theory to assure us that it was diametrically opposed to the doctrine of gravitation, as generally understood, we could not help regarding the new discovery with suspicion. And so, when Mr. Darwin takes pains to show us that his theory is diametrically opposite to our belief that the contrivance of our eyes to see with was the result of "means superior to, though analogous with, human reason "—that is, the divine reason-we cannot help being prejudiced against such a theory. A great array of facts and arguments would be necessary to convince us of its truth; some such array as would be necessary to overturn our faith in the law of gravitation. But when we come to examine the facts and arguments adduced in support of Darwinism, we fail to find any such invincible evidence.

I. Darwinism is only another Theory of Ignorance and Presumption.

In proceeding to examine the theory from the scientific side, we are astonished to observe that its author presents it to us with abundance of confessions of great ignorance of the most fundamental facts, and of the forces assumed as the working powers of his system. One might suppose that the fate of his predecessors in leading the blind populace would have warned him against attempting to teach what he did not know, and which he knew that he did not know, and of which he actually again and again confesses himself ignorant. But far from any fears of sinking, he gaily leaps on the quagmire, and with an "it is possible," followed by a "we cannot doubt," he goes on, hop, step and jump, to the most wonderful conclusions. His theory is that of the evolution of all plants and animals from a few primeval forms, in the beginning of the geologic ages. But he acknowledges that no specimens of these primeval germs have been preserved, and mourns the impossibility of our ever becoming

acquainted with them! He knows nothing of their size, their shape, their organs, or their functions. But without such knowledge how can he pretend to describe their evolution into existing animals?

Heredity is one of the great powers of his plan of evolution-the Magna Charta of its rights. But he owns himself ignorant of its origin, and of the laws of inheritance. The correlation of the parts of all structures is the prime condition of their existence; and he says he knows little or nothing about it. The great business of his grand agent, natural selection, is the extinction of weak species; but he cannot tell any reasons for the butchery. An immense duration is absolutely indispensible for his slow processes; but he cannot tell what length of a lease he has to run, nor even how long he has been in business already. The variations of plants and animals are the first movers of his method, but he cannot tell the laws governing them; he says they are “what in our ignorance we term spontaneous variations." He has no information about the date of the beginning of the primordial forms, nor of their rate of progress. He alleges that many millions of forms intermediate between existing species must have existed in the past; but cannot tell where to find them, unless under the bottom of the ocean.*

Now all these are facts or principles absolutely necessary to be known before any such theory can be constructed. Mr. Darwin's confessed ignorance of the first principles of his own science, forbids other people's acceptance of it as a scientific exposition of nature. It is necessary to say this in the beginning, since so many young people have been lectured, and magazined, and popular. scienced into the notion that Darwinism is science. But

*Origin of Species, pp. 4, 10, 127-9, 97, 100, 409, 410, 415, 423; Descent of Man, I., pp. 182, 204, and II., 15. 257.

the greatest part of it is only superstition founded on ignorance-confessed ignorance.

These confessions of ignorance run all through Mr. Darwin's books. When he meets facts which flatly contradict his doctrines of the slow growth of variations, or of inheritance, or of the imperfection of early organssuch facts as the short-legged sheep, the sterility of hybrids, the existence of neuter bees and their instincts, the battery of the electric eel, the eye of the cuttle-fish, and many others of a like kind, of which he can give no explanation, he takes refuge in confessions of ignorance, with all the complacency of a hunted ostrich hiding its head in a bush. According to his theory Mr. Darwin ought to have inherited a tail from his arborean ancestor, but for the life of him he cannot tell what has become of it. The origin of species by variations is the very theory he sets out to prove and illustrate. The very title of his book is The Origin of Species by Natural Selection, and yet he unhesitatingly acknowledges that "Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound!"*

On the authority, then, of Mr. Darwin himself, we unhesitatingly receive his theory as one illuminated by profound ignorance of the subject-a game of blind-man'sbuff-the blind proposing to lead the blind. Is that science? Belief of any theory devised by such acknowledged ignorance is the basest superstition.

This confessed ignorance of facts and principles, far from producing modesty and patience in building the theory, is followed up shamelessly by the most intolerable presumption in assuming facts which never had an existence, and in asserting doubtful principles without the shadow of proof. Then he refers to these unfounded facts and assumptions as bases of argument, as though they had been established irrefutably like the propositions Descent of Man, I., pp. 144, 187, 197.

in Euclid. Allow me to cite some remarks which I have made on this part of the subject in another book (The Fables of Infidelity, p. 65): "It is evident, however, that evolutionists are not confident of the ability of the facts which they are able to allege to sustain their theory, since they are perpetually postulating assumptions necessary to their argument, but which are utterly unproved, and incapable of proof. Mr. Darwin is the most notorious offender against inductive science in this respect. I have now before me a list of eighty-six assumptions of this sort in The Origin of Species alone. Those in his other works are too numerous to mention. He continually mistakes his own assertions, or even his own mere conjectures, for proof; and refers back to them, and builds further assumptions upon them accordingly; and he assumes facts unproven, and incapable of proof; and principles which he must know are denied by his opponents. We can only take a few instances at random.

"He assumes that all dogs are developed from wolves (Descent of Man, p. 48); that the instincts of animals are developed (p. 38); that language was developed (p. 53); that there is a wider interval between the lamprey and the ape than between the ape and the man, thus begging the question of man's brutality (34); that the savage is the original state of man (63); that parental instincts are the result of natural selection-and this after owning utter ignorance of their origin (77); that the ideas of glory and infamy are the workings of sympathy (82); that moral tastes are produced by heredity (98); that the standard of morality has been rising since the giving of the ten commandments (99); that our ancestors were quadrupeds (116); that there have been thousands of generations of mankind (125). In his Origin of Species he assumes that breeds have the characters of species (p. 411); that rudimentary organs are inherited abortions

(424); that there are four or five original progenitors, and distant evidence of only one (425); he assumes descent to prove his geology (428), and perpetual progress toward perfection, in the face of his own facts of retrogression.

Mr. Darwin presents the most preposterous assumptions with such coolness, and apparent unconsciousness of their utter improbability to his hearers, and with such an entire ignoring of the necessity of any farther attestation than his own ipse dixit, as to warrant serious suspicions of his sanity. Take, for instance, his bear and whale story (in his First Edition.) Hearne reports having seen, in the Arctic regions, a bear swimming in the water for hours, with his mouth wide open, catching flies; and Mr. Darwin says, "If the supply of flies were constant [where the winter lasts eight months of the year, 40° F. below zero], he can see no difficulty in the production at length of an animal as monstrous as a whale!" That gives us a gauge of Mr. Darwin's soundness of judgment. The rest of the theory is modeled on this bear gauge.

He assumes the indefinite addition of small variations to account for such an amazing metamorphosis as that of a bear into a whale, or of a worm into a man, without giving, or even attempting, proof of such a contradiction. of all experience. For everybody knows well that there is a limit to the powers of all animals and of all men. You cannot go on indefinitely adding to their work, or subtracting from their food. That has been known since the days of the Greek who diminished the food of his ass one straw each day, but unfortunately, just as he had brought the donkey to the last straw, he died. Then, again, as to the hereditary transmission of profitable variations, that soon reaches its limit. There is no indefinite progress by that agency. The well-bred greyhound may run a mile in three minutes, or the race-horse the same