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of course, would make all the difference. I may add that I have given this 
quotation from the second edition of Sir Charles Ly ell’s book, published in 
1863. Seventeen years afterwards, in 1880, Professor Boyd Dawkins, in his 
Early Mm in Britain, without hesitation, placed the forest beds in the 
pleistocene period ; and his zoological argument for the non-existence of man 
in the pliocene is, that only one pliocene form now lives, at any rate in 
Europe. This, I think, will strengthen the position of Mr. Hassell. 
(Applause.) 
Mr. William Griffith: — Wishing to do no injustice to Haeckel, I 
obtained a copy of his work, and may unhesitatingly say that the basis of his 
theory is atheism. If that basis fails his theory falls with it, as the super- 
structure cannot stand when the foundation is removed. There is no doubt 
that there are difficulties with regard to the theistic theory, but, at any rate, 
it is sufiicient to explain, or account for, the problems of human and other 
life existing around us. It helps to elucidate the difficulties of the past, 
to clear up those of the present, and at the same time, affords hope for 
the future. The atheistic theory, however, does not explain these difficulties, 
but ignores the hopes we may cherish, and the arguments for the existence 
of the infinite power and goodness of a Supreme Being, to be derived from 
the evidences of adaptation and design which have been so ably treated 
by Paley. At the present day it may be the fashion to depreciate the 
argument from design. But its great expounder, Paley, was a man of high 
mathematical talent ; and the argument he brought forward was not new, 
and does not rest upon his work alone, inasmuch as the most celebrated 
of all physicians, Galen, who was a heathen, dwelt with great force upon it, 
and sixteen centuries before Paley flourished, “felt that in writing his 
anatomical treatises he was composing a hymn to the Deity, that a 
declaration so plain of the wisdom, the power, and the goodness of God 
was an act of piety and praise.”* Of all physicians in ancient or modern 
times, the works of none have more extensively influenced the branches 
of medical science than those of Galen. To leave this general view of 
the subject, and to deal more specifically with the view of evolution 
adopted by Dr. Haeckel ; it will be seen that his theory starts with 
the proposition that life arises from spontaneous generation. Now the 
experiments of Dr. Tyndall, and other experiments that have been made in 
the same direction, have proved, as a matter of fact, that spontaneous 
generation cannot be produced. But what is it that this so-called spontaneous 
generation demands in its origin ? It demands that atoms of matter should 
possess certain qualities which have a creative power. Now, I would ask, 
which is the more reasonable assumption — that one Creator made aU the 
varieties of matter and modes of life which we see around us, or, that we 
have thousands upon thousands of atoms which have endowed themselves 
with these perpetually creative properties ? But even if, for the sake of 
* Watson’s Principles and Practice of Physic. 
