277 
and because in what he does prove, he seems to raise an inconsequential 
sequence. 
Rev. W. Arthur. — There is one point which has been raised by the last 
speaker which I think may to some extent be said to have been met. Mr. 
Titcomb seemed to think that the argument on the 16th section of the paper 
was that life must have existed antecedently to vegetation. To my mind the 
argument in the paper is a very different one. It assumes, as Mr. Titcomb 
has very justly pointed out, just what we have in the Mosaic description, 
namely, that vegetation preceded animal life. But the argument is not 
merely that vegetation preceded animal life ; but that if animal life came 
only by evolution, this doctrine “makes it necessary that the vegetable 
forms of life must have covered the earth with verdure before the evolution 
of animal life ; inasmuch as almost each animal in the world has its own 
plant, or class of plants, upon which it feeds. Therefore all plants, or the 
greater part of them, must have gone through their battles and struggles, 
and been selected and become species before the animals which feed upon 
them were evolved, or the latter would have been starved.” This is a 
totally different argument from that which Mr. Titcomb conceived it to be, 
and goes to prove that the whole flora of the world must have existed before 
the fauna began to be developed, and I think it is an argument requiring a 
good deal of consideration. (Hear, hear.) I agree in what has been said as 
to the desirability of keeping the scientific argument on a strictly scientific 
ground, and in the assumption that upon all questions between the Bible 
and science, the Bible will take care of itself. At the same time we ought 
to be very careful when we assume that, if we admit there is a series in crea- 
tion, we come very near to development. I believe the two things are 
totally distinct. I believe with regard to the question of a series ascending 
from the lowest depths to the highest we yet know of, which is man, that if 
you fill up the series so completely that you leave no kind of interval what- 
ever, there is nothing in experience alone with which science has to deal which 
will lead you to ascribe the result to evolution, but that everything in 
experience absolutely requires us to attribute it to one presiding mind with 
one great object, which has dealt with each great type so as to advance it 
endlessly towards innumerable adaptations. For the sake of illustration, if you 
take the wheel, you see at first the original block wheel, without fellies, 
spokes, or nave ; then you come to a wheel with these component parts, 
then to the tired wheel, the cog-wheel, the bucket-wheel, and so on, deve- 
loped into almost endless varieties, and in a perfect series. I ask you is it a 
scientific conclusion that these wheels have developed themselves — that the 
process of evolution has been going on, and that by a scheme of natural 
selection the rude block wheel has developed itself into the balance-wheel of 
a watch ? (Hear, hear.) The scientific conclusion is that the wheel has 
been developed by a mind which, having a type before it, adapted it to the 
different purposes for which wheels are required. This is the conclusion 
which experience would suggest, and not the conclusion that Darwinism 
would favour. I am glad to have heard the strong expressions that have 
