The writer of this article asserts: "Procuring the death of the fœtus to save the life of the mother is, I am sure, to be defended on ethical grounds." And here is the way he attempts to defend it: "We may safely assume," he argues, "that the theory of evolution is the best working hypothesis in every branch of natural science. We are learning through Herbert Spencer and all late writers on ethics and politics, that the same principle will best explain the facts" (p. 395). I do not deny that a certain school of scientists is trying to rewrite all history and all Ethics and Jurisprudence. But the writer strangely misstates the case when he says that "all great writers on ethics and politics" agree with Mr. Spencer. Besides a multitude of others, Lord Salisbury for one, has clearly shown of late that the school of agnostic evolutionists is coming to grief; it has had its short day, and it is now setting below the horizon of ignominy and subsequent oblivion. The writer of the article in question does not attempt to prove the evolution theory; therefore I need not stop to disprove it. But he makes the following application of it to our subject--an application so shocking to humanity and so revolting to common sense that, if it is logical, it is by itself sufficient to refute the whole theory of Mr. Spencer and his school. He argues that, if that theory be admitted, it must necessarily follow that, while the human embryo is from the first alive, it is not a human being until it has developed and differentiated to such a point as corresponds to that point at the birth of the race where the animal becomes a man. "I am sure," he adds, "I do not know when that occurred in the past, and I do not know at what point it occurs in the individual.... In inquiring for that distinct feature which distinguishes the man from the animal, I find none but mentality. If we wait for distinct mentality to appear in the development of the individual, it would be some time after birth."