10 



ANNUAL ADDRESS. 



is, but I think one of the principles of the Victoria Institute is 

 to endeavour to understand one another and to use plain 

 speech and not to be terrified by particularly long words, even 

 if their energy is enhanced by capital letters. Just one 

 hundred years ago Lamarck published his Philosopliie Zoologique, 

 and since his time the theory which he propounded with 

 additions and variations has occupied learned persons ever 

 since. Biologie der Natur, Principles of Biology, by Herbert 

 Spencer, Mans Place in Nature, and the Evolution of Matter, 

 have given rise to controversies of inordinate length, but except 

 so far as they touch the foundations of religious belief I do not 

 propose to deal with any part of them. 



So far as the question of ideas and sensations go I am not 

 very much interested in the dispute. I suspect in this case as 

 in so many others the disputants are disputing about words 

 and do not always use words in the same sense. Indeed, 

 Darwinism, as the Germans call it, though I think Dr. Packard 

 has proved that it would be more appropriately called Lamarck- 

 ism, is an interesting study, but what it has to do with a 

 revelation which we believe to be divine is a greater puzzle 

 than any metaphysician has ever invented. 



To be sure, I saw quoted the other day the profound remark 

 of a gentleman who has determined to be up-to-date in 

 science, who informed us that modern chemistry had found that 

 transubstantiation was chemically impossible. 



It may well be that those who \vould raise a laugh at 

 such an argument, nevertheless, themselves fall into the same 

 error when assuming analogies that have no real relation 

 to each otlier. Lamarck says that he could pass in review all 

 classes, all orders, all the genus and species of animals that 

 exist, and that he could prove that the conformation of 

 individuals and of their parts, their organs and faculties is 

 entirely the result of circumstances to which each species has 

 been subjected by Nature. 



It is to my mind beyond tlie power of Iniman language to 

 express the wonderful adaptation of the merely animal part of 

 creation to the part they are intended to fill ; this is true of 

 each creature from the highest to the lowest, but to most minds 

 this would suggest a Creator incomprehensible and Almighty 

 in power, and that inference would not be got rid of by using 

 the word Nature instead of the word God. 



That God's creation should be gradual or progressive or 

 evolutionary and that his creatures should be endowed witli a 

 faculty of development is no more inconsistent with His power 



