Transcribed from the [1885?] Elliot Stock edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
EVOLUTION.
BY
Rev. EDWARD HOARE, M.A.
VICAR OF TUNBRIDGE WELLS, AND HONORARY CANON OF CANTERBURY.
Reprinted from The Churchman.
LONDON:
ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, E.C.
Price Twopence.
EVOLUTION.
It may appear a very rash thing for any person who does not claim to be a man of science to presume to give an opinion on any of the theories of scientific men. But there is a vast difference between the facts of science and the theories suggested for their explanation. The facts are, as it were, the property of the investigators. The investigators have a power of investigation which we outsiders have not, and it would be folly for us who have not that power to presume to call in question their information. But it is a very different matter with the theories either founded on these facts or invented to explain them. When science has given us the facts common-sense can discuss the theories founded on them; and, without presuming to call in question the ascertained results of scientific investigation, any person of ordinary intelligence may form his own opinion as to the conclusions derived from the known facts. The scientific men know the facts, and we do not; but, when they have told us the facts, we can think as well as they. This point was exceedingly well put by Canon Garbett at the Norwich Church Congress in 1865. He said: “Beyond a certain point the conclusions and arguments of the man of science cease to be exclusively his own, and become the common property of all men. All argument rests on common principles, and when once the facts of the case are clearly ascertained, any man who is trained to reason correctly is competent to judge of them.” Again: “Let the man of science,” said Canon Garbett, “reign supreme within his own sphere, and let none but those trained in the same school and learned in the same craft venture to dispute with him as he gathers his facts and generalizes his rules. But when all this is done, and he proceeds to reason, then it is different. He steps out of his special department into a sphere open to all men alike. Tell me what your facts are, and if I sufficiently master them I am as competent to judge of the validity of the conclusions drawn from them as the man of science himself.”
There is scarcely any subject to which this principle applies more completely than it does to Evolution; for what is called “the doctrine of Evolution” is only a theory. It is not a collection of facts, but a theory which some of its warmest advocates—as, e.g., Professor Drummond—declare to be “still unproved.” [3] While, therefore, we fully recognise that it would be the utmost folly “to debate a point of natural history with Darwin, or a question of comparative anatomy with Owen,” we may, by the aid of common-sense, form an opinion possibly as sound at theirs on the unproved theory which has been founded on the ascertained facts which those great investigators have placed within our reach. This is all that I would attempt to do in the present paper. I do not propose to call in question a single fact ascertained by men of science. All that I would venture to do is to exercise the ordinary powers of thought in considering one of the theories which some scientific men have suggested as an explanation of those facts. I say “some scientific men,” for there is a very great difference of opinion amongst scientific men, and no one can read the admirable papers produced by the Victoria Institute without perceiving now much accurate observation, how wide a scientific knowledge, and how great a force of Baconian philosophy is arrayed against the theory just now in the fashion.