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and because in what he does prove, he seems to raise an inconsequential 

 sequence. 



Eev. W. Arthur. — There is one point which has been raised by the last 

 speaker which I think may to some extent be said to have been met. Mr. 

 Titcomb seemed to think that the argument on the 16th section of the paper 

 was that life must have existed antecedently to vegetation. To my mind the 

 argument in the paper is a very different one^ It assumes, as Mr. Titcomb 

 has very justly pointed out, just what we have in the Mosaic description, 

 namely, that vegetation preceded animal life. But the argument is not 

 merely that vegetation preceded animal life ; but that if animal life came 

 only by evolution, this doctrine "makes it necessary that the vegetable 

 forms of life must have covered the earth with verdure before the evolution 

 of animal life ; inasmuch as almost each animal in the world has its own 

 plant, or class of plants, upon which it feeds. Therefore all plants, or the 

 greater part of them, must have gone through their battles and struggles, 

 and been selected and become species before the animals which feed upon 

 them were evolved, or the latter would have been starved." This is a 

 totally different argument from that which Mr. Titcomb conceived it to be, 

 and goes to prove that the whole flora of the world must have existed before 

 the fauna began to be. developed, and I think it is an argument requiring a 

 good deal of consideration. (Hear, hear.) I agree in what has been said as 

 to the desirability of keeping the scientific argument on a strictly scientific 

 ground, and in the assumption that upon all questions between the Bible 

 and science, the Bible will take care of itself. At the same time we ought 

 to be very careful when we assume that, if we admit there is a series in crea- 

 tion, we come very near to development. I believe the two things are 

 totally distinct. I believe with regard to the question of a series ascending 

 from the lowest depths to the highest we yet know of, which is man, that if 

 you fill up the series so completely that you leave no kind of interval what- 

 ever, there is nothing in experience alone with which science has to deal which 

 will lead you to ascribe the result to evolution, but that everything in 

 experience absolutely requires us to attribute it to one presiding mind with 

 one great object, which has dealt with each great type so as to advance it 

 endlessly towards innumerable adaptations. For the sake of illustration, if you 

 take the wheel, you see at first the original block wheel, without fellies, 

 spokes, or nave ; then you come to a wheel with these component parts, 

 then to the tired wheel, the cog-wheel, the bucket-wheel, and so on, deve- 

 loped into almost endless varieties, and in a perfect series. I ask you is it a 

 scientific conclusion that these wheels have developed themselves — that the 

 process of evolution has been going on, and that by a scheme of natural 

 selection the rude block wheel has developed itself into the balance-w^heel of 

 a watch ? (Hear, hear.) The scientific conclusion is that the wheel has 

 been developed by a mind which, having a type before it, adapted it to the 

 different purposes for which wheels are required. This is the conclusion 

 which experience would suggest, and not the conclusion that Darwinism 

 would favour. I am glad to have heard the strong expressions that have 



