THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS. 197 
other. There is a charm in a theory so logically complete, and so 
adequate for all cosmic purposes, which goes far to reconcile us to 
an origin so obscure and humble. But unfortunately for the theory, 
the link which is to connect the dead stone and the living animal 
cannot be found, and is allowed even by Evolutionists to have 
baffled discovery. 
The importance of this fact is fully recognized by all scientists. 
Dr. Thompson says, ‘‘ the importance of the right solution of this 
problem ”’ (of the origin of life) ‘is one of wide significance, seeing 
that if it shall be satisfactorily proved, or even rendered probable, 
that in the course of Cosmical Development all the various kinds 
of plants and animals have been gradually produced by Evolution 
out of pre-existing simpler forms, and thus the whole series of 
organized beings in nature has been shown to be one of hereditary 
connection and derivation, then it would follow that the history of 
the origin of the simplest organisms may be the key to that of the 
first commencement of life upon the earth’s surface, and the ex- 
planation of the relation in which the whole succeeding progenies 
stand to their parental stocks.”’ But the conelusion reached, in 
spite of every desire to the contrary, is unfavourable to any such 
possibility ; and Dr. Thompson, with Huxley, Tyndall, and other 
leading scientific men, confesses that “no development of organisms, 
even of the most simple kind, has been satisfactorily observed to 
occur in circumstances which entirely excluded the possibility of 
their being descended from germs, or equivalent formative particles, 
belonging to pre-existing bodies of a similar kind.” 
In other words, the hypothesis of spontaneous generation, which 
would have given such completeness to the theory of Evolution, 
falls to the ground, and by its fall the theory itself is seriously 
shaken. 
The President is too good a philosopher to seek the origin of life 
‘in conditions coeval with the first existence of physical and 
chemical properties” in other bodies, because the basis of the 
theory of Evolution rests on the hypothesis that all the materials 
composing the present earth were once in a state of incandescent 
heat, in which its materials could exist only in the form of a 
vaporous mass, Sir William Thompson, indeed, came afterwards 
to the rescue, by suggesting that all life in general, and the 
Colorado beetle in particular, came, or may have come, to our planet 
by a meteorite. But Cosmic Evolution must include the meteorite 
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