Now, Dr. Taylor, by his own confession, is no authority in either
geology, biology, or palaeontology. He has neither collected,
observed, nor experimented in these fields. He does not know how
many facts have been discovered in them, or what bearing they have
on other facts in other fields. Therefore, he is entirely unable to
say whether Huxley is arguing from things "known or proved" or not.
Moreover, he does not, for similar reasons, know whether Huxley's
process has been "fatally vitiated" by the dependence of any
"material circumstance" on conjecture, or by the insufficiency of
the "known facts" to exclude every other hypothesis; for, first, he
does not know what is in geological, biological, or palaeontological
induction a "material circumstance"--nor does any man know except by
prolonged study and observation--and, second, he does not know
whether "the known or proved facts" are sufficient to exclude every
other hypothesis, because he neither knows what facts are known nor
what is the probative force of such as are known.
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