cause of that deterioration, then I think we arrive at one great, if not the greatest answer, to the whole theory. I mean this: I pass from that one idea which has been prevalent in my mind, to another, to the idea Mr. Manners struck the chord of, when he spoke of our ignoring any idea of there being a great Saviour-man come to recover man's lost estate. I consider this theory may be good to apply to vegetables and animals and fish, and all the various species with which this world is stocked. There may be causes in climates, in various temperatures, to bring about changes; but when you come to man, you are applying it to a being to whom no law that you can in any way bring to bear ought to be applied. I mean this; that the law of man's fall, the law of man's own self-will, what we Christians call free-will, has deteriorated mankind. Let us take the case of man coming from the ark, I mean Noah and his three sons. We have a distinct proof in my mind of the fact that there was a deterioration from that day forth on account of the sin of one man. They came out of the ark, and we find that the descendants of Ham have ever since gone back because of man's sin. It appears that that is ignored, excepting that Mr. Manners alluded to it once to-night. I think, therefore, that this theory is one which ought not to be applied to mankind or what may happen to man.

The CHAIRMAN.-As the time is so far advanced, I shall not call upon any other gentleman to speak; and I think it is only fair-as Mr. Warington has been replied to in writing, and the discussion to-night has been so long,that Mr. Warington should have the same opportunity of consulting Mr. Reddie's written Reply that he had of reading Mr. Warington's paper. This is also Mr. Reddie's own wish; and I shall therefore, with your permission, adjourn the discussion to our next meeting.

The Meeting was then adjourned.

ORDINARY MEETING, APRIL 1, 1867.

THE REV. WALTER MITCHELL, VICE-PRESIDENT, IN THE CHAIR.

The minutes of the previous Meeting were read and confirmed. Afterwards, the discussion on Mr. WARINGTON'S Paper on "The Credibility of Darwinism" was resumed, as follows :

The CHAIRMAN.-The subject of Mr. Warington's paper has been so fully discussed, that the time has now arrived when it is my duty to sum up the matter by stating my own views, leaving to Mr. Warington the right of reply. I may express my own views by saying that nothing urged by Mr. Warington in his valuable paper has led me to believe the hypothesis of Mr. Darwin one whit more credible than I ever conceived it to be. The matured opinion I formed, not only after a careful study of Mr. Darwin's book, but after a full consideration of all the alterations and additions of successive editions, remains unaltered. In the first place, I protest against the principle laid down by Mr. Warington, that a hypothesis is to be held as credible unless it can be proved to be impossible, as contrary to all sound principles and to the inductive philosophy of Bacon. I regard this method of procedure as a retrograde step, bringing us back to that system of feigning and inventing hypotheses which was the source of so much error before the time of Bacon; the abandonment of which, and the procedure of the search after truth by a sounder method, have caused so great an advance in our knowledge of nature since his day. I can find no better summary of the Baconian method of induction than that given in so few words by Newton in the queries appended to his work on optics :-" The main business of natural philosophy is to argue from phenomena without feigning hypotheses, and to deduce causes from facts until we come to the first cause, which is certainly not mechanical." Now the method Mr. Warington (if I rightly understand him) sets before us, is the direct reverse of this. It is, first, to feign a hypothesis, and then see what facts we can find to agree with it, ignoring those that are contrary to it. And though both Mr. Darwin and Mr. Warington do not shrink from an approach to a first cause, Mr. Darwin's followers have not hesitated to disavow a belief in any first cause which is not mechanical. Bacon, like Newton, tells us, that "analysis consists in making experiVOL. II.

H

ments and observations, and in drawing general conclusions from them by induction, and admitting of no objections against the conclusion but such as are taken from experiments or other certain truths, for hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental philosophy." If the hypothetical method is to be excluded from experimental philosophy, I believe it must be from every branch of natural philosophy, as one unfit for leading the mind to the discovery of truth. Indeed the want of success of the Greek school, which used so freely the hypothetical method, is a caution to those who would have us to retrograde by following their example. According to Mr. Warington's method of arriving at truth, I am bound to accept a hypothesis provided it be credible although unproven; and this, too, though facts seem to contradict the hypothesis, because some unknown but credibly possible circumstances may make the discordant facts accordant. To take his own example, the perturbations of the planetary system, produced by a planet now proved to exist-viz., Neptune, should not be taken, even if that planet had not been discovered, as adverse to the reception of the law of gravitation; for it is perfectly credible that a planet incapable of reflecting light, and so not discoverable by a telescope, might exist capable of producing the observed perturbations. Now, I maintain that Newton himself would never have held a law of gravitation requiring such a possible credible hypothesis of a planet incapable of reflecting light to bolster it up. The belief that the moon is made of green cheese, taken generally as a proverb of the extremest credulity, becomes, according to this system, a tenable hypothesis; for though extremely improbable, no one can say that it is absolutely incredible. But waiving all objections to Mr. Warington's principle of admitting a hypothesis confessedly unproven by facts, because it is credible and may hereafter be proved, I must confess that on his own grounds that gentleman has failed to make Darwinism credible to my mind. In the first place, let us see what facts in nature Mr. Darwin's hypothesis is supposed to account for. As far as I understand it, it assumes that if we review the whole animate creation, vegetable and animal, and strive to classify the creatures belonging to either kingdom, we shall find the whole so linked together in one continuous chain, unbroken by any breach of continuity, that it is impossible to say, here one species ends, and here another begins. Mr. Darwin's hypothesis to account for this continuous chain of animate beings is that they all sprung either from one progenitor, or as many progenitors as the naturalist can find unbroken chains of animate beings insensibly passing from one change of structure or organs to another. Mr. Darwin feels that he must assume the existence of such chains of organized beings, though he cannot prove their existence, otherwise he would not have to account for the vast flaws in these chains, by the supposition of a vast number of necessary links being lost or undiscovered in the geological strata of past ages. Assuming the existence of all necessary links not found in the present animate creation, either in the defective records of the past or among undiscovered beings of the present, he would seem to think that he can prove the existence of eight or ten such chains. That in all these chains one being not

