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the powers of a designing mind ? The only means of evasion is by juggling 
with infinity. We are told that in the past infinity of time there has been a 
perpetual succession of chances acting through a succession of immutable laws 
of nature, and at last, as the result of that infinite succession of chances, the 
complex mechanism of creation has been produced. Take, for example, the 
Darwinian theory, encumbered as it is with great metaphysical difficulties at 
every point. It presupposes the principle of natural selection ; but how does 
that principle act so as to get rid of a designing mind 1 The stronger things 
destroy the weaker, and then, by means of an infinity of chances, nature 
goes on producing and producing and producing until at last up turns the 
right thing. It is a common sophistry to fall back upon infinity whenever 
you are hard driven. People go on drawing cheques upon the bank of 
Infinity which they cash upon other people’s imaginations ; but these cheques 
never become current money. (Hear, hear.) The argument proceeds upon a 
total misconception of the real character of infinity which I endeavoured to 
expose in one of the papers I read here. A confusion is made between the 
non-finite and what we call the infinite. I will not, however, enter into that 
question now, but I want to point out one other very serious difficulty with 
which such a theory is encumbered. Suppose for a moment that all animated 
nature has been evolved under this law of a succession and by the aid of 
natural selection from a single type. Take as an illustration a horse evolved 
in this way. I do not know what his immediate ancestor would be ; I 
suppose an ass ; but at any rate it is necessary that, whichever he may be, 
by a happy succession of natural selections, and by the aid of an infinite 
number of happy chances, he should get a bit better and a bit better until 
at last you produce the horse. But in this stage of production you encounter 
one very serious difficulty, because there is a point at which hybridization 
steps in, and that is a very formidable objection. The ass and the horse 
produce the hybrid called the mule, and here you come to a dead lock. 
The Chairman. — Much of your theory must run with the idea that there 
is a probability of the horse coming from the ass. That is an utter impossi- 
bility — people must not be led to suppose it possible. 
Mr. Row. — I merely point it out as a logical illustration, and not a physical 
one. Suppose you get the hybrid— the mule. Now to make the theory capable 
of working, to preserve the race of horses, and to evolve a still finer animal 
out of the horse hereafter, it is necessary to get a mare somewhere. Well, 
you see that involves another succession, and the application of the same 
amount of changes and suitable adaptations by the mere aid of chance. We 
have then to deal with a number of suppositions, each encumbered with this 
extreme difficulty. If you can produce the horse and the mare in this way, 
you must produce the one within a very moderate distance of the other. 
You cannot produce one in Europe and the other in America, or the race 
would become extinct. You have to produce them within a very moderate 
distance of each other, and this at once makes the whole thing break down. 
There are not only these difficulties to be encountered, but when we come 
to survey the entire subject, we have to look at another side of the question 
