ect, how obvious is the inference which I have
elaborated in Sec. 32, that all the diverse forms of matter, as we know them,
were probably evolved by natural causes. So obvious, indeed, is this
inference, that to resort to any supernatural hypothesis to explain the
diverse properties of the various chemical elements appears to me a most
glaring violation of the law of parcimony--as much more glaring, for
instance, than the violation of this law by Paley, as the number and
variety of organic species are greater than the number and variety of
chemical species. And if it was illegitimate in Paley to use a mere absence
of knowledge as to how the transmutation of apparently fixed species of
animals was effected as equivalent to the possession of knowledge that such
transmutation had not been effected, how much more illegitimate must it be
to commit a similar sin against logic in the case of the chemical elements,
where our classification is confessedly beset with numberless difficulties,
and when we begin to discern that in all probability it is a classification
essentially artificial. Lastly, the mere fact that the transmutation of
chemical species and the evolution of chemical "atoms" are processes which
we do not now observe as occurring in nature, is surely a consideration of
a far more feeble kind than it is even in the case of biological species
and biological evolution; seeing that nature's laboratory must be now so
inconceivably different from what it was during the condensation of the
nebula. What an atrocious piece of arrogance, therefore, it is to assert
that "none of the processes of nature, _since the time when nature began_,
have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule!"
No one can entertain a higher respect for Professor Clark Maxwell than I
do; but a single sentence of such a kind as this cannot leave two opinions
in any impartial mind concerning his competency to deal with such subjects.

I am therefore sorry to see this absurd argument approvingly incorporated
in Professor Flint's work. He says, "I believe that no reply to these words
of Professor Clark Maxwell is possible from any one who holds the ordinary
view of scientific men as to the ultimate constitution of matter. They must
suppose every atom, every molecule, to be of such a nature, to be so
related to others and to the universe generally, that things may be such as
we see them to be; but this their fitness to be built up i