be taught to bend before the loud mouthings of orthodoxy, or to give ear to the still small voice of reason. According to your article of to-day's date, the ban applies to the "theory of evolution in so far as it pertains to the origin of man." Presumably, therefore, no exception can be taken to the theory provided that it is applied without application to man.
Scientists work on two dicta, firstly "give unqualified consent to no proposition, the truth of which is not demonstrated beyond question," and secondly, when assent kas been given to a proposition, that proposition must be applied as far as it is consistent with fact Even though the results of the application of a proposition are unpalatable, the application must be carried on to the limit. Having regard to these principles, the origin of man cannot be excluded from the idea of Evolution. Not only is the frame of man different from those of the higher primates in less degree than these differ from the lower, but his mental attributes differ in degree, rather than in kind from those of the rest of the animal kingdom. Man shows his lowly origin throughout the stages of his embryonic condition, and in the adult, who has not seen drink-sodden, and vice-ruined wretche§ who compare unfavourably with the brutes, whom man, in his arrogance sees fit to term "the lower animals?"
Is man less noble if he has sprung from a lowly stock, is the love of a mother for her offspring less ennobling because a mother ken loves her chickens? Is it derogatory to man to hold that he has risen both bodily and mentally from amongst the rest of the animal kingdom, and ennobling to believe that instead, he has fallen from grace? To the man who casts aside the teachings of authority, and reasons the matter for himself, the. answer is likely to be in favour of the Evolutionary hypothesis.
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Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.