112 PROF. ERNEST W. MACBRIDE, M.A., F.R.S., ON 



Sir Kobert Anderson, K.C.B. : We must all recognize the great 

 interest attaching to the subject of Professor MacBride's paper ; but 

 practical people will recognize also that its interest is purely academic. 

 For Darwinian Evolution is a mere theory, and a theory, moreover, 

 which is not only unproved, but obviously incapable of proof. At 

 a University College meeting a dozen years ago (1st May, 1903), 

 Lord Kelvin uttered a memorable dictum on this subject. The 

 occasion was one of a series of addresses on " Christian Apologetics." 

 The first was delivered by Dean Wace, when I had the honour of 

 presiding. At this second, an eminent botanist dealt with the 

 Evolution theory in relation to his own sphere of study ; and he 

 demonstrated that while Darwinism was true in the garden, it was 

 not true in the field. In other words, under the pressure of culture 

 life tends to advance, but, in the absence of culture, deterioration is 

 the rule. Lord Kelvin, who followed, touched upon the crucial 

 question of the origin of life, and he summed up his argument by 

 declaring that " science positively affirms creative power." 



But scientists of a certain type use the hypothesis of Evolution 

 simply as a cloak for their atheism. In marked contrast, both Kelvin 

 and Charles Darwin accepted as a fundamental doctrine that all life 

 must come from life ; both refused to accept the doctrine that the 

 phenomena of life are the results of blind chance. It is indeed 

 more incredible than any miracle yet recorded, that the material, 

 intellectual and spiritual life of man should be derived from the 

 chance collisions of dead particles of dead matter. And the fact 

 that man is a religious being shows that he is God's creature in a 

 sense different from that implied by any theory of material evolu- 

 tion. As A. E. Wallace aptly said, " to call the spiritual nature of 

 man a 'by-product,' is a jest too big for this little world." 



Mr. Woods Smyth : I should like to congratulate the Victoria 

 Institute on the lecture to which we have just listened. There is a 

 distinction between organisms undergoing the process of evolution 

 and the finished terminal forms of life. In the earlier ages, it may 

 be argued, there were synthetic types of living organisms, that is organ- 

 isms embracing potentially the forms of animals now widely separated. 

 Thus one creature united the forms of the deer, the camel and the hog, 

 but to-day these three animals are widely differentiated, and no amount 

 of selection, natural or artificial, can make them other than what they 

 are. Do what you will, the hog will still remain a pig. This 



