ORDINARY MEETING-, Apkil 1, 1867. 
The Rev. Walter Mitchell, Vice-President, in the Chair. 
The minutes of the previous Meeting were read and confirmed. After- 
wards, the discussion on Mr. Warington’s Paper on “ The Credibility of 
Darwinism ” was resumed, as follows : — 
The Chairman. — The subject of Mr. Wariugton’s paper has been so 
fully discussed, that the time has now arrived when it is my duty to sum up 
the matter by stating my own views, leaving to Mr. Warington the right of 
reply. I may express my own views by saying that nothing urged by Mr. 
Warington in his valuable paper has led me to believe the hypothesis of Mr. 
Darwin one whit more credible than I ever conceived it to be. The matured 
opinion I formed, not only after a careful study of Mr. Darwin’s book, but 
after a full consideration of all the alterations and additions of successive 
editions, remains unaltered. In the first place, I protest against the principle 
laid down by Mr. Warington, that a hypothesis is to be held as credible unless 
it can be proved to be impossible, as contrary to all sound principles and to 
the inductive philosophy of Bacon. I regard this method of procedure as a 
retrograde step, bringing us back to that system of feigning and inventing 
hypotheses which was the source of so much error before the time of Bacon ; 
the abandonment of which, and the procedure of the search after truth by a 
sounder method, have caused so great an advance in our knowledge of nature 
since his day. I can find no better summary of the Baconian method of 
induction than that given in so few words by Newton in the queries 
appended to his work on optics : — “ The main business of natural philosophy 
is to argue from phenomena without feigning hypotheses, and to deduce 
causes from facts until we come to the first cause, which is certainly not 
mechanical.” Now the method Mr. Warington (if I rightly understand him) 
sets before us, is the direct reverse of this. It is, first, to feign a hypo- 
thesis, and then see what facts we can find to agree with it, ignoring those 
that are contrary to it. And though both Mr. Darwin and Mr. Warington 
do not shrink from an approach to a first cause, Mr. Darwin’s followers have 
not hesitated to disavow a belief in any first cause which is not mechanical. 
Bacon, like Newton, tells us, that “ analysis consists in making experi- 
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