A second aspect in which such speculations are too partial is in the unwarranted use which they make of analogy. It is not unusual to find such analogies as that between the embryonic development of the individual animal and the succession of animals in geological time placed on a level with that reasoning from analogy by which geologists apply modern causes to explain geological formations. No claim could be more unfounded. When the geologist studies ancient limestones built up of the remains of corals, and then applies the phenomena of modern coral reefs to explain their origin, he brings the latter to bear on the former by an analogy which includes not merely the apparent results but the causes at work, and the conditions of their action; and it is on this that the validity of his comparison depends, in so far as it relates to similarity of mode of formation. But when we compare the development of an animal from an embryo cell with the progress of animals in time, though we have a curious analogy as to the steps of the process, the conditions and agents at work are known to be altogether dissimilar, and therefore we have no evidence whatever as to identity of cause, and our reasoning becomes at once the most transparent of fallacies. Farther, we have no right here to overlook the fact that the conditions of the embryo are determined by those of a previous adult, and that no sooner does this hereditary potentiality produce a new adult animal than the terrible external agencies of the physical world, in presence of which all life exists, begin to tell on the organism, and after a struggle of longer or shorter duration it succumbs to death, and its substance returns into inorganic nature, a law from which even the longer life of the species does not seem to exempt it. All this is so plain and manifest that it is extraordinary that evolutionists will continue to use such partial and imperfect arguments. Another example may be taken from that application of the doctrine of natural selection to explain the introduction of species in geological time which is so elaborately discussed by Sir C. Lyell in the last edition of his _Principles of Geology_. The great geologist evidently leans strongly to the theory, and claims for it the “highest degree of probability,” yet he perceives that there is a serious gap in it; since no modern fact has ever proved the origin of a new species by modification. Such a gap, if it existed in those grand analogies by which we explain geological formations through modern causes, would be admitted to be fatal.