as transmutation of species,
it is unphilosophical to assume that transmutation of species ever takes
place. Had I been present I think that, passing over his assertion,
which is open to criticism, I should have replied that, as in all our
experience we have never known a species _created_, it was, by his own
showing, unphilosophical to assume that any species ever had been
created.

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution as not being
adequately supported by facts, seem to forget that their own theory is
supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a
given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief,
but assume that their own needs none. Here we find, scattered over the
globe, vegetable and animal organisms numbering, of the one kind
(according to Humboldt), some 320,000 species, and of the other, some
2,000,000 species (see Carpenter); and if to these we add the numbers of
animal and vegetable species which have become extinct, we may safely
estimate the number of species that have existed, and are existing, on
the Earth, at not less than _ten millions_. Well, which is the most
rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely
that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most
likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances,
ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being
produced still?

Doubtless many will reply that they can more easily conceive ten
millions of special creations to have taken place, than they can
conceive that ten millions of varieties have arisen by successive
modifications. All such, however, will find, on inquiry, that they are
under an illusion. This is one of the many cases in which men do not
really believe, but rather _believe they believe_. It is not that they
can truly conceive ten millions of special creations to have taken
place, but that they _think they can do so_. Careful introspection will
show them that they have never yet realized to themselves the creation
of even _one_ species. If they have formed a definite conception of the
process, let them tell us how a new species is constructed, and how it
makes its appearance. Is it thrown down from the clouds? or must we hold
to the notion that it struggles up out of the ground? Do its limbs and
viscera rush together from all the points of the compass? or must we
receive the old Hebrew idea, th