47 



appearance of life on this planet was the formation of a small germinal 

 vesicle by a chemico-electrical operation. There was an attempt made at 

 one time to show the creation of an acarus by the operation of a galvanic 

 battery, but it failed altogether. I maintain that human parents were the 

 progenitors of human children, and that it is a mere gratuitous assertion to 

 say that the law of propagation is based upon evolution, and that each type 

 gives rise to that next above it, and so on up to the very highest, everything 

 being the result of a series of successive developments. Come down to 

 the very bottom, and what does the theory rest on ? Like the Hindoo 

 cosmogony, on a tortoise, or a serpent, which, in its turn, rests on an 

 imaginary tertium quid, which rests — on nothing. If you say yon have no 

 connecting links, and can only trust to further geological discoveries to 

 furnish them, that is asking us to accept nescience in the name of science. 

 When you are asked, " How do you know that all these things went on 

 progressively V the answer can only be that in all the varieties which we 

 see, like gives birth to like. And yet we are asked to accept the dogma 

 that like gives birth to unlike, without one solitary fact being adduced to 

 prove it. (Cheers.) 



Rev. John James. — I arise to a point of order. I wish to know whether 

 it would be competent to substitute the word " newly-propounded " for the 

 word "newly-established" in the fifth page of this paper. It seems to me 

 that it is hardly right to use this word in speaking of a theory only lately 

 advocated, and very much contested, and improper to assume that such 

 theory is an established doctrine. 



The Chairman. — All these papers rest on the responsibility of those who 

 write them. If the Council had undertaken to correct everything that was 

 open to correction in the last paper that was read here, we should certainly 

 have undertaken a very troublesome responsibility indeed. 



Mr. James. — I have listened with very great satisfaction to the paper 

 which has been read ; and I also sympathize in the remarks of the last 

 speaker. It does so happen that one of my intimate friends— a Christian 

 man, very earnest and religious, and of large spiritual experience and sym- 

 pathies — is a believer in the doctrine of evolution. How he reconciles the 

 two I cannot say ; but I merely mention this to explain how it is that 

 I can sympathize with Christian gentlemen who hold these views. As for 

 myself, I do not see how it is easy to reconcile the doctrine that man in his 

 physical integrity is himself the last and the highest result of development, 

 and that other doctrine, that mind and moral responsibility are the things 

 which difi'erentiate man from all the lower creatures. I believe Mr. Henslow 

 when he says he does not care from what he may be physically descended ; 

 but at the same time he must bear in mind the vastly superior dignity and 

 responsibility of the mental and moral powers and capacities of man. To 

 my thinking, the theory of gradual evolution, if taken in reference to man 

 when he is physically considered, must also, by those who advocate its 

 claims to the exclusion of divine interposition, be taken in reference to him 

 when he is mentally and morally considered. But I have a great feeling 



