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appearance of life on this planet was the formation of a small germinal 
vesicle by a chemico-electrical operation. There was an attempt made at 
one time to show the creation of an acarus by the operation of a galvanic 
battery, but it failed altogether. I maintain that human parents were the 
progenitors of human children, and that it is a mere gratuitous assertion to 
say that the law of propagation is based upon evolution, and that each type 
gives rise to that next above it, and so on up to the very highest, everything 
being the result of a series of successive developments. Come down to 
the very bottom, and what does the theory rest on ? Like the Hindoo 
cosmogony, on a tortoise, or a serpent, which, in its turn, rests on an 
imaginary tertium quid, which rests — on nothing. If you say you have no 
connecting links, and can only trust to further geological discoveries to 
furnish them, that is asking us to accept nescience in the name of science. 
When you are asked, “How do you know that all these things went on 
progressively ?” the answer can only be that in all the varieties which we 
see, like gives birth to like. And yet we are asked to accept the dogma 
that like gives birth to unlike, without one solitary fact being adduced to 
prove it. (Cheers.) 
Eev. John James. — I arise to a point of order. I wish to know whether 
it would be competent to substitute the word “ newly-propounded ” for the 
word “newly-established” in the fifth page of this paper. It seems to me 
that it is hardly right to use this word in speaking of a theory only lately 
advocated, and very much contested, and improper to assume that such 
theory is an established doctrine. 
The Chairman. — All these papers rest on the responsibility of those who 
write them. If the Council had undertaken to correct everything that was 
open to correction in the last paper that was read here, we should certainly 
have undertaken a very troublesome responsibility indeed. 
Mr. James. — I have listened with very great satisfaction to the paper 
which has been read ; and I also sympathize in the remarks of the last 
speaker. It does so happen that one of my intimate friends— a Christian 
man, very earnest and religious, and of large spiritual experience and sym- 
pathies — is a believer in the doctrine of evolution. How he reconciles the 
two I cannot say ; but I merely mention this to explain how it is that 
I can sympathize with Christian gentlemen who hold these views. As for 
myself, I do not see how it is easy to reconcile the doctrine that man in his 
physical integrity is himself the last and the highest result of development, 
and that other doctrine, that mind and moral responsibility are the things 
which differentiate man from all the lower creatures. I believe Mr. Henslow 
when he says he does not care from what he may be physically descended ; 
but at the same time he must bear in mind the vastly superior dignity and 
responsibility of the mental and moral powers and capacities of man. To 
my thinking, the theory of gradual evolution, if taken in reference to man 
when he is physically considered, must also, by those who advocate its 
claims to the exclusion of divine interposition, be taken in reference to him 
when he is mentally and morally considered. But I have a great feeling 
