294 
[May, 
Analyses of Books. 
an organic individual than with an artificia producft ; conse- 
quently we are justified in inferring a priori that the species, like 
the individual, has been born rather than made.” 
It may here be suggested that the supposed finder of the watch 
would not infer the existence of the watchmaker unless he had 
previous knowledge of the existence of watchmakers, or of 
makers, at least, of some other machines. It is recorded that 
in the last century a Highland lassie, going to service in the 
house of a Lowland laird, saw for the first time in her life a 
clock. On the second or third day, she exclaimed : “ Well, 
since I have been here nobody has given that creature anything to 
eat.” This poor girl, and even Mrs. Beecher-Stowe’s Topsy, in 
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” who “ ’spedts she’d grow’d,” were, 
perhaps, more capable of biological conceptions and less mecha- 
nical than the man who is supposed to find the watch. 
It is commonly urged by anti-evolutionists that during histo- 
rical ages no essential change has been observed in any animal 
or vegetable species. Mr. Spencer replies that, in like manner, 
“an intelligent ephemeron, perceiving no apparent change of 
structure in human beings during the few hours over which his 
observation extended, would probably infer that each man and 
woman had been separately created, and had, from the outset, 
possessed all the characters then visible.” 
This supposition is illustrated by a very curious faft, appo- 
sitely quoted from Mr. Powell’s “ Report to the Smithsonian 
Institution,” that some of the Aboriginal races of North America 
are exercised by the question : “ Do the trees grow or were they 
separately created ? That the grass grows they admit, but their 
orthodox philosophers stoutly assert that the forest pines and the 
great Sequoias were created as they are.”* There are two con- 
siderations which anti-evolutionists would do well to bear in 
mind, although they belong to the a posteriori rather than to the 
a priori argument : — Only a very few animal or vegetable species 
have been observed with sufficient closeness to detect any incipi- 
ent changes, and even in the most favourable cases this observa- 
tion does not extend over a longer time than 5000 years ; secondly, 
if so-called species have not changed within the historical period 
neither have the races or breeds of certain species. If the sup- 
posed permanence proves in the one case individual distinct 
creation, it must in the other also. The anti-evolutionist con- 
tention to which we refer was we believe first raised by the 
French expedition to Egypt under the first Napoleon, and it is 
generally spoken of as the “ Egyptian ” argument. It hovers to 
this day, before the eyes of the French Academy of Sciences, — 
a survival of Egyptian darkness. 
Miss Naden maybe congratulated on the manner in which she 
has presented Mr. Spencer’s argument to her hearers. 
* It does not appear whether this quotation is made by Mr. Spencer or by 
Miss Naden. 
