so as to obtain that crucial 

 result which I mentioned just now. So that though 

 Mr. Darwin's hypothesis does not completely extricate 

 us from this difficulty at present, we have not the least 

 right to say it will not do so. 



There is a wide gulf between the thing you cannot 

 explain and the thing that upsets you altogether. 

 There is hardly any hypothesis in this world which 

 has not some fact in connection with it which has not 

 been explained, but that is a very different affair to a 

 fact that entirely opposes your hypothesis ; in this case 

 all you can say is, that your hypothesis is in the same 

 position as a good many others. 



Now, as to the third test, that there are no other 

 causes competent to explain the phenomena, I explained 

 to you that one should be able to say of a hypothesis, 

 that no other known causes than those supposed by it 

 are competent to give rise to the phenomena. Here, 

 I think, Mr. Darwin's view is pretty strong. I really 

 believe that the alternative is either Darwinism or 

 nothing, for I do not know of any rational conception 

 or theory of the organic universe which has any scien- 

 tific, position at all beside Mr. Darwin's. I do not 

 know of any proposition that has been put before us 

 with the intention of explaining the phenomena of 

 organic nature, which has in its favor a thousandth 

 part of the evidence which may be adduced in favour 

 of Mr. Darwin's views. Whatever may be the objec- 



