called "natural selection." It may serve therefore to provide a little more of the same thing, but no new or different product whatever. Hence it does not seem to call for a distinct refutation.

3. Homologous anatomical structure is found to obtain very extensively among widely diverse races, e. g. in the arm of man, the fore-leg of the monkey and indeed of all quadrupeds, in the wing of the bird and the fin of the fish. This indicates a common parentage.

4. Some animals which, fully grown, differ from each other widely, are scarcely distinguishable in the embryo.__Hence he infers their common origin.

5. The fact of rudimentary organs is assumed to be historic, proving that some ancient progenitor used them, and that they have gradually passed out of use. This is held to prove that great changes of structure come of genealogical descent.

BRIEF REPLIES.

1. To Darwin's first law, viz. that the offspring always vary though slightly from the parent, and therefore, given indefinite time, he has any desired amount of variation, I reply that this law of variation becomes practically worthless for his theory, because these variations from parent to offspring run in all conceivable directions and not in the one definite direction required for his purpose, i. e. toward a higher grade of perfection, or [which his argument requires] toward a new form of animal life. For example, there is always some change in the human countenance from parent to child. Yet who does not know that those changes run in every possible direction and not in one uniform line of progress or advance, as from monkey toward man and from man toward angel? For another example we may take the shape of the skull and of the brain-evermore differing slightly from parent to offspring yet not by any means on one given line. The skulls of Egyptian mummies entombed three thousand years ago do not differ appreciably from those of the Copts (their lineal descendants) of to-day, i. e. are no more pithecoid-ape-like. On Darwin's theory three thousand years backward ought surely to approximate toward the ape; otherwise these variations are fruitless. This law of successive genealogical changes amounts to nothing for his argu

ment unless the changes consent to come into line so that their results shall actually accumulate with the lapse of ages. The fatal lack in the argument is-no husbandry of these infinitesimal changes-not the least perceivable accumulation.

A second branch of my reply suggests that Mr. Darwin misinterprets this law of nature, viz. perpetual variation from parent to offspring. It is doubtless a law, but Darwin has quite missed its divinely ordained purpose-which is to indicate the relationship between parent and child on the one hand, and yet maintain individual identity on the other. The resemblances answer the former purpose; the differences, the latter. Beings constituted to bear personal responsibilities so momentous as those of man must be so organized that every one can identify his own individuality, lest one man be hung for some other man's crime.

2. His second argument comes from the law of “natural selection"-"the survival of the fittest"-with which it is convenient to couple the precisely similar law of "sexual selection "-the ascendency of the smartest over their inferiors, to perpetuate the race. Here a specific case will suffice both to illustrate and to refute. The principle of "natural selection" has a fair chance for itself in the spawn of the shad. It is no doubt true that none but the smartest out of the many thousand spawned at once survive so as to become parents in their turn. Yet who believes that these smartest shad are becoming sturgeon or sharks or whales by this law of progress? Are they actually found to be any thing but shad after never so many hundred generations? It may seem superfluous to push the still more pertinent question-Are these smartest and most ambitious shad really found to be working up out of their watery element, i. e. working up into ducks or geese, or into blackbirds and crows? For just this is Mr. Darwin's theory-the line of ascent running up from fish to fowl; from fowl to mammal and so on up to man. The questions here suggested are therefore only the fair and scientific test and touchstone of his argument. A law which has not made its results even perceptible since the birth of the first shad known to human history must be regarded as scientifically worthless.

My second remark here is that Darwin errs not in finding these to be laws of nature-"natural selection," "sexual selection "--but in interpreting them, i. e. in detecting their divinely ordained design and their actual working and product. I suggest that these laws, apparently made for the improvement of races, may be requisite to enable them to hold their own against the ever present tendency to degeneracy. Life is a perpetual struggle against death. The life-principle finds an antagonist force in chemical law which is evermore hurrying organized matter back to its inorganic state. Still further, be it considered, races excessively prolific would rapidly lose vitality but for these laws of natural and sexual selection. We may therefore rationally assume that these laws are simply forms of the general principle of self-preservation, and not a purposed provision for lifting a lower race up to the plane of a higher.

