Darwin Vindicated.

Thames Star, Volume X, Issue 3158, 2 April 1879, Page 3

Darwin Vindicated.

From a reprint of a lecture given by Professor Williamson in Wakefield, England, one of the series of Gilchrist Science Lectures, upon the subject " Life in the earliest ages of tho world," we make the following extract, in which the lecturer gives his opinion of Charles Darwin :— " We find there are many circumstances in the natural world which bring us to the conclusion that much connected with the origin of the forms of life is capable of explanation, and here I have to deal at once with that great problem that has been brought before us of late years by one of the noblest—one of the most honest of intellects—l mean that of my friend Charles Darwin—(applause). I am not going to vindicate Charles Darwin—Charles Darwin needs no vindication—(hear, hear) —" the blood of Douglas can protect itself"—(applause)—but I do want to guard some of our friends who do not know Charles Darwin, who do not know what he has done, and how he has gone about the doing of it, from supposing he is what some people are so fond of calling him —" a dreamy enthusiast." If there has ever been in the higlory of science men who have pro"cwded more cautiously than others from step to step, by a patience of investigation and minutely persevering labors, such as has never been surpassed by any painstaking clerk in any one of our great manufactories, he stands at the head of the men who nave worked in that way— (applause). No one unfamiliar with his labors can have any conception of the minute research carried on year after year, not only by himself, but with the aid of his admirable family ; only those who are familiar with what is going on behind the scenes can form any conception of the amount of toil day and night that the conclusions of Charles Darwin have involved, and of which they are the legitimate outcome. Charles Darwin says that one form of animal and vegetable life has been developed out of another, and in this way he goes back and back and back until he comes to a point where the first forms of life made their appearance upon the earth. But what then ? Are we to suppose that these forms gathered themselves together out of a few particles of dust, or are we to believe in what is now termed " spontaneous generation ? " As most of you are well aware, Dr Bastian and some others are endeavoring to convince us of this, but looking at it as one indifferent and unpledged, I am bound to cast in my lot with Tyndall and Huxley; and the large body of distinguished men who most emphatically say that the doctrine of spontaneous generation has not a leg to stand upon-(cheers). If that be trueas I most emphatically believe—what follows? Supposing every form of life that now exists upon the earth, from the tropics to the poles, and from the east to the west, all these endlessly multiplied forms of plants and animals in the air, on the land and in the sea, to be really developed by natural agencies out of one little germ of life that somehow or oth< r found its way upon our globe, what follows ? What sort of a germ must that have been to have such powers lodged within it? It must have contained within itself potentially all these marvellous things that now characterise the widespread living world, it must have contained all those endless modifications, or at all event the materials out of which they were capable of growing; it has contained these, too, in such a shape that they needed no helping hand, no guiding machinery; they developed in themselves by virtue of their own inherent property, and if any one in this room will point out to me any miracle more wondrous than such a miracle as that—if anyone will point out to me one single indication in the material world that signified the grandeur and the power, and the foreknowledge and forethought of a Divine Being more emphatically than the creation of such a germ so marvellously endowed, I should like to hear his illustration of that higher power —(applause.) I know none. Thus, if it be true, as the men I have quoted assert, that no life is or can be produced or developed upon the earth except from pre-existing life, Materialism ceases to have a mere existence —I mean the gross form of Materialism, I don't mean the more refined Materialism of Huxley and Tyndall, that is altogether a different thing—but the gross Materialism has no place, because that one little germ of life had to be brought into being by a Power on which Materialism is silent—which Materialism cannot recognise, and that Power must have been something which in itself possessed life, and yet which was in earth—(applause). We are then driven to the conclusion —I think honestly driven —that, even supposing evolution to be true, there is no one single thing in connection with it that need militate against —I was going to say the prejudices or beliefs of any person in this room. It not only is compatible with the conception of design in its' most definite form ; not only compatible, as the Duke of Argyle has shown, with the admission and recognition of a Designer, but I thoroughly agree with the Duke of Argyle, when he says it is the union of the conception of Design, and consequently of a Desifigtar, with the conception of evolutionf^akt gives us the grandest scheme of the nature and origin of life, and yet a scheme that is perfectly compatible with our most reverend beliefs."