Lectures on Evolution | Page 9

opinion among the scholars and the
clergy, it is well for the unlearned in Hebrew lore, and for the laity, to
avoid entangling themselves in such a vexed question. Happily, Milton
leaves us no excuse for doubting what he means, and I shall therefore
be safe in speaking of the opinion in question as the Miltonic
hypothesis.
Now we have to test that hypothesis. For my part, I have no prejudice
one way or the other. If there is evidence in favour of this view, I am
burdened by no theoretical difficulties in the way of accepting it; but
there must be evidence. Scientific men get an awkward habit--no, I
won't call it that, for it is a valuable habit--of believing nothing unless
there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief
which is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as immoral.
We will, if you please, test this view by the circumstantial evidence
alone; for, from what I have said, you will understand that I do not
propose to discuss the question of what testimonial evidence is to be
adduced in favour of it. If those whose business it is to judge are not at
one as to the authenticity of the only evidence of that kind which is
offered, nor as to the facts to which it bears witness, the discussion of
such evidence is superfluous.
But I may be permitted to regret this necessity of rejecting the
testimonial evidence the less, because the examination of the
circumstantial evidence leads to the conclusion, not only that it is
incompetent to justify the hypothesis, but that, so far as it goes, it is

contrary to the hypothesis.
The considerations upon which I base this conclusion are of the
simplest possible character. The Miltonic hypothesis contains
assertions of a very definite character relating to the succession of
living forms. It is stated that plants, for example, made their appearance
upon the third day, and not before. And you will understand that what
the poet means by plants are such plants as now live, the ancestors, in
the ordinary way of propagation of like by like, of the trees and shrubs
which flourish in the present world. It must needs be so; for, if they
were different, either the existing plants have been the result of a
separate origination since that described by Milton, of which we have
no record, nor any ground for supposition that such an occurrence has
taken place; or else they have arisen by a process of evolution from the
original stocks.
In the second place, it is clear that there was no animal life before the
fifth day, and that, on the fifth day, aquatic animals and birds appeared.
And it is further clear that terrestrial living things, other than birds,
made their appearance upon the sixth day and not before. Hence, it
follows that, if, in the large mass of circumstantial evidence as to what
really has happened in the past history of the globe we find indications
of the existence of terrestrial animals, other than birds, at a certain
period, it is perfectly certain that all that has taken place, since that time,
must be referred to the sixth day.
In the great Carboniferous formation, whence America derives so vast a
proportion of her actual and potential wealth, in the beds of coal which
have been formed from the vegetation of that period, we find abundant
evidence of the existence of terrestrial animals. They have been
described, not only by European but by your own naturalists. There are
to be found numerous insects allied to our cockroaches. There are to be
found spiders and scorpions of large size, the latter so similar to
existing scorpions that it requires the practised eye of the naturalist to
distinguish them. Inasmuch as these animals can be proved to have
been alive in the Carboniferous epoch, it is perfectly clear that, if the
Miltonic account is to be accepted, the huge mass of rocks extending
from the middle of the Palaeozoic formations to the uppermost
members of the series, must belong to the day which is termed by
Milton the sixth. But, further, it is expressly stated that aquatic animals

took their origin on the fifth day, and not before; hence, all formations
in which remains of aquatic animals can be proved to exist, and which
therefore testify that such animals lived at the time when these
formations were in course of deposition, must have been deposited
during or since the period which Milton speaks of as the fifth day. But
there is absolutely no fossiliferous formation in which the remains of
aquatic animals are absent. The oldest fossils in the Silurian rocks are
exuviae of marine animals; and if the view