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which it is every day becoming clearer that the present is most in- 
timately connected with, and springs from, the past ; and if it is now 
further established that all organic life has similarly originated, it 
will be more and more difficult to believe that man alone, of all 
that portion of creation with which we are acquainted, is the 
exception to this otherwise universal reign of law. 
The arguments in support of the theory which bears the name 
of Mr. Darwin are well known, and are admittedly of great weight. 
Thoso which have been urged against it are principally of the 
nature of objections, but as Professor Huxley has remarked, with 
reference to tins very point, there are two kinds of objection, that 
of which it may not be at first sight easy to find the explanation, 
and that which knocks one down altogether, and the arguments 
against evolution are, I take it, all of tho first class. The old 
saying that “ possession is nine points of tho law ” may bo fairly 
applied to this controversy. If evolution, as at present understood, 
had been tho old-established belief, and tho hypothesis had been 
advanced that the progenitors of each species had come into exis- 
tence by means of a sudden act of creation, the difficulties which 
tho advocates of the latter could have urged against the old views 
would certainly never have been of sufficient weight to have over- 
thrown them — I question, indeed, whether they would have been 
even listened to — while of the kinds of positive evidence by which 
the old views were supported, the new theory would have been 
able to adduce absolutely nothing. The improbability of the sup- 
position that any individual organism ever came supernaturaily into 
existence, would under the circumstances I am imagining, have 
been an insuperable objection to the general acceptance of its truth. 
It would be, of course, unscientific to argue that the creation of 
new species can only have taken place in conformity with those 
laws with which we are at present acquainted ; but those who assert, 
as does the writer I am about to mention, that evolution is hypo- 
thetical, should remember that that epithet is even more applicable 
to their own position, and also that tho burden of proof rests 
rather with its opponents than with its advocates, with those 
who assert that creation has taken place in opposition to, rather 
