prksident’s address. 
485 
existence and its but necessary outcome, Natural Evolution, is the great 
scientific work of the nineteenth century. And a philosopher and 
student of an entirely different kind, Mr. Leslie Stephen, declares that 
he has no doubt that the future historian of thought will regard the pro- 
mulgation and the rapid triumph of evolutionist doctrines, as the most 
remarkable phenomenon in the intellectual development of the century. 
Although there had been hints at such a theory in the past, they had' 
been merely hints and no definite statement had been made. The 
ordinary amount of scientific knowledge or information in evidence 
concerning the material world, did not seem to require any general 
theory of how species came into existence. 
With great pains and great care scientific men had classified 
birds and animals and plants, and had pretty well settled upon the- 
order and species to which they belonged, but the enquiring mind 
could not rest here fully satisfied that all was known that could be 
known. How did these species originate 1 If all matter could be 
reduced to simple atoms, by what law did matter operate, and upon- 
what principle did it arrange itself in the various forms, simple and 
complex, living and dead, in which we find it? No doubt the earlier 
students of natural history, so far as the living, growing world was 
concerned, busied with their classifications and efforts at determina- 
tions, were generally satisfied that each species of animals and plants 
was a distinct creation, and this was sufficient for their purposes, but 
there were among them men who often wondered how these distinct 
creations were produced, and by what law they came into being. 
Those who had studied or were studying the physical world, the earth, 
the solar system, the stellar universe, had had their attention drawn 
to the origin of things, and here and there were suppositions, vague 
theories, ingenious speculations, but it will be found among those who 
investigate the subject, that at first naturalists were less inclined to- 
look with favor upon the idea of evolution than were the mathematician 
and philosopher, who were engaged in working out a natural law for 
the whole universe. lean remember reading about 1850 the work 
“Vestiges of Creation,’ which was published six years before by an 
anonymous writer, who for the first time gathered up and placed in a 
very attractive manner, the ideas of those English and continental 
students who believed in a progressive development, due to an impulse- 
imparted to the forms of life, by which impulse they were advanced i 
