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a false quantity, and not what Darwin ever set forth. We come now to 
another misrepresentation as to the consistency of Darwinism. We are 
told by Mr. Reddie, “Mr. Warington thinks it the severest possible 
test to require that a theory should apparently agree with the facts or 
phenomena it has been invented expressly to account for.” I have said 
nothing of the kind. I said that in the particular case of Darwinism this 
test happened to be to my mind the severest ; and why ? Not because this test 
is, as a rule, the severest, but because in the case of Darwinism the field 
which it covers is so enormous that it is practically the severest test. But 
the impression is conveyed by Mr. Reddie as if I laid it down as an axiom 
for all theories. Then as to geology, it is asserted that I have said the theory 
does not need geological evidence. I never said a syllable of the kind. We 
have not got such evidence complete; there is no hope of getting it complete; 
and it is certain that if such transformations are going on at the present time, 
we should not get evidence of it in the geological strata now forming. I do not 
say that the evidence of geology would not be an excellent test of Darwinism 
if we had it complete, but we have not got it thus complete, and therefore 
must dispense with it. (Hear, hear.) Now we come to the matter of design. 
I have used a phrase which has been twisted and turned all manner of ways : 
“ A symmetry and manifest method strongly suggestive of especial design 
and arbitrary plan.” What was I referring to ? Was I referring to what we 
call organs of designs, i. e., organs in different beings fitted to the life of 
those beings ? No ; I was referring to classification only ; and I said if living 
beings had not been connected in the peculiarly natural manner in which 
they are, but in a more arbitrary manner, it would have been suggestive of 
especial design ; we should have thought of them as having been arbitrarily 
marked out by some one who planned exactly where they should be. If I 
go, for instance, into a flower garden,, with the flowers artistically arranged 
in rows and plots, there is evidence at once of an arbitrary plan which 
shows special design ; but if I go to a bank of wild flowers, with all the 
flowers mingled anyhow, I see there no special design of the same kind, no 
arbitrary plan, no parting out in rows and plots : the flowers have grown 
naturally. I say, then, so far as classification goes, there is nothing in the 
connection of species with species, and group with group, which evinces 
arbitrary plan suggestive of special design, but rather the whole classification 
is purely natural. Then we have something about there being no struggle 
for existence at first, because there were few beings. Of course not. These 
beings would, however, certainly multiply, and then the struggle for existence 
would begin, but I never said that it always existed. Then as to orchids and 
insects, I never said they did not come into existence at the same time. 
Darwin would tell you that, upon his hypothesis, when the orchids came the 
insects came, because one was necessary to the other, and could not exist 
without it. Then we come to what is made a very grave objection, that 
Darwin converts the exception into the rule. Nothing of the kind. Darwin 
never says variation is the rule ; he says, on the contrary, that he regards it 
as the exception. But he says this, that when variation does come it will very 
