"

evolution consists," he tells us, "not in an experimental demonstration (for the subject is hardly accessible to this mode of proof), but in its general harmony with scientific thought."1 "Scientific thought," however, can only mean "the aggregate thoughts of scientific men ; and with these thoughts it is most certain that this doctrine of Evolution is not in harmony. Mr. Darwin, with his usual candour, writes as recently as 1871, "Of the older and honoured chiefs in natural science, many unfortunately are still opposed to Evolution in every form." 2 Since that date it is certain that, on the continent at least, the doctrine has been met by many distinguished botanists and zoologists with growing disfavour. To the same purpose is the still more recent admission of Professor Tyndall: "Our foes are to some extent they of our own household, including not only the ignorant and the passionate, but a minority of minds of high calibre and culture, lovers of freedom, moreover, who, though its objective hull be riddled by logic, still find the ethic life of their religion unimpaired."s

But even if this were not the case, it would

1 “Belfast Address,” p. 58.

2 "Descent of Man,” p. 2.

3 "Materialism and its Opponents," ut sup., p. 597.

still be true, on Professor Tyndall's showing, that Evolution as above defined has not been "verified" "by observation and experiment;" and that "without verification a theoretic conception is a mere figment of the intellect." 1 "Those who hold the doctrine of evolution," he tells us, "are by no means ignorant of the uncertainty of their data, and they only yield to it a provisional assent. They regard the nebular hypothesis as probable, . . . and accept as probable the unbroken sequence of development from the nebula to the present time." 2

"Probable," "provisional," provisional," "uncertain," and therefore "unscientific;" this, on the highest authority, is thus admitted to be the actual character of "the doctrine of Evolution." But of what kind is this probability? When examined, it appears that even the alleged probability itself is at best a mere "supposition,” “a theoretic conception," a probability hypothetical only, nothing more.

For example: Mr. Herbert Spencer tells us that "there is reason to suspect that there is but one ultimate form of Matter, out of which the successively more complex forms of Matter

1 "Fragments of Science," p. 469.

2 "Scientific Use of the Imagination,” p. 456.

"1

are built up.' When we ask for the reason for this assertion, we are merely told that there is "reason to suspect" so, and that "by the different grouping of units, and by the combination of the unlike groups each with its own kind, and each with other kinds, it is supposed that there have been produced the kinds of matter we call elementary." 2 But, for anything that appears to the contrary, the "reason to suppose" all this, and the subsequent supposing of it, exist only in Mr. Spencer's own mind, and have their raison d'être in the exigencies of the "constructive philosophy." Having however in this way "supposed" whatever he pleased, and having also justified his method of procedure by saying that there was

reason to suppose" so, he then in the very next paragraph, and without adducing any proof whatever, proceeds to treat these suppositions as if they were ascertained facts, and builds on them as if he took them for solid foundations. Thus :-" If then, WE SEE (!) that by unlike arrangements of like units, all the forms of matter, apparently so diverse in nature may be produced," etc. etc.3

1 "Principles of Psychology." Stereotyped Edition. Williams & Norgate, 1870, vol. i. p. 155.

But this method of evolving science from supposition, and conjuring with conjecture for certainty, is by no means a monopoly of Mr. Herbert Spencer. In one sentence of his Essay on "Scientific Materialism," Professor Tyndall states that "we should on philosophic grounds expect to find" certain physical conditions; and in the next, he commences an induction, from this mere expectation, with the phrase, "The relation of physics to consciousness being thus invariable"!1 a relation which, if it exists at all, does certainly not exist in any demonstrable form— so far is it from "being thus," or being in any way other than that of "expectation " merely, "invariable."

Similarly, when, in his controversy with Mr. Martineau, he claims "consciousness" for the fern and the oak, he says, "No man can say that the feelings of the animal are not represented by a drowsier consciousness in the vegetable world. At all events no line has ever been drawn between the conscious and the unconscious; for the vegetable shades into the animal by such fine gradations, that it is impossible to say where the one ends and the other begins. The evidences as to

1 "Fragments of Science." Sixth Edition. Longmans, 1879, vol. ii. p. 86.

consciousness in the vegetable world depend wholly upon our capacity to observe and weigh them."1 What then? This, evidently that since we are not possessed of any such capacity; and since, without that capacity the evidence is non-existent; it follows that there is no evidence whatever "as to consciousness in the vegetable world." But if there is a fatal lack of evidence there is no lack of imagination; and Dr. Tyndall's imagination, always brilliant, is fully equal to the occasion. He supposes altered conditions for the observer, and then says: "I can imagine not only the vegetable, but the mineral world, responsive to the proper irritants." "I can imagine!" What? "Consciousness" in a cabbage, and in a granite cube. But on what evidence? None that I can find: but plenty that "I can imagine!"

In the same category with the suppositions of Mr. Spencer and the imagination of Professor Tyndall must be placed the conceptions of Mr. Darwin. Like them, he has to assume as fundamental, certain propositions which he cannot prove. But then if he cannot prove, he cannot doubt," or he "can hardly doubt;" and this incapacity for doubt serves as a highly 1 "Materialism and its Opponents," ut sup., p. 595.

Ibid.

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