With regard to the absolute datum question we have seen that Science has two alternatives before it--either to be merely intellectual and to seek for its start-point in some quite external (and imaginary) thing like the Atom, or to be divine and to seek for its absolute in the innermost recesses of humanity. We have two similar alternatives in the doctrine of Evolution, which looks either to one end of the scale or the other for its interpretation--either to the amoeba or to the man--to something it knows next to nothing of, or to that which it knows most of. Goethe, when gazing at a fan-palm at Padua, conceived the idea of leaf-metamorphosis, which he afterwards enunciated in the now accepted doctrine that all parts of a plant--seed-vessel, pistil, stamens, petals, sepals, stalk, etc.--may be regarded as modifications of a leaf or leaves. In this view the distinctions between the parts are effaced, and we have only one part instead of many--but the question is "what is that part?" It is of course arbitrary to call it a leaf, for since it is continually varying it is at one time a leaf, and at another a stalk, and then a petal or a sepal, and so forth. What then is it? For the moment we are baffled. So with the doctrine of Evolution as applied to the whole organic kingdom up to man. Like the doctrine of leaf-metamorphosis it obliterates distinctions. Geoffroy St. Hilaire proposed to show the French Academy that a Cephalopod could be assimilated to a Vertebrate by supposing the latter bent backwards and walking on its hands and feet. There is a continuous variation from the mollusc to the man--all the lines of distinction run and waver--classes and species cease to exist--and Science, instead of many, sees only _one_ thing. What then is that one thing? Is it a mollusc, or is it a man, or what is it? Are we to say that man may be looked upon as a variation of a mollusc or an amoeba, or that the amoeba may be looked on as a variation of man? Here are two directions of thought; which shall we choose? But the plain truth is, the Intellect can give no satisfactory answer. Whichever, or whatever, it chooses, the choice is quite arbitrary--just as much so as the choice of the "leaf" in the other case. There is no answer to be given. And thus it is that _the appearance of the doctrine of Evolution is the signal of the destruction of Science_ (in the ordinary acceptation of the word). For Evolution is the successive obliteration of the arbitrary distinctions and landmarks which by their existence _constitute_ Science, and as soon as Evolution covers the whole ground of Nature inorganic and organic (as before long it will do)--the whole of Nature runs and wavers before the eye of Science, the latter recognises that its distinctions _are_ arbitrary, and turns upon and destroys itself. This has happened before, I believe--ages back in the history of the human race--and probably will happen again.