3. As to homologous anatomical structure, e. g. of the arm, fore-leg, wing, fin, paddle-there are abundant reasons for its existence aside from the assumption of Darwin that it proves a common ancestry for man, monkey, calf, bull-dog, eagle, toad and whale. The ball and socket joint at man's shoulder is the perfect thing for use. Equally so is the same kind of joint for the fore-leg of a horse, the wing of an eagle or the fin of a fish. God made the anatomy of man's arm perfect. What forbids that he should make an equally perfect machinery for the motions and various uses of other animals? The reason of this uniformly perfect machinery is found in the wisdom and benevolence of the Great Maker, and proves nothing in favor of a common descent from some one parent, . e. it proves nothing unless you may assume that God could not have made two kinds of animals with homologous anatomical structures-two kinds, each with machinery perfect for its purposes.

4. As to the similar appearance of the embryo in very dissimilar races, there may be differences in the embryo which no microscope and no human test have yet discovered. The force of this argument seems to me to come rather from ignorance than from knowledge. 5. As to rudimentary organs, their history is very obscure and their design also. I suggest that Mr. Darwin begin with the history and the reason for the ru

dimentary organs which appear on the bosom of the male in the species man. When he shall have mastered this problem-the history and the reason -we can afford to consider his argument therefrom in proof that man has a common ancestry with whatsoever other animal he may find having this male organ, not rudimentary but in full activity. Probably he will prove that man must have come down by descent from that class of animals which economically combine the two sexes in one and the same individual!

Some objections of a more general bearing upon Darwin's scheme.

1. His system requires indefinite, almost infinite, ages of time back of the Silurian strata, i. e. back of the oldest known remains of life, vegetable or animal, on our globe. That is, he requires for the development of his system an almost infinite extension of time back beyond the earliest traces or proofs of life, vegetable or animal, on our globe. And this, he would have men believe, is the perfection of modern Science !-a science which pushes its sphere in time back indefinitely beyond all known facts upon the bare evidence of theories and assumed analogies!But even this gives not the full force of the objection made by true Science to his system. It is not merely that he builds upon assumed facts where no known facts are-which is building upon nothing-but where no facts can be, which is building not merely upon negatives but upon impossibilities. There is no room for his assumed facts where he locates them. If Geology proves any thing it proves that vegetable and animal life commenced on our planet as soon as the planet was ready and not sooner, and that we have the remains of the earliest living organisms in the oldest fossil-bearing rocks. His scheme is therefore conditioned upon impossibilities and must be false.

2. His system requires a close succession of animal races, differing from parent to offspring by only the

"If my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods must have elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day; and that, during these vast yet quite unknown periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures." Darwin's Origin of Species, p. 269.

least possible amount, with no leaps, no gaps whatever. Thus from monkey up to man the system calls for at least a few scores not to say hundreds of intermediate links. Where are they? His suffering theory cries out for their support: there is no answer. The earth's surface responds not to the call; even "the depths say-They are not in me!" From the original monad up to man all the way through at least the long line of the vertebrates-reptile, fish, bird, mammal-that is to say, through the serpent tribe; the fish kingdom; the swallow, blackbird and eagle, and especially through the quadruped family-the horse and camel and particularly the monkey household-through all this remarkable line of ancestry, Darwin's system demands a very gradual upward march by the shortest possible stages of progress, so that the intermediate links must be barely less than infinite. It certainly ought to be very easy to trace a genealogical line so well represented. It is estimated that thirty thousand fossil species have been recognized. How many of these can be formed into this genealogical line from the aboriginal vertebrate-supposed to be aquatic and Ascidian-up to man? Has Mr. Darwin set himself to marshal this proof-line of witnesses to his system? No. Not only has he not done this very appropriate thing, but he has said little, quite too little on this most vital point, in the way of showing what could be done. He reiterates that the geological records are very imperfect. Doubtless they quite fail to come up to meet the demands of his system. It is the fatal weakness of his theory that just where it should find facts in animal history for its support, they are not there! He himself admits that if you believe in a tolerably full showing of animal history in the geological records of our globe, you must disbelieve his system.* He needs quite another geological record for his proofs.

*These are his words-"Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this perhaps is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies as I believe in the extreme imperfection of the geological records." -And again-"He who rejects these views on the nature [i. e. the defects] of the geological record will rightly reject my whole theory.