134 PROF. H. LANGHORNE ORCHARD, M.A., B.SC., ON 
Indefinite and indistinct as the Spencerian nebula, it is in no 
true sense a philosophy. Blinded by devotion to their theory, 
its advocates have (consciously or unconsciously) magnified 
resemblances, and ignored or blurred over differences ; 
some advocates reminding one of those “ that call evil good, and 
good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; 
that, put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter” (Isaiah v, 20). 
Evolutionist Reasoning. — One is struck, when reading 
evolutionist reasoning,* by an apparent anxiety to maintain 
the theory at all costs and in disregard of inconvenient facts — 
the intelligence of the reader among them. A recent writer, 
admitting that the evidence in favour of a certain hypothesis is 
by no means as strong as he would desire, complacently seeks 
to evade the difficulty by saying — 
“ But the necessity of some such assumption becomes irresistible when 
we realize by careful reflection the inadequacy of any other theory 
to account for the evolution . . . t ” (My italics). 
However “ irresistible ” this kind of argument may appear to 
some minds, it is not logical, and is not conducive to the 
investigation and ascertainment of truth. 
Discovery or Imagination ? — We may remind ourselves of the 
wise words of a President of the British Association — 
“If we strain our eyes to pierce ‘ a mystery ’ with the foregone 
conclusion that some solution is and must be attainable, we shall 
only mistake for discoveries the figments of our own imagination.” 
No method of intellectual procedure is more mischievous than 
that which, attending merely to resemblances in similar things, 
systematically slurs over their differences. J 
Discrimination. — The faculty of discrimination lies at the basis 
of ali intellectual progress. Locke has remarked that 
* Dr. Scott (in “ The Origin of Seedbearing Plants,” see Nature , 
August 20th, 1903) speaking of certain plants, says “ tlieir anatomical 
structure proves them to have had so much in common with true ferns 
that there can be no doubt of their affinity with them.” This is indeed 
to fall into the fallacy, rebuked by Mivart, that structural resemblance 
implies genetic affinity. 
t How different was Newton’s procedure, when his gravitation theory 
met with a difficulty through an error in the sun’s distance as then 
accepted ! That greatest of all scientists hung up his theory until (after 
two years or thereabout) the error had been rectified, thus giving 
evidence that he preferred Truth to Theory. 
\ It has been said of a famous scientist that “ his lively imagination 
was apt to see in the facts what he expected or wished to see.” 