only succeeds another by almost insensible changes of structure, but that organs found in a rudimentary state in one being are found in perfection in some being further down the chain. He accounts for this continuous chain by the hypothesis that every member of any one of these eight or ten chains has descended from one common ancestor. That the differences to be found between any given members of the chain are accountable for, by a law that any accidental change of structure taking place in a plant or animal is transmissible to its offspring. That, if favourable to the existence of the creature, it will give it an advantage in the struggle of life, and be perpetuated until improved again by accident. That this hypothesis is sufficient to account for all the varieties of structure and for the formation of every complex organ of animal or vegetable beings we may find in the animate world. Assuming that he has proved the existence of some eight or ten beings from which all others have been derived by natural descent, he says in his first edition, "Therefore I should infer from analogy that probably all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth have descended from one form, into which life was breathed by the Creator." Here, in passing, I cannot refrain from remarking that this admission of a Creator breathing life into one form at least, has disappeared from the later editions of Mr. Darwin's bookMr. WARINGTON.-It is to be found in another page.

The CHAIRMAN.-I have not seen it.

Mr. WARINGTON.-It is in the last edition, on another page." *

The CHAIRMAN.-Now I ask, why are we called upon to receive this hypothesis with so little proof? For Mr. Darwin has never given us the proofs of his hypothesis-for these we are to wait for a future work. Why are we to receive a hypothesis so monstrous, so incredible as I conceive it to be? For what other hypothesis is it to be substituted? For this, that instead of the Creator breathing the breath of life into one primordial being, he did it into many. That the surprising uniformity seen to run through the animate creation, is the uniformity of plan of one Divine Creator. That organs and structures have not been formed by chance changes, propagated by the destruction of weaker creatures, but owe the marvellous wisdom, marking their design for the welfare of the creatures in whom they are found, to the direct power of their Creator. It has ever been held as a principle in natural philosophy, that we are not called upon to abandon any law or hypothesis founded on a large induction of facts, till that law or that hypothesis is found insufficient to account for any new facts that may present themselves. Mr. Warington has referred to an analogy-an analogy of which Mr. Darwin seems exceedingly proud— between the simplicity of his own law of the formation of species by what he calls the "Law of the preservation of races in the struggle of life by means of natural selection," and that of the law of gravitation. Notwithstanding

* Mr. Darwin has removed the admission of a Creator of one form at least from the passage where it originally stood in the first edition, in the middle of the work, to a page near the end.-W. M.

the possibility of a dark planet incapable of reflecting light, it has hitherto been held by natural philosophers, without exception, that one discordant fact from observed phenomena, not mathematically accounted for, would be sufficient to upset the Newtonian law of gravitation, although it seemed before to afford a solution for such complex motions of planets and satellites, and so many phenomena of nature as it is supposed to do. Clairvaux was about to express his opinion that the law of gravitation failed, because he found a discrepancy of a small fraction between the moon's observed place and that calculated according to the theory of Newton. Here I cannot help expressing my opinion that our Honorary Secretary has had hard measure dealt out to him, because he has ventured to express his scepticism as to the law of gravitation. He has not expressed his scepticism without giving sound and good reasons for it. Why am I to be so little indulgent to heresy, if it be heresy, in matters of science, when I am called upon to be so charitable to any amount of heterodoxy in religion? That while the Bible may be called in question by any man, and disregarded as the revelation of God's will; while it may be treated as a collection of fables; while its clearest expressions may be regarded as mere apocalyptic visions;—I do not see why, when all this is allowed with so much cold indifference, a man is to be branded as a philosophical heretic because he cannot accept as sound every demonstration of Newton's Principia, or Laplace's Mechanism of the Heavens. Mr. Reddie gave good reasons, I say, for his scepticism the other evening, but some gentlemen who were present seemed to think I neglected my duty in not calling him to order for wandering from the subject of discussion. A reference to the law of gravitation was a part of the discussion, and Mr. Reddie, I conceive, was quite within the proper limits of the discussion, in maintaining that the law of gravitation was not so incontrovertibly proved as it had been assumed to be. What is the state of the case? The discovery of Neptune in the very place in the heavens where the observed perturbations of Uranus, pointed out by exact calculation on the Newtonian hypothesis that such a planet should exist, such discovery being no casual one, but following directly from the calculations, has been trumpeted forth by scientific men as one of the greatest triumphs of modern philosophy. Now Mr. Reddie calls in question the accuracy of the statements made in all the more modern text-books of astronomy on this subject. He has a perfect right to do so, if he can produce proper evidence. He asserts that the two calculations made by Adams and Le Verrier of the position of the planet causing the perturbations of Uranus, did not by any means agree; that they did not by any means arrive at the same position of the planet; and that the discrepancies in the calculated elements of that planet were considerable; that the planet Neptune, when found, was not in the place assigned to it by either Adams or Le Verrier; and, finally, that the elements of the orbit of Neptune, as determined from observation, differ so considerably from those calculated by Adams and Le Verrier, that they cannot be made to agree with either. I maintain, therefore, that our Honorary Secretary is perfectly philosophical in urging these facts against this argument for the Newtonian