Dr. Taylor further on makes a display of this inability to
appreciate the logical value of scientific facts by asking: "Where
is the evidence, scientific or other, that there was evolution? We
see these fossils (those of the horse). Huxley _says_ they are as
they are because the higher evolved itself out of the lower; we
_say_ they are as they are because God created them in series." To
recur to the former illustration, it is as if the Indian should show
Dr. Taylor the marks on which he relied in his induction, and the
doctor should calmly reply: "I see the marks; you _say_ they were
made by a man's foot in walking; I, who have never given any
attention to the subject, and have never been in the woods before,
_say_ they were made by the rain." The fact is that if there were
any weight whatever in this kind of talk--if no equality of
knowledge were necessary between two disputants--it would enable an
ignorant field-hand to sweep away in one sentence the whole science
of geology and palaeontology, and even astronomy, and to dispose of
every conclusion on any subject drawn from a skilled and experienced
balancing of probabilities, or nice mathematical calculation, by
simply saying that he was not satisfied with the proofs.
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