Now we have to test that hypothesis.  For my part, I have no prejudice one way or the other.  If there is evidence in favor of this view, I am burdened by no theoretical difficulties in the way of accepting it:  but there must be evidence.  Scientific men get an awkward habit—­no, I won’t call it that, for it is a valuable habit—­of believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as immoral.  We will, if you please, test this view by the circumstantial evidence alone; for, from what I have said, you will understand that I do not propose to discuss the question of what testimonial evidence is to be adduced in favor of it.  If those whose business it is to judge are not at one as to the authenticity of the only evidence of that kind which is offered, nor as to the facts to which it bears witness, the discussion of such evidence is superfluous.

But I may be permitted to regret this necessity of rejecting the testimonial evidence the less, because the examination of the circumstantial evidence leads to the conclusion, not only that it is incompetent to justify the hypothesis, but that, so far as it goes, it is contrary to the hypothesis.

The considerations upon which I base this conclusion are of the simplest possible character.  The Miltonic hypothesis contains assertions of a very definite character relating to the succession of living forms.  It is stated that plants, for example, made their appearance upon the third day, and not before.  And you will understand that what the poet means by plants are such plants as now live, the ancestors, in the ordinary way of propagation of like by like, of the trees and shrubs which flourish in the present world.  It must needs be so; for, if they were different, either the existing plants have been the result of a separate origination since that described by Milton, of which we have no record, nor any ground for supposition that such an occurrence has taken place; or else they have arisen by a process of evolution from the original stocks.

In the second place, it is clear that there was no animal life before the fifth day, and that, on the fifth day, aquatic animals and birds appeared.  And. it is further clear that terrestrial living things, other than birds, made their appearance upon the sixth day, and not before.  Hence, it follows that, if, in the large mass of circumstantial evidence as to what really has happened in the past history of the globe, we find indications of the existence of terrestrial animals, other than birds, at a certain period, it is perfectly certain that all that has taken place since that time must be referred to the sixth day.