ON THE DIRECTIVITY OF LIFE. 



265 



the statement in para. 3, p. 248, that " the conviction of the truth of 

 the doctrine of evohdion of all living beings, includimg man . . . 

 has been incontestably and permanently established." 



Now, sir, I confess my surprise that the Professor should have 

 made such a statement as that. I should have thought that what- 

 ever his personal views might be he would have known that the 

 doctrine of the evolution of man is one of the most ^mcertain and 

 unipToved of theories ever propounded ! 



What is evolution "? Here is what Sir Oliver Lodge says, and I 

 suppose he is one of the greatest authorities of the day : — 



" Taught by science, we learn that there has been no fall of man ; 

 there has been a rise. Through an ape-like ancestry, back through 

 a tadpole and fish-like ancestry, away to the early beginnings of life, 

 the origin of man is being traced." 



Or, to use the words of two other modern professors, " It must 

 be granted a primeval germ, originating it does not know how 

 . . . some primitive protoplasts gliding in a quiet pool . . . 

 proceeding through unthinkable millions of years . . . emerging 

 as man, at a moderate estimate, half-a-million years ago ! " 



That is the doctrine of the evolution of man as taught by its 

 greatest exponents ! 



Now the question is : Is this theory " incontestably and per- 

 manently established," as the Professor declares it to be 1 Let us see. 



No less an authority than Professor Tyndall said : " Those who 

 hold the doctrine of evolution are by no means ignorant of the 

 uncertainty of their data ! " While Professor J. A. Thomson, of 

 Aberdeen University, and Professor Patrick Geddes, of Edinburgh 

 University (to whom I have already referred) — both of them 

 strong evolutionists — when writing an article in defence of 

 evolution in a book recently published, entitled Ideals of Science and 

 Faith, actually make this pitiable confession in answer to the 

 question, "How man came": — "We do not know whence he 

 emerged . . . nor do we know how man arose . . . for 

 it must be admitted that the factors of the evolution of man partake 

 largely of the nature of may-be's, which have no permanent position in 

 science." And an article in the Times Literary Sitpplement of June 

 9th, 1905, referring to a number of professors who have written on 

 the subject of evolution said, " Never was seen such a mel^e. The 

 humour of it is that they all claim to represent ' science.' . . . Yet 



