which is the reason assigned by the theory for its transmission, but could not possibly be of any advantage at all.

If, again, the theory be sound, we have a right to anticipate that where an experiment has extended over at least 6,000 years—some would say 60,000-where the struggle for existence has been severe, and favourable variations have often occurred, some definite advance would have been produced. Such a case is that of man; no one can say he has had no struggle for existence. Take the case of the labourer, where development of muscle is so advantageous, and where use does develop certain muscles in a high degree. Now here is a distinctly useful modification; but are his children born with a more fully developed muscle than their father? Is the race of such men steadily growing more muscnlar? The reverse seems nearer the truth. Once more, therefore, the theory lacks the evidence needed for verification. But Tyndall says, and rightly, that "the function of the experimental philosopher is to combine the conditions of nature and produce her results"; but, he adds, "this was the method of Darwin." Here I differ from him, because I consider Darwin's experiments on pigeons, to which Tyndall refers, as being quite distinct from the methods of nature. He selected a variety that struck his fancy, and with his eye directed to the particular appearance which he wished to exaggerate, he selected it as it reappeared in suceessive broods, and thus added increment to increment, until, as he says, an astonishing amount of divergence from the parent type was effected. Here, then, we have wish, observation, intelligence, and voluntary selection, every one of which is a conscious state, and every one of which is wanting in nature. Am I justified from the evidence, that a conscious intelligence, having an end in view, can produce some slight useless variations, for such are those of pigeons, in inferring that nature without consciousness, without intelligence, and without a purpose, can produce endless beneficial variations? Am I warranted in inferring that, because a compositor can, by selecting the particular type he requires, arrange them into a connected statement; therefore, if you fling them on the floor, they will arrange themselves into a more difficult and longer statement? If I be, then I strangely misapprehend the nature of evidence; but if I am not, Darwin's experiments are of no evidential value whatever as to nature's method; and his hypothesis is not a good one, because in this case at least it is not in agreement with fact, does not allow of deductive iuference, and conflicts with known laws of nature.

He also instances Darwin's investigations into the cell-making

instinct of the hive-bee as an instance of his analytic and synthetic skill, and in confirmation of evolution. That Darwin's expertments were most interesting, and afforded additional illustrations of the wondrous instinct of the hive-bee I gladly acknowledge, but that they afford evidence of this power having been acquired by natural selection I cannot admit. The experiments were made with hive-bees; that is, with bees already possessing this economical instinct, and could not, therefore, show how they acquired it. The hypothesis is that humblebees have gradually evolved themselves into hive-bees; to prove this by experiment, he must collect a number of humble-bees together, see if they will swarm, and then, supposing them to swarm, watch whether they make any progress towards cellbuilding. When he has taken some steps in this direction with success, he will have commenced experiments affording important evidence, but not before. Another flaw in this explanation seems to be that the bees "transmit by inheritance their newly-acquired economical instincts to new swarms." Is this a fact? The bees that make the cells have no descendants, and the bees that have the descendants, the drones, do not make the cells; how then can they have the instincts without doing the work? Darwin has shown how it is useful for communities to have working insects which are neuters; but I cannot find where he attempts to show that non-constructing insects can transmit a constructing instinct. The next important point to which attention is called, is the important doctrine of teleology. Tyndall says, "It is the mind thus stored with the choicest materials of the teleologist that rejects teleology, seeking to refer these wonders to natural causes. They illustrate, according to him, the method of nature, not the 'technic' of a man-like artificer." On this point Huxley speaks still more decidedly. "The teleology which supposes that the eye, such as we see it in man or one of the higher vertebrata, was made with the precise structure which it exhibits, for the purpose of enabling the animal to see, has undoubtedly received its death-blow." Nevertheless, it is necessary to remember that there is a wider teleology, which is not touched by the doctrine of evolution, but is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of evolution. That proposition is, that the whole world, living and not living, is the result of the mutual interaction, according to definite laws, of the forces possessed by the molecules of which the primitive nebulosity of the universe was composed. If this be true, it is no less certain that the existing world lay, potentially, in the cosmic vapour; and that a sufficient intelligence could, from a

knowledge of the properties of the molecules of that vapour, have predicted, say the Fauna of Britain in 1869, with as much certainty as one can say what will happen to the vapour of the breath in a cold winter's day. Why limit the prediction to the fauna, if we be, as he says we are, machines as much as the fauna; why not have been able to predict this paper this evening, and also the criticisms on it, if it be thought worthy of any? Why not predict the state of every man's mind and life at any particular moment? The one ought, by his hypothesis, to be as possible as the other. But as regards teleology, are all the phenomena of nature to teach this, that by merest accident, according to Darwin, or by some unconscious force possessed by primitive nebulosity, according to Huxley, the eye for example just happens to be as it is, but that all the structure, every detail of which is so admirably adapted for seeing, had in its combinations no reference whatever to sight. That the fact that we are able to see with the eye and hear with the ear are only accidents, in accordance, indeed, with law, as all accidents are, but not the purposes of either; in fact, that they have no purpose; for if they have a purpose or end of any kind, that is teleological. Are we also to infer that those cases of-adaptation I was going to say, but may not, as adaptation, Huxley says, has received its "death-blow"-those cases where flowers and insects are mutually suitable, and which Tyndall himself quotes, are mere coincident suitabilities, the one having no designed relation to the other? All this may by its disciples be called inductive philosophy. Perhaps it is presumptuous in me, but I would call it by another name, as I cannot discover the inductions, still less the philosophy. It is wholly unnecessary for me, in this Society, to point out the overwhelming and accurate evidence in favour of teleology, which has superabundantly every test of a true theory. There is another doctrine coming prominently to the front now, which was only alluded to in the Belfast address, but which formed the subject of a masterly lecture by Huxley: I allude to automatism. There is difficulty in dealing with this subject, because the word has not yet been satisfactorily defined in its scientific application: one thing, however, is clear, that by animal automata are meant conscious machines. Huxley says "that consciousness is a spectator not an actor, that we are in fact conscious machines." The facts from which he infers this show a certain amount of involuntary, or what he calls automatic action; but they do not warrant the further inference that, because some actions are automatic, all are; that because our circulation, &c., is involuntary, our choice of evil rather than good is involuntary

