I have not the space to show how Agassiz further complicated the problem immensely by his absurdly illogical use of his three "laws" of comparison, when the prime fact of there ever having been a succession of life on the globe in any order whatever had never been proved; but I am free to say that if Cuvier's system of creation on the instalment plan had been fact instead of fancy, some scheme of evolution would undoubtedly be implied in this general fact. It is this instinctive feeling on the part of modern scientists which makes them to-day, while confessing the failure of Darwinism, still cling to the general idea of evolution =somehow=. Hence it seems quite evident that, having deviated from strict inductive methods by pursuing this _ignis fatuus_ of a cosmological history of creation, it was essential in the interests of true science to go the whole journey and make a complete investigation of the biological side of the question, in order to complete the demonstration that science was on a wrong tack entirely. Darwin and Weismann were inevitable in view of the wholly unscientific course on which biology entered under the guidance of Buffon and Cuvier. What then can we take as the general lesson to be learned from the stubborn way in which, for over a hundred years, the world has followed this hypnotic suggestion of folly, that we might explain our genesis and being from the scientific standpoint? One of the lessons--there may be others--is that =science knows nothing about origins=, and that, in speculating along these lines, the cosmological taint will always vitiate the accuracy of our conclusions and debauch the true spirit of induction. A hundred years ago, they thought they knew all about how the world was made. The keen investigations inspired by Darwinism were necessary to convince us that we know nothing at all about it. Modern biology has simply developed a gigantic _reductio ad absurdum_ argument against the easy assumptions of the earlier geologists that it occurred by a progression from the low to the high. A hundred years--nay fifty years ago--this assumption did not appear so unscientific, for we did not then have the biological evidence to refute such an idea. Now, however, in the light of the modern progress of science, this awful mystery of our existence, of our creation and destiny, is borne in upon us from every dividing cell, from every sprouting seed, from countless millions of the eloquent voices of nature, which our forefathers were too blind to see, too deaf to understand; and with weary, reluctant sadness does science confess that about it all she knows absolutely nothing. FOOTNOTES: [4] Nature, Nov. 28, 1901, pp. 76, 77. [5] "History of Geology," p. 23. [6] Zittel, p. 42. [7] "Founders of Geology," p. 112; Johns Hopkins Press, 1901. [8] "Principles," p. 50, 8th Ed. [9] "History of the Inductive Sciences," vol. ii., p. 521. [10] "Founders of Geology," pp. 237-8. [11] "History," p. 112.