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without even being at the trouble of inquiring whether any evidence or argu- 
ment can be adduced in favour of the new dicta. The sort of argument which 
seems to convince people, of course longing to be convinced, is to be found in 
assertions of the vaguest character about the nebulous originals of suns 
and planets being connected by a chain of causation with the physical basis 
of existing life and organisation. Can it be supposed that it is in any sense 
a valid excuse on the part of any thinking person to urge that the responsi- 
bility rests with those who teach these doctrines ? The desire for being 
taught encourages the teachers, and if there was no longing for the doctrines 
of a silly form of science the supply would soon cease. It is surely as much 
the duty of intelligent persons to find out and expose erroneous teaching in 
science as in other departments of human knowledge. If but a very little 
trouble had been taken by some of those well qualified for the task, a good 
deal of nonsense which has excited curiosity, pleased the fancy, and deceived 
the intellect during the last twenty years, would have done no more 
harm than contribute a little intellectual amusement and help to sharpen 
the wits of the rising generation. Every person of intelligence ought to be 
competent to estimate the importance and reliability of reasons given for chang- 
ing or subverting his belief in the fundamental facts of his religion, and most 
would certainly, with far less trouble than tliey take to enable them to 
decide concerning questions of far less consequence, succeed in doing so. If, 
for instance, it is said that a living thing grows like a crystal, surely before 
the dictum is accepted by any one he would naturally inquire whether the 
new matter taken up by the living thing was deposited particle by particle 
upon the surface as in the crystal. Doubt would at once be excited in his 
mind, for no instance would occur to him in which during growth new 
matter was superposed upon that which was already there, in the case of a 
living thing. The nourishment always goes into the inside of a living 
thing, and is never deposited on its outside, as is the case in the 
crystal when it increases in size. Would it not also occur to him that the 
matter of the crystal can be dissolved and crystals formed again and again 
from the solution, while no living thing can be dissolved at all, much less 
re - crystallised ? Such simple considerations would cause doubt to 
rise in his mind whether a living thing does grow like a crystal, 
and the doubt would suggest the expediency of further inquiry. 
He would require, before he accepted the new doctrines, that the 
particular points in which the so - called crystal - growth resembled 
and differed from living-growth should be clearly stated. So far from 
assenting to the proposition that the growth of a crystal was like the growth 
of a living thing, he would find that the increase in size of a crystal was 
not growth at all. So, too, with regard to the likeness said to exist between 
the living and non-living, the particular living and non-living between which 
this likeness is supposed to exist, should be pointed out. It is probable 
that the acceptance of many of the most absurd and unreasonable dogmas 
is due not so much to a want of power to think as to an indisposition 
to think, and no doubt acquiescence is promoted by a fear of the con- 