also. This is contradictory of consciousness, which testifies that volition is not a farce; that we can compare and select one action rather than another; that we can, if we will, choose the right and reject the wrong. If we be only machines, all terms of praise or blame are fallacious; there can be neither right nor wrong, virtue nor vice. But our whole moral consciousness testifies to the existence of these things; it is a fundamental law of our nature that we should approve or disapprove in certain cases; and consequently, whatever hypothesis contradicts this, must be so far unsound. The surest evidence we can have testifies that we are voluntary agents, and not involuntary machines.

Several other illustrations from Tyndall's address, as well as from evolution in general, might be selected to show that many of its inferences are from insufficient or untrustworthy evidence; that it often violates what we know to be laws of nature; that its deductions are but seldom verified; but what I have selected are sufficient for my present purpose. It must not for a moment be supposed that because evidence is sifted and explanations tested, the fullest investigation of nature is objected to; yet this is what our opponents often insinuate, or openly state. For example, Professor Roscoe says, in the conclusion of his lecture at Manchester on the atomic theory, "In order to flourish and produce fruit, science must be free-free to experiment and observe, without let or hindrance; free to draw the conclusions which may flow from such experiments or observations; free, above all, to speculate and theorize into regions removed far beyond the reach of our senses." To all this I am convinced every theologian will give a hearty assent: it is not knowledge, but ignorance we have to fear, either in our own department of thought or any other. What we do object to are conclusions that do not flow from observation or experiment, speculations that are not only beyond the reach of sense, but also of reason; the wandering, fancy free, in regions where the logician can find no solid ground for his foot, and consequently cannot follow. We object to the freedom which is untrammelled by the laws of observation, of inference, and of verification. And we object to these things more in the interest of science than of theology, because while science may be seriously hindered by the blundering of injudicious friends, or irrational votaries; the fundamental bases of theology are too firmly seated in the consciousness of humanity ever to be overturned by any amount of illogical reasoning on the part of its friends, or any amount of illogical rancour on the part of its foes.

The CHAIRMAN (the Rev. Prebendary Row)—having conveyed the thanks of the Institute to Dr. M'Cann for his paper,-observed, that he had carefully studied the general laws of evidence, but that he had given less attention to those which regulate the inductions of physical science than to any other branch of the question. No doubt the principles of the paper were capable of a far wider application than to this special subject, and the application of the principles contained in the latter part of it were of much value. That portion of the paper which dealt with the subject of transmitted instincts seemed worthy of great consideration, as the question was becoming one of grave importance in reference to the controversies of the day; but before any general theory could be laid down upon this subject, it would be necessary to collect a much greater number of facts respecting it than those already in our possession. He far from wished to dispute that instincts were in some way or other transmissible; but it was quite clear that we were not in a position to determine the law which regulated their transmission. The fact that the father of the working bee was a drone who never gathered honey or performed any labour in the hive, and the mother one whose exclusive business was to breed, afforded a conclusive proof that the instinct of the working bee was not a mere accumulation of instincts gradually acquired through a long succession of fathers and mothers. He made this remark because there were not wanting persons occupying a high standing in the ranks of physical science, who affirmed that the moral nature of man was merely the result of a mass of accumulated instincts gradually acquired in the course of an indefinite (nay, almost infinite) number of generations. No less unknown, he might almost say capricious, was the law which regulated the transmission of likeness, whether it were mental or bodily, passing over one or two generations, and reappearing in another; but the transmission of likeness in some way or other was unquestionably a fact. In the same manner there could be no doubt that many of our actions, and even of the operations of our intellects, were automatic. Many of his own mental operations were carried on in a manner that he was utterly unable to analyze the process by which they were performed. What was designated "cerebration" might account for some of these phenomena, but he did not think that it could account for all of them. Again, with respect to adaptation, more popularly designated design; any one who examined the structure of living organisms, and yet who denied that they testified to the existence of an Intelligence, seemed to him to maintain a most astonishing paradox. He was glad to find that the late Mr. J. S. Mill, in his posthumous essays, admitted the validity of this argument. He (Mr. Row) admitted that the argument from design had been unduly pressed in some cases; but it was manifest that the innumerable adaptations in nature could only be accounted for on the supposition that they originated in intelligence. What was the only substitute that scientific men who denied its existence could find for it? An infinite chain of happy coincidences and concurrences of events during the eternity of the