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Divine or Creative power, apart from mere variation or chance, to bear 
upon it. 
Mr. E. Charlesworth (a visitor). — The problem of evolution, which has 
now for some years occupied so prominent a place in the mind of the 
intellectual world, is unquestionably one of those which may be worked out 
with the greatest benefit to human knowledge. To deal satisfactorily with 
evolution, or Darwinism, or natural selection, one of the things desirable 
would be that we should have spread out before us all the types of organic 
life that have ever existed, or that now exist. This is what we unquestion- 
ably want in order to deal with the problem in a satisfactory manner ; but 
we cannot get such a map — we cannot see all these forms spread out ; and 
the question therefore which we have to consider is : can we, upon the im- 
perfect data that we have, deal with the problem in such a way as to make 
it of any practical utility ? I maintain that we can. What is theory ? Is 
it not one of the grandest incentives to observation ? When a theory like 
that of evolution is put before the intellectual world, it sets men observing 
and thinking, and calls forth a vast amount of brain-power. All this being 
wisely directed, unquestionably tends to build up a great storehouse of 
human knowledge, even though ultimately the theory in question may wholly 
and entirely come ter grief. Let me give you one illustration of this. Nearly 
a thousand years ago there was discovered one of the most lovely and exquisite 
forms to be found in the animal kingdom, popularly known as the “ paper 
nautilus ” ; it was found in vast quantities on the shores of the Mediterranean, 
and other parts of the world, and that nautilus, when associated with animal 
life, had in it a cuttlefish. You could take up the shell, turn it topsy-turvy, 
and out dropped a cuttlefish. Then distinguished philosophers told us that 
cuttlefish dropped out of the shell when it was turned up. It could not 
possibly have made the shell, for it was a universal law throughout all the 
science of malacology, that where you had a shell made by an animal, that 
animal must have a muscular or organic attachment to the shell. W e know 
that that is so in the case of the oyster, — that when you open an oyster you 
have to cut through the muscle. Then they said the beautiful and exquisite 
shell of the nautilus never could have been made by that hideous animal the 
cuttlefish, it must have been made by some other animal. For nearly a 
thousand years distinguished natural philosophers wrangled, fought, and 
quarrelled over this great problem, as to whether a cuttlefish did or did not 
make the shell of the paper nautilus. Look what an elaborate mass of 
reasoning has been accumulated around that insignificant matter. But what 
was the result of all this fighting ? Why, that hundreds and thousands of 
naturalists set to work to study the habits of the cuttlefish, and although 
they did not solve the problem until very recently, they were led to make 
hosts of other most interesting discoveries, which arc of the greatest possible 
advantage to the human race. This is the way in which I look at this problem 
of evolution. All the world is thinking and talking of it, and the brain- 
