and the strange anomalies presented by the crossfertilization of many plants, should all, as Mr. Darwin has urged, be taken into account in considering it.” This is all he says, or that can be said, in reply to this objection.

Häckel asserts that sometimes hybrids are not, and five hundred other authorities, and all the proverbs

of breeders, affirm that true hybrids are, sterile. Not true..!

It is safe to say that evolutionists concede,

11. That natural selection cannot take leaps, and that therefore a multitude of links must have existed. between man and the higher apes.

12. That after a diligent search, for nearly forty years, for traces of these missing links, none have been found.

13. That, in spite of all imperfections of the geological record, the destruction of these relics, without traces, is amazing, and that their absence leaves the argument for evolution weakest where it should be strongest.

14. That the oldest human fossils exhibit in essential characteristics no approach to the ape type.

"No remains of fossil man," says Professor Dana, in a most significant passage of his "Geology" (edition of 1875, p. 603)," bear evidence to less perfect erectness of structure than in civilized man, or to any nearer approach to the man-ape in essential characteristics. The existing man-apes belong to lines that reached up to them as their ultimatum; but, of that line. which is supposed to have reached upward to man, not the first link below the lowest level of exist

ing man has yet been found. This is the more extraordinary, in view of the fact, that, from the lowest limits in existing man, there are all possible gradations up to the highest; while below that limit there is an abrupt fall to the ape-level, in which the cubic capacity of the brain is one-half less. If the links ever existed, their annihilation without trace is so extremely improbable, that it may be pronounced impossible. Until some are found, science cannot assert that they ever existed." [Applause.]

In regard to these missing links, Darwin himself says that their absence is amazing. Even Huxley says of what is unquestionably one of the oldest fossil skeletons of man, that it has "a fair, average human skull." The lengths of the bones of the arm and thigh of the man of Mentone, one of the oldest human fossils yet discovered, have the proportions ordinarily found in man, and the skull is of excellent Caucasian type. (See DANA'S Geology, frontispiece, and pp. 575, 577, and 603.) The poorest fossil human brain is twice the cubic capacity of the best ape brain (DANA'S Geology, p. 603).

It must be noticed that evolutionists admit,

15. That, if any animal can be shown to possess organs or peculiarities of no use to it in the struggle for existence, the theory of natural selection breaks down.

3

16. That the hairlessness of man was not only of no use, but was a disadvantage, to him in the struggle for existence, and cannot be accounted for by natural selection, and must be accounted for by sexual selection.

17. That many animals possess peculiarities, which, so far as we can see, can be of no use to them in the struggle for existence, and cannot be accounted for by any form of selection, natural or sexual.

In his "Descent of Man," published in 1871, Mr. Darwin himself makes these great concessions. "Natural selection," said Mr. Darwin in his "Origin of Species," published in 1859, "can act only by taking advantage of slight successive variations; it can never take a leap, but must advance by short and slow stages. If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."

6

Compare that extract with this: "I now admit, after reading the essay of Nägeli on plants, and the remarks by various authors with respect to animals, that, in the earlier editions of my Origin of Species,' I probably attributed too much to the action of natural selection or the survival of the fittest. I had not formerly sufficiently considered the existence of many structures which appear to be, as far as we can judge, neither beneficial nor injurious; and this I believe to be one of the greatest oversights as yet detected in my works " (Descent of Man, English edition, vol. i. p. 152).

It may be safely asserted that evolutionists concede,

18. That whether the cause of variation is a force exterior or one interior to the modified organism, or a combination of these forces, is not known.

19. That it is probable that variation is due much more to some innate force in the modified organism than to any thing outside of it.

20. That the influence of natural selection has been exaggerated; that it explains much, but not every thing; that it deserves only a co-ordinate rank with sexual selection as the explanation of the origin of man; and that very possibly it should have a subordinate rank in contrast with yet unknown causes of variation.

"No doubt man, as well as every other animal," says the Charles Darwin of to-day, "presents structures which, as far as we can judge with our little knowledge, are not now of any service to him, nor have been so during any former period of his existence, either in relation to his general conditions of life, or of one sex to the other. Such structures cannot be accounted for by any form of selection, or by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts" (Descent of Man, vol. ii. p. 387).

"In the greater number of cases we can only say that the cause of each slight variation and of each monstrosity lies much more in the nature or constitution of the organism than in the nature of the surrounding conditions, though new and changed conditions certainly play an important part in exciting organic changes of all kinds" (Ibid., vol. ii. p. 388).

These astonishing modifications of his own theory by Darwin induce Professor St. George Mivart to assert in his "Lessons from Nature," a work which has but just crossed the Atlantic, that "the hypothesis of natural selection originally put forward as the origin

of species has been really abandoned by Mr. Darwin himself, and is untenable. It is a misleading positive term, denoting negative effects, and, as made use of by those who would attribute to it the origin of man, is an irrational conception," "a puerile hypothesis" (MIVART, PROFESSOR ST. GEORGE, Lessons from Nature, London, 1876, pp. 280-331). Any who remember Professor Huxley's article on Darwin's Critics, in "The Contemporary Review," for November, 1871, will recall the strong terms in which he speaks of Mivart's scientific and philosophical competence. But Mivart holds nearly Professor Theophilus Parsons's and Owen's creed, that species have originated by a force interior, and not exterior, to the modified organism. To that position Darwin draws nearer and nearer. Among Darwinians there seems to be a conspiracy of silence as to this fact. Darwinism is becoming Owenism. Darwin himself is not a good Darwinian. [Applause.]

:

God be thanked that this age takes nothing for granted! No it does take one thing for granted, its own superiority to all other ages; and yet one other thing, — that there are not more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in its philosophy. But, my friends, the scientific method requires, that, when we run up our list of causes, chemical, electrical, physical, mental, spiritual, - we should put at the top, to reach on into the infinite, another class, -the unknown. Even in the nineteenth century, there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy.