to mourning. In science, the passing away of systems is generally an absorption of lesser into more comprehensive laws. The question of the truth of a new scientific theory is not as to its everlastingness, but as to its superiority to the views it seeks to supersede. Does it involve fewer assumptions? Does it account for more facts? Does it harmonize conflicting opinion? Does it open new inquiries and incite to fresh research? These are the tests that determine the acceptance of the theory, and, if it fulfils these conditions, it is held to be true.
Now, how does the doctrine of Evolution answer to these tests? It has arisen as an outgrowth of the latest and highest knowledge, has steadily made its way, in the teeth of inexorable criticism, to a large acceptance among the most disciplined thinkers of the period. It has been simmering in the minds of men of science for a century, and has now reached a point where it is capable of being formulated; where it is of great and acknowledged value for the guidance of scientific exploration, and it thus answers to the highest uses of theory. It is, moreover, becoming every day increasingly consonant with facts in the various branches of science, and is now far more congruous with the state of knowledge than any other hypothesis yet applied to the range of facts which it attempts to explain. The proof of the theory is unquestionably incomplete, but all theories are accepted under the same conditions. At the worst, it stands to-day where the theory of gravitation stood in the time of Newton, which, as Baden Powell remarks, "was beset by palpable contradictions in its results till many years after Newton's death."
On a complex and difficult scientific question of this kind, authority goes for something, and Mr. Godwin recognizes it. He remarks: "Can we say that any questions, on which such cautious observers and life-long students as Darwin, Owen, Huxley, Wallace, and Agassiz, still debate, are settled questions?" Certainly not; but, when their fundamental principles are accepted by four out of five of the eminent authorities which are cited as differing about them, we must acknowledge that the weight of authority is very strongly on one side. Nor is this all. The eminent scientific men who have adopted the view of Evolution, and that, too, against the powerful pressure of public prejudice, are to be numbered by scores and hundreds. In fact, the movement among naturalists, for the last ten years, toward a general doctrine of development, has amounted almost to a "stampede." This is not mere unsupported assertion. Here comes the latest scientific book of the season, "The Depths of the Sea," by the eminent Professor of Natural History in the University of Edinburgh, Wyville Thompson, and he says: "I do not think that I am speaking too strongly when I say that there is now scarcely a single competent general naturalist who is not prepared to accept some form of the doctrine of Evolution." Prof. Agassiz, indeed, still clings to his long-cherished opinions; but it is notorious that, on this question, his old students are running away from him, and his hypothesis, that there is an epidemic aberration upon this subject among the naturalists of the age, will hardly be held as a sufficient explanation of the phenomena. On the basis, therefore, of the judgment of the great body of those most competent to form an opinion, we cannot help thinking that Mr. Godwin was not only in error when he characterized the theory of Evolution as counterfeit science; but that he is also in error when he declares it to be a fugitive speculation, and not an accredited principle, entitled to the weight of valid scientific authority.
But, aside from the question of authority, Mr. Godwin argues against the
