180 



CHARLES B. WARRING, M.A., PH.D., ON 



their results in a purely hap-hazard sort of way, such as is implied 

 in the Darwinian dogma ; we can, in fact, recognise directivity (as 

 defined by Professor George Henslow) in the very variations, which 

 must be antecedent to selection. Evolution pure and simple must 

 imply that every new departure on the road of development is 

 evolved solely out of the facts that preceded it, and the material and 

 other properties latent in those facts, including environment. Yet 

 when we come to consider the origin of matter and its properties, 

 we are a long way from grasping any intelligent idea of matter 

 originating in mind, though everything in Nature proclaims a 

 controlling mind. 



Again, the mysterj^ of life is inscrutable; and whatever ideas we 

 may ultimately get as to the intrinsic nature of life, it is not likely 

 that we shall ever get rid of that element of scientific faith which 

 holds the minds of Haeckel and his followers. The sneer from that 

 side implied in the word "miracle" is but an "appeal to the 

 (Agnostic) gallery " ; and it is illogical for Haeckel to maintain that 

 a legitimate place is found for faith (implying an exercise of the 

 imagination) in science, and at the same time to dismiss the exercise 

 of precisely the same intellectual faculties in the field of religion as 

 mere " illusion and fancy." And so we are led on to the mysteries 

 involved in the great Christian verities, and to that " pure 

 Agnosticism " of George Eomanes, which is content to say, " I don't 

 know," " I don't understand," without having the effrontery to say 

 (ergo) "You don't know or understand." "Nobody can know or 

 understand." Such Agnostic dogmatism is utterly unphilosophical, 

 and must remain so, until at least the origin of matter and its 

 properties, and the origin of life with its vast variety of manifestations 

 are remove/ 1 from the region of the unexplained qua natural causation. 



Eev. John Tuckwell, M.E.A.S. — With very much of this 

 paper I am in entire agreement. But there are some important 

 facts to which insufficient weight has been allowed. First of all I do 

 not think we can rely upon the uniformitarian principle altogether 

 in the geological processes of the past. 



The very fact that at certain epochs many more forms of life 

 disappeared and with much greater geological suddenness than at 

 others, implies something more than the ordinary processes of nature. 

 The late Professor Prestwich, in a paper read before this Institute 

 ten years ago, pointed out that a great diluvial catastrophe overtook 



