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domain of science. There is no natural progression to be shown from the 
inorganic to the organic world. Take the lowest form of organization you 
can find that is capable of producing organic substance and of reproducing 
its own kind ; you have not the most remote analogy to that, in the most 
highly-developed forms of the crystal, or in anything else which belongs to 
the inorganic world. You have nothing in the formation of crystals which 
is at all analogous or approaching to the power of the living organism which 
is capable of producing other beings like itself. But if the doctrine of evolution 
be true, how is it, unless you add to that doctrine a continued series of suc- 
cessive creations, that inferior beings are now existing along with higher 
ones ? How is it that the lowest and the highest forms exist at the same 
time with one another. That is a great difficulty which all those who main- 
tain the theory of evolution have to get over. It is not enough to say 
hypothetically that one creature has been stopped in its development at/ one 
stage, another stopped at a more advanced stage, another at a still more 
advanced stage, and so on ; you must show the probability of that. Then 
comes the question of rudimentary organs ; but before I go to that, there is 
one thing with regard to which I wish to state that I entirely differ from the 
author of this paper. Mr. Henslow says : — 
" Our ideas of perfection can only be relative. As we say, in speaking of 
intellectual and moral attributes, that perfection resides in the Deity alone, 
which may therefore represent the limit to which we are continually en- 
deavouring to approach, but can never reach ; so in the works of nature our 
conception of the perfect is never realized.” 
Now, the defect of that passage arises in this way : — Mr. Henslow was con- 
fining his attention simply to the organic world, and not considering the in - 
organic. Now, I have not yet understood or seen anything like imperfection 
in the inorganic world, or in the laws which regulate it. Speaking of these 
laws and of their results, there is nothing abnormal to be found in the inorganic 
world. It was fully brought out by Professor Whewell, in his works, that 
you find nothing of an abnormal nature there. You have nothing like dis- 
ease in the laws of chemistry, in the laws of crystallization, in the laws of 
light, or in the laws of gravitation. Dr. Whewell says, you cannot conceive 
disease in gravitation, or imperfection in the movements of the solar system, 
At first sight, and on a superficial view', men may suppose that they hare 
found imperfection, as when it was thought that there was something in the 
laws of gravitation which would lead to the destruction of the solar system 
in a certain period, but that was found to have depended on a mistake in the 
integration of an equation, and that the seeming irregularity was in reality a 
most marvellous and beautiful adaptation of laws, giving us a most wonderful 
argument for design. I cannot conceive anything like disease or irregularity 
in the laws of the circulation of the' wind or water. All these things have 
apparent irregularities ; but the more we examine and analyze them the more 
we find that these apparent irregularities are really the objects of design, 
intended to operate for the benefit of God’s creatures on earth. But then 
