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Bree has succeeded in showing that Darwinism may tend to an attack on 

 religious thought, and I have been surprised to hear some members take 

 Mr. Darwin's side. 



The Hon. Secretary. — I think they merely stated what they conceived to 

 be Mr. Darwin's views, in order that those views might be made known in 

 the absence of Mr. Darwin's own friends, several of whom were supplied 

 with copies of Dr. Bree's paper, and invited to attend this meeting ; un- 

 fortunately they have failed to put in an appearance, which is to be regretted, 

 because it has rather damped the interest which might otherwise have 

 attached to the discussion. It may interest many present if I relate the sub- 

 stance of a conversation I had the other day with Dr. Parker, the President 

 of the Microscopical Society. He showed me the results of a large number 

 of experiments which he and Professor Huxley have been making, and 

 stated that up to the present time their labours at South Kensington had 

 failed to prove the connection between man and the rest of creation — in 

 fact there was, he said, no point at which they appeared to join. He 

 a,dded : — 



" We can classify, and have classified, the whole of the animal kingdom 

 that we are acquainted with. We have put all the different animals into 

 their separate places, and we have constantly got hold of man, and tried to 

 put him into his place ; but he would fit nowhere. There is such an immea- 

 surable gulf between him, with all his attributes, and the rest of creation, and 

 everything tends to prove that he must have been a separate creation." (Hear, 

 hear.) 



I give these as being as near as possible the ipsissima verba of Dr. Parker, 

 than whom, I think, there is not a much higher authority in England. 

 With regard to the remarks to the effect that Sir William Thompson had 

 said, or had allowed others to say for him, that his theory of vegetation 

 coming to us from another planet, by means of meteoric stones, was only 

 a joke, — I fear I must remark that this is the only excuse which a number 

 of his friends, and some newspapers, have been able to make for his having, 

 as a man of science, put forward such a theory. (Hear, hear.) 



Dr. Bree. — I do not think we have any cause to regret that no professed 

 Darwinian is present, for I am sure that if there had been, he could not have 

 stated the arguments in favour of Mr. Darwin's theories more ably, or more 

 pointedly, than one or two of the speakers we have heard. With regard to 

 Sir William Thompson's meteoric theory being a joke on his part, those who 

 say this must remember that the theory was propounded in his Address before 

 the British Association, with just as much gravity as characterized the asser- 

 tion of Dr. Hooker at Norwich, that almost all the philosophers of the world 

 were Darwinians. Sir William Thompson is a great physicist ; but Dr. 

 Lionel Beale expressly states, in his Life Theories and Religious Thought, 

 that in his opinion that part of Darwinism which includes the evolution of 

 living beings by physical laws, is utterly opposed to every principle of reli- 

 gion ; and, therefore, I am astonished when I hear it stated that the do3trine 

 of evolution is consistent with the Bible. Had I possessed the time, I 



