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method by which that result has been brought about. Mr. 
Huxley believes that Organic Evolution has been proved, 
while at the same time he hesitates to accept any of the 
theories which explain the method by which the process 
has been brought about. He says :— 
“ An inductive hypothesis is said to be demonstrated when the 
facts are shown to be in entire accordance with it. If that is not 
scientific proof, there are no merely inductive conclusions which can 
be said to be proved, and the doctrine of evolution, at the present 
time, rests upon exactly as secure a foundation as the Copernican 
theory of the motions of the heavenly bodies did at the time of its 
promulgation. Its logical basis is precisely of the same character— 
the coincidence of the observed facts with theoretical requirements.” 
—(American Addresses, p. go.) 
“ On the evidence of palaeontology, the evolution of many existing 
forms of animal life from their predecessors is no longer an hy 
pothesis, but an historical fact ; it is only the nature of the physio 
logical factors to which that evolution is due, which is still open to 
discussion.”—(.Encyclopaedia Britannien.) 
And again he says :— 
“ I can testify from personal experience that it is possible to have a 
complete faith in the general doctrine of evolution and yet to hesitate 
in accepting the nebular, or the uniformitarian, or the Darwinian 
theory in all their integrity and fulness.”—(.Proceedings of the Royal 
Institute, vol. v., p. гуд.) 
Mr. Wallace, on the other hand, seems to think that 
Organic Evolution, even by Natural Selection, is not so 
certainly a fact as the transmutation of species by Natural 
Selection. 
“The point here insisted upon is, that the origin of all organisms, 
living and extinct, by ‘descent with modification,’is not necessarily 
the same thing, and is not included in ‘the origin of species by means 
of Natural Selection.’ The latter we not only know has occurred, 
but we can follow the process, step by step, by means of known facts 
and known laws ; the former, w>e are almost equally certain, has 
occurred, but we cannot trace its steps, and there may have been 
facts and laws involved of which w'e have no certain knowledge.”— 
{Nineteenth Century, vol. vii., p. gy.)