France, Professor Paul Broca says: "The great capacity of the brain, the development of the frontal region, the fine elliptical form of the anterior part of the profile of the skull, are incontestable characteristics of superiority, such as we are accustomed to meet with in civilized races.' "' *

Professor Virchow says:

When we study the fossil man of the quaternary period, who must, of course, have stood comparatively near to our primitive ancestors in the order of descent, or rather ascent, we find always a man, just such men as are now. . . . The old troglodytes, pile-villagers, and bog-people prove to be quite a respectable society. They have heads so large that many a living person would only be too happy to possess such. Nay, if we gather

together the whole sum of the fossil men hitherto known, and put them parallel with those of the present time, we can decidedly pronounce that there are among living men a much larger number of individuals who show a relatively inferior type than there are among the fossils known up to this time. Every addition to the amount of objects which we have attained as materials for discussion has removed us further from the hypothesis propounded. †

* Wallace: Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection, p. 336, f.

The Freedom of Science in the Modern State, p. 63.

XV. THE ATOMIC THEORY.

THE atomic theory seems fatal to evolution. The atoms, or, if you choose, the molecules, of which all matter is composed, have never changed their properties. It is inconsistent with the concept of "atom" that it should ever have been larger or smaller. There are no "natural" causes for this state of things, but the state is manifest. If evolution were a universal law atoms would be subject to it; but atoms, by their essential constitution, cannot be subject to the law of evolution; the conclusion is manifest. Moreover, the exact equality of all molecules, and of each to all others, shows, as Sir John Herschel pointed out, "the essential character of a manufactured article,” and therefore cannot have been evolved, and cannot be eternal.

The late gifted and lamented Professor Clifford said:

If there is any name among contemporary natural philosophers to whom is due the reverence of all true students of science, it is that of Professor Clark Maxwell.

From Professor Maxwell's very remarkable "Discourse on Molecules," delivered before the British Association, at Bradford, September, 1873, the following important extract is taken :

In the heavens we discover by their light, and by their light alone, stars so distant from each other that no material thing can ever have passed from one to another; and yet this light, which is to us the sole evidence of the existence of these distant worlds, tells us also that each of them is built up of molecules of the same kinds as those which we find on earth. A molecule of hydrogen, for example, whether in Sirius or in Arcturus, executes its vibrations in precisely the same time.

Each molecule, therefore, throughout the universe bears impressed upon it the stamp of a metric system as distinctly as does the metre of the archives at Paris, or the double royal cubit of the temple of Karnac.

No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction.

None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are, therefore, unable to ascribe either the existence

of the molecules or the identity of their properties to any of the causes which we call natural.

On the other hand, the exact equality of each molecule to all others of the same kind gives it, as Sir John Herschel has well said, the essential character of a manufactured article, and precludes the idea of its being eternal and self-existent.

XVI. SPONTANEOUS GENERATION.

If the theory of evolution is to be accepted, it must take in the whole universe. A "Link" does not help us: we want links which all belong to the same chain, and enough to make a chain. Physical organisms must have arisen from the very lowest conceivable type into all the perfections known among them, and then they must have been able to take on life. Have they ever done so? This makes the hypothesis of spontaneous animal generation indispensable. Evolution stands or falls with it. Why should evolutionists be wasting their time in showing the differentiations among vegetables on the one hand, and animals on the other? Grant everything that has been claimed in those departments and a thousandfold as much, and

nothing would be gained for evolution, whatever light might be thrown upon development. If evolution be true our ancestors ought constantly through the ages to have been witnessing, not only uncountable numbers of cases in which vegetables and animals have been passing and have passed from one species to another, and it ought to be a phenomenon common to contemporaneous observation, but, in addition, spontaneous generation ought not to be now an uncommon phenomenon, and the records of the past should abound with cases. Paleontology should

furnish facts fixed in the rocks to sustain this hypothesis. No man should be called upon to disprove it; its supporters must prove it by giving such multiplied cases of its occurrence as to show that it is the rule in the case, not the exception. Have they done so? On the contrary, not a single instance has ever been exhibited. If anything has been supposed to be a case of spontaneous generation in our day, it has been proved, on the examination of competent scientists, to be simply a case of life from previous life, and not at all the passage of the non-living