

Transcribed from the [1885?] Elliot Stock edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org





                                EVOLUTION.


                                * * * * *

                                    BY
                         REV. EDWARD HOARE, M.A.

       VICAR OF TUNBRIDGE WELLS, AND HONORARY CANON OF CANTERBURY.

                                * * * * *

                     _Reprinted from_ THE CHURCHMAN.

                                * * * * *

                                 LONDON:
                 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.

                                * * * * *

                             Price Twopence.




EVOLUTION.


IT may appear a very rash thing for any person who does not claim to be a
man of science to presume to give an opinion on any of the theories of
scientific men.  But there is a vast difference between the facts of
science and the theories suggested for their explanation.  The facts are,
as it were, the property of the investigators.  The investigators have a
power of investigation which we outsiders have not, and it would be folly
for us who have not that power to presume to call in question their
information.  But it is a very different matter with the theories either
founded on these facts or invented to explain them.  When science has
given us the facts common-sense can discuss the theories founded on them;
and, without presuming to call in question the ascertained results of
scientific investigation, any person of ordinary intelligence may form
his own opinion as to the conclusions derived from the known facts.  The
scientific men know the facts, and we do not; but, when they have told us
the facts, we can think as well as they.  This point was exceedingly well
put by Canon Garbett at the Norwich Church Congress in 1865.  He said:
“Beyond a certain point the conclusions and arguments of the man of
science cease to be exclusively his own, and become the common property
of all men.  All argument rests on common principles, and when once the
facts of the case are clearly ascertained, any man who is trained to
reason correctly is competent to judge of them.”  Again: “Let the man of
science,” said Canon Garbett, “reign supreme within his own sphere, and
let none but those trained in the same school and learned in the same
craft venture to dispute with him as he gathers his facts and generalizes
his rules.  But when all this is done, and he proceeds to reason, then it
is different.  He steps out of his special department into a sphere open
to all men alike.  Tell me what your facts are, and if I sufficiently
master them I am as competent to judge of the validity of the conclusions
drawn from them as the man of science himself.”

There is scarcely any subject to which this principle applies more
completely than it does to Evolution; for what is called “the doctrine of
Evolution” is only a theory.  It is not a collection of facts, but a
theory which some of its warmest advocates—as, _e.g._, Professor
Drummond—declare to be “still unproved.” {3}  While, therefore, we fully
recognise that it would be the utmost folly “to debate a point of natural
history with Darwin, or a question of comparative anatomy with Owen,” we
may, by the aid of common-sense, form an opinion possibly as sound at
theirs on the unproved theory which has been founded on the ascertained
facts which those great investigators have placed within our reach.  This
is all that I would attempt to do in the present paper.  I do not propose
to call in question a single fact ascertained by men of science.  All
that I would venture to do is to exercise the ordinary powers of thought
in considering one of the theories which some scientific men have
suggested as an explanation of those facts.  I say “some scientific men,”
for there is a very great difference of opinion amongst scientific men,
and no one can read the admirable papers produced by the Victoria
Institute without perceiving now much accurate observation, how wide a
scientific knowledge, and how great a force of Baconian philosophy is
arrayed against the theory just now in the fashion.

Let us begin, then, with a few facts respecting which we are all agreed,
and which as they are sometimes called by the name of Evolution, are
supposed to supply evidence of the correctness of the theory.

(1)  We all believe in _growth_.  It is a matter of fact that the world
is full of growth.  And this growth is not limited to gradual, or
continuous, enlargement or development; but consists sometimes in most
remarkable sudden changes, as when the egg becomes a chicken, the
caterpillar a chrysalis, and the chrysalis a butterfly.  Every living
creature, whether plant or animal, has its own mode of growth; and no