ON THE DIRECTIVITY OP LIFE. 



257 



allowed me to olFer any adequate remarks in reference to a paper 

 which has taken more than an hour to read, and is so exhaustive in 

 its details. I am extremely grateful to our Secretary for allowing 

 me to revise and supplement what I said at the meeting. 



Evolution. At the outset I much regret that Professor Henslow 

 has used the term " Evolution " as descriptive of, or to denote, such 

 modifications of plants or adaptations in plants as may be due to the 

 change of environment. 



I doubt very much whether any two persons in this meeting 

 understand precisely the same thing by the term " Evolution," but 

 I am quite certain that nine out of ten of those present, if not more, 

 understand that by the word " Evolution " is meant some progress 

 or development from a lower or more rudimentary organism to 

 another which is higher and more complex. I have not the slightest 

 hesitation in affirming that in no single instance among the many 

 examples to which the Professor has called our attention by the 

 drawings and specimens submitted to us, is there the slightest 

 evidence that the changes he claims to be due to changed environ- 

 ment have resulted in any advance from a lower to a higher 

 organism or from a relatively simple to a more complex one. If 

 this is so, the term " Evolution," as almost universally understood, 

 is incorrectly applied to such changes as the Professor considers 

 have been produced by change of environment. 



The word "modification," or even "mutation," although the 

 latter has acquired another and distinctive meaning, would be 

 more suitable and more correct. 



Page 248, paragraph 1. I question whether the accumulation of 

 coincidences is sufficient to establish any probability as a facfy 

 because further "inferences, deductions, and hypotheses" may 

 entirely alter our attitude towards these coincidences. 



Page 248, paragraph 2. Professor Henslow says that "the 

 ultimate origin or Final Cause of both Matter and Physical Force are 

 unknowable to Science." I much prefer to take the view of 

 A. Russel Wallace, the earlier but joint author of Darwin's theory 

 of " Natural Selection," who most definitely asserts that Science 

 demands the recognition, and therefore the knowledge, of an 

 Intelligent Being as the Final — or rather the First — Cause of the 

 phenomena of Physical Force. Without an initial act of creation 

 followed also by subsequent creative acts, Wallace is unable to see 



s 



