CONCLUSION

Summary

The doctrine of creation, revealed in the opening words of Scripture, agrees at once with the most certain conclusions of sound reason, that time and the universe had a beginning, and with the widest results of induction with regard to all the successive generations of plants and animals during the ages of known history. The progress forward, in every case, is not from like to unlike, but from the few to the many; and the only progress backward, which can claim really scientific evidence, is not from like to unlike, from the definite to the undefined, but from the many to the few.

The Theory of Evolution, on the other hand, in its momentary acceptance by so many hewers of wood and drawers of water for the building of the temple of science, and its wholesale substitution of ingenious guesswork for the evidence of facts, seems to hold exactly the same place in Physiology which the hypothesis of vortices held two centuries ago in Physical Astronomy. Each lays hold of a captivating analogy, and rears on it an immense superstructure, without submitting it to the test either of known facts, or of clear and intelligible reasoning. It was known that floating matter was carried round and round in a whirlpool. It was assumed that such a whirlpool of loose revolving matter did exist in the planetary spaces, and that the planets might in this way be carried in their orbits round the sun.