PROCEEDINGS OP THE PERTHSHIRE SOCIETY OP NATURAL SCIENCE. 
149 
Haeckel is founded on suppositions, and explains nothing:. 
Is it any explanation of the origin of life to say that 
a certain combination of organo - genetic elements of 
carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, and nitrogen, becomes a 
molecule of albumen, which ultimately transforms itself 
into a living substance? We may arrange the atoms of 
carbon and the other materials in the certain combina¬ 
tions, and we see that only dead matter is the result. 
The wooden nutmegs so far resembled the real article, 
that they were bought, and the buyers only discovered 
their mistake when they bit them, but Haeckel’s mixture 
has not even this outside resemblance to living tissue. 
Life is still wanting. We have here confessedly only guesses 
and imaginations, and mere guesses and empty imagina¬ 
tions do not form the basis on which actual science rests. 
Much of what has been said against the doctrine of 
evolution might have remained unsaid, if a clear distinc¬ 
tion had been drawn between the theory itself and the 
opinions and statements of some who have embraced that 
theory. Evolution is one thing, the opinions of some 
evolutionists is another thing. Evolution professes to 
account for the origin of species alone, and is not 
responsible for what evolutionists may say when, leaving 
this question, they attempt to account for the origin of life. 
Some of our own evolutionists come far short of their 
continental brethren in boldness and plainness of speech. 
Thus, in a popular treatise on the subject, published last 
year, I read :—“It seems illogical to deny that whatever 
properties the protoplasm of germ or adult exhibits, 
depend, strictly speaking, upon the chemical and physical 
properties of that substance.” A like conclusion is intro¬ 
duced by such phrases as “ Thus we approach the idea,” 
“ This leads us to think of the possibility and probability.” 
These phrases “It seems illogical,” “We approach the 
idea,” “We are led to think of the possibility and pro¬ 
bability,” occur at the crucial point of the argument, and 
these seemings, approaches to the idea, thinking of the 
possibility and probability, form the grounds on which a 
materialistic view of the origin of life is reached. Surely 
the logical and scientific course in these circumstances 
was not to arrive at a positive conclusion, but to investi¬ 
gate and to wait till seeming had become reality, 
till the approach to the idea had become the ar¬ 
rived at it, till thinking of the possibility and pro¬ 
bability had evolved into certainty. The other week 
I read in a provincial paper. a report of a scientific 
lecture delivered in a county town. The town was 
not Perth. The lecturer, addressing a mixed audience, 
the great majority of whom had the vaguest notions, if 
they had any, of evolution and the grounds on which it 
rests, informed his hearers that the evolution theory was 
the work of some of the greatest minds of our generation; 
that the evolution views were the matured deliberations 
of the most accomplished anatomists and naturalists; 
that these views must be adopted by all who wished to be 
regarded as reasonable and intelligent; to adopt these 
views was to take a place in the most advanced school of 
science; to reject them was to take aplace in that classwbich 
is composed of the old women of both sexes. Whether 
these statements represent the sentiments of the lecturer, 
or the reporter’s impression of the lecturer's sentiments, I 
do not know, but there can be no doubt that, whether such 
sentiments were uttered or not on that occasion, they were 
sentiments which are widely current. Such an advice 
would have been reprobated by Darwin, and will be repro¬ 
bated by none more strongly than by his reasonable 
followers. Such an advice with regard to any school, be it 
advanced or lagging behind, is mischievous. To enquire 
simply on the one hand what opinions are the most ad¬ 
vanced, or on the other what opinions are reckoned safe 
and sound, and to adopt them merely because they 
are advanced or because they are safe and sound, is 
not the study of science, nor is it even a wretched 
pretence of an imitation of scientific study. A young 
man may enter an emporium of fashion, may see 
and choose the newest fabrics and devices, and, having 
made his selection, may come forth the lawful owner and 
wearer of the results of the most advanced ideas of the 
tailor as shown in the latest product of his artistic skill; 
but the young, or, for the matter of that, the old man can¬ 
not enter the emporium of science, ask there to be shown 
the latest and most advanced opinions, and when they are 
spread before him say these are the opinions for me. I 
choose them, and therefore I am now a man of the most 
advanced views, and entitled to look down with scorn 
on others as laggards and dotards. No, reading, research, 
meditation, honest work, can alone lead to the real adoption 
of any views. Without these essential antecedants, we may 
adopt advanced or non-advanced, new or old opinions, but 
we assume them as a certain animal, once on a time, 
assumed the lion’s skin, and found that though the out¬ 
ward aspect was that of a lion, the voice was the voice of an 
ass. Pope truly says that— 
Index learning turns no student pale. 
Yet holds the eel of science by the tail. 
But it must at the same time be acknowledged that, if we 
hold the eel only by the tail, we have a very short and 
slippery grip. While on the one side there are men who 
profess to hold evolutionist views, simply because they 
