prove that the intermediate forms must remain longer in existence; whilst the fact is that such forms do not exist at all. “There has been much complaint,” says Mr. Youmans, “that Prof. Huxley undertook to put the demonstrative evidence of evolution on so narrow a basis as the establishment of the genealogy of the horse; but this rather enhances than detracts from his merit as a scientific thinker.” Here the case is misstated. Had Prof. Huxley really demonstrated evolution by the genealogy of the horse, no one would have complained that the basis was too narrow; but as it became manifest that the basis was not only narrow but questionable, and that it afforded no evidence whatever of evolution, it was thought that it required a “marvellous effrontery” on the part of Prof. Huxley to maintain before the American public that the genealogy of the horse gave “demonstrative evidence” of evolution. This is the reason why there has been so much complaint. Prof. Huxley simply insulted his audience when he asked them to believe that evolution was a demonstrated fact. Mr. Youmans tells us that the vital point between Prof. Huxley and his antagonists is the question of the validity of the conception of order and uniformity in nature. “Prof. Huxley holds to it as a first principle, a truth demonstrated by all science, and just as fixed in biology as in astronomy. His antagonists hold that the inflexible order of nature may be asserted perhaps in astronomy, but they deny it in biology. They here invoke supernatural intervention.” This statement is utterly false. There is no question about the order and uniformity of nature; and it is not to Prof. Huxley or to modern science that we are indebted for the knowledge of this uniformity either in astronomy or in biology; the world has ever been in possession of this indisputable truth. The real question between Prof. Huxley and his antagonists is that nature, according to the professor, is independent in its being and in its working, and has an inherent power of fostering into existence a series of beings of higher and higher specific perfection, from the speck of gelatinous matter even to man; whereas nature, according to the professor’s antagonists, and according to science, revelation, and common sense, is not independent either in its being or in its working, and has no inherent power of forming either a plant without a seed or an animal without an ovum of the same species. If Prof. Huxley had had any knowledge of that part of philosophy which we call metaphysics, and which our advanced scientists affect so much to despise because they cannot cope with it, he would have seen the absurdity of his assumption; and if Mr. Youmans had consulted the rules of logic, he would not have said that the “uniformity of nature” was with Prof. Huxley a “first principle”; it being evident that uniformity clashes with evolution, which is a change of forms.