The present prevailing theory of development contradicts one half by the other half. It extends the doctrine of development and transmutation to species which happen to be visible to such eyes as we have; it denies it to such as happen to be invisible to us. If all animals and plants have been obtained by the secular synthesis of transformed monera, and the differentiation of the organs composing them--thus giving in the last analysis one form and kind of protoplasm as the root of all; the pursuit of the same line of thought--the same theory, applied to the atoms of the chemist, with their various properties and atomic weights, gives, as the common ground of all, a single material element; each chemical atom being a structure composed of this material element, but so stable as to be indecomposable in the laboratory. Let this be granted, as asserted by Macvicar in 1868, and by Keely now, and the theory of evolution, whatever may be the case as to its cogency, at least possesses a scientific form. It is no longer a conception which breaks down midway between its first and its last terms. But letting science, in this respect, stand for the present as it is, and supposing the seventy recognized elements of the laboratory (which do not include the twenty or more new elements recently said to have been discovered by Krüss and Nilson in certain rare Scandinavian minerals) or rather, perhaps, some very high multiple of their number to constitute that cosmic gas from which the solar system has been evolved, the theory of development shows itself to be as imperfect on the great scale, and in point of extent, as it is in point of homogeneity in its intimate material. Macvicar continues--Beyond that cosmic gas there certainly is the ether, a medium which no longer can be ignored in any physical theory of nature. What, then, is the relation of the cosmic gas to the ether? Evolutionists do not answer this question, but Macvicar seeks to render the whole system of thought homogeneous, and to show that, just as all organisms are the synthetic developments of one kind of moneron, and all chemical atoms and molecules the synthetic development of one kind of material element, so is the material element a synthetic development of ethereal elements. These also are Mr. Keely's views; but neither Macvicar nor Keely rest in the conception of a congeries of particles which are wholly blind and devoid of feeling and thought, diffused throughout all space, believing such particles to be the first of things. "Reason, if it is to enjoy intellectual repose, can have it only in finding, beyond and above all things else, a unity, a power, intelligence, personality--in one word, God. This is the only legitimate haven of a theory of development: sending back the tide of materialism and pantheism which has swept its mire over our age into the ebb again; as, after having reached the full, it has so often done already, before