has ever been observed, his popular assertion that our "knowledge" goes "so far" as to establish that this gelatinous mass not only exists, but is the foundation of all life, is contradictory of his published retraction of his theory before scholars. The observed Bathybius having turned out to be a myth, its place is now occupied by an inferential Bathybius. The chasm between the inorganic and the organic was not bridged by the results of actual observation; but it must yet be bridged, even if only with a guess and a recanted theory. This substitution of the inferential for the observed is unscientific. A primary fault of Professor Huxley's latest definition of the basis of evolution is self-contradiction.

Huxley persists in his forced recantation in spite of all the alleged discoveries in the Bay of Biscay and the Adriatic. But the gelatinous mass, which, according to Huxley's New-York Lectures, is the common foundation of all life, he defined. His words permit no doubt that he meant Bathybius and its associated forms of life, as Häckel does in similar language, and not protoplasm in the minute forms. in which it exists in the living tissues of to-day. Huxley affirmed in New York, that, "if we traced. back the animal and vegetable world, we should find, preceding what now exists, animals and plants not identical with them, but like them, only increasing their differences as we go back in time, and at the same time becoming simpler and simpler, until finally we should arrive at the gelatinous mass, which, so far as our present knowledge goes, is the common foun

dation of all life. The tendency of science is to justify the speculation that that also could be traced farther back, perhaps to the general nebulous condition of matter" (Tribune Pamphlet Report, p. 16).

Very plainly, by this gelatinous mass, at which we should "arrive " by a process of investigation carried backward to the first living organisms and to the nebulous condition of matter, Huxley does not mean protoplasm in minute forms in the veins of the nettle, and in the other living tissues of to-day, and in them constituting what his famous lecture of a few years ago called "the physical basis of life." But he affirmed that our "knowledge," and not merely our theory, goes" so far " as to show that this gelatinous mass is "the foundation of all life."

In view of his recantation as to this sheet of living matter beneath the seas, this assertion is self-contradictory. Since no such gelatinous mass has ever been seen, the substitution of an inferential for an observed sheet of living slime enveloping the world is unscientific. With the argument of Huxley, that of Strauss takes its place among exploded and ludi

crous errors.

5. It follows, also, from the facts now stated, that Professor Huxley's New-York Lectures are defective in omitting the most essential part of their subject; that is, in failing to explain how evolution bridges the chasm between the inorganic and the organic, or the lifeless and the living forms of matter.

6. There have been and are at least three schools of evolutionists, those who deny the Divine exist

ence, those who ignore it, and those who affirm it; or the atheistic, the agnostic, and the theistic. Carl Vogt, Buchner, and Moleschott belong to the atheistic school of evolutionists; Huxley and Tyndall and Spencer, to the agnostic; Dana, Gray, Owen, Dawson, Carpenter, Sir J. Herschell, Sir W. Thomson, and, in the judgment of Professor Gray; Darwin himself, to the theistic. .

7. Of the theistic form of the doctrine of evolution, there are theoretically three varieties: (1) That which limits the supernatural action in the origination of species to the creation of a few primordial cells; (2) That which makes Divine action in the origination of species chiefly indirect, or through the agency of natural causes, and yet sometimes direct, or through special creation; (3) That which makes God immanent in all natural law, and regards every result of cosmic forces as the outcome of present Divine action.

8. In the history of the discussion of evolution, the origin of species among plants and animals has been explained by at least seven distinct hypotheses:

(1.) Self-elevation by appetency, or use and effort. That is the theory of Monboddo, Lamarck, and Cope.

(2.) Modification by the surrounding condition of the medium. That is Geoffrey St. Hillaire, Quatrefages, Draper, and Spencer.

(3.) Natural selection under the struggle for existence, with spontaneous variability, causing the survival of the fittest. That is Darwin and Häckel.

(4.) Derivation by pre-ordained succession of organic forms under an innate tendency or internal force. That is Owen and Mivart.

(5.) Evolution by unconscious intelligence. That is Morell, Laycock, and Murphy.

(6.) Immanent action and direction of Divine power, working by the purposive collocation and adjustment of natural forces, acting without breaks; or the theory of creative evolution. That is Asa Gray, Baden Powell, and the Duke of Argyll.

(7.) The same immanent Divine power collocating and adjusting natural forces, but with breaks of special intervention, and this notably in the case of man. That is Dana, and Darwin's great co-discoverer of evolution, Alfred Wallace. (See arts. on "Evolution," by Professor Youmans and President Seelye, in JOHNSON'S Cyclopædia and JOHNSON'S Natural History.)

What Huxley calls the Miltonic theory of creation, he did well not to call the biblical; for it is generally admitted by specialists in exegetical science, that the writings of Moses neither fix the date, nor definitely describe the mode, of creation. Professor Dana, in the closing chapter of his celebrated "Geology," exhibits the first chapter of Genesis as thoroughly harmonious with geology, and as both true and divine. Many theologians combine their distinctive positions with some theistic view of evolution, especially with that held by Professor Dana. Owenism seems at least as sure of a future as unmodified Darwinism. Dana and Häckel represent

respectively, I should say, the use and the abuse of the theory of evolution.

9. It is thus evident, from the history of recent speculation alone, that there are, or well may be, at least thirty different views as to the past history of nature; but Professor Huxley affirms, that, so far as he knows," there have been, and well can be, only three." That nature has existed from eternity, and that it arose, according to the Miltonic hypothesis, in six natural days, and that it originated by evolution, of which latter he gives a definition,—these are his three theories; and they are a curiously incomplete statement of facts in the case. It does not follow, that, if the first two be overthrown, only the theory represented by his definition is left to be chosen ; but this is the implicit and explicit assumption of

the New-York Lectures.

10. It is the theistic, and not the agnostic or the atheistic, school of evolution which is increasing in influence among the higher authorities of science.

Some agnostics are proud of exhibiting under almost atheistic phraseology a really theistic philosophical tendency. Spencer's negations in natural theology amount to the assertion that our knowledge of the Divine existence is like our knowledge of the back-side of the moon, we know that it is, not what it is. But I assuredly know that there is not a ripple on any sedgy shore, or in the open sea of the whole gleaming watery zone, from here to Japan, which is not influenced by that unknown side as much as by the known. So, in the far-flashing

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