Page:The Limits of Evolution (1904).djvu/88

Rh chasm, that now comes into view between the inorganic and the organic, to be bridged?

Empiricist principles would fain bridge it with some element of sensible experience, by some hypothesis made in terms of such experience alone. There is no hypothesis of this kind, however, but that of “spontaneous generation,” — whatever this handy phrase may mean. This hypothesis historic philosophy and recent science alike correctly designate as a generatio œquivoca, and they show that all the indications of careful biology are steadily more and more against the assumption which it covers. The logical march of the notion Evolution here suffers a certain arrest; the thread of continuity disappears from the region recognised by agnosticism as verifiably known, and it seems to vanish into something unknowable. We instinctively ask, as we before asked about the unknowable Noumenon, Why should we believe that such a continuity exists at all? How can there be any evidence of its actuality, if there is no real evidence but the evidence of experience?

In this break between the inorganic and the organic, evolution, as a principle of such continuity as philosophic explanation requires, finds its Second Limit.

But, coming now to our third question, continuity in some sense or other — a logical or intelligible