Let us now bestow a few words upon the facts ar- rayed above as warranting a concurrence in the evolu- tion theory. We are ourselves amazed that the acute and learned writer who clearly presents them did not perceive their utter insufficiency as proof of the posi- tion taken. The evidence from geology is little more than that from the various orders of animated beings now observed upon the face of the earth. The oidy difference, if anj-, is that they do not seem to have been all simultaneous or synchronal : nor are those now extant to be found all in one habitat. The first and second arguments, therefore, resolve themselves substantially into one, and this has the great flaw of the supposition — the begging of the main question in reality — that the many missing links will yet be found, or, if not found, still once existed. The third argument is parallel, but still weaker, because in the embryo we have the actual stages, again, with many and notable gaps, but they are found to be incapable of that arrest at any particular point which the theory supposes. The germ of each animal in generation must go on im- mediately to its complete development, or perish at once as an abortion. None can stop short of its peculiar type, nor go bej^ond it. In fine, the fact patent to ev- ery observer, and one which, to the common mind, dis- poses of this whole speculation, is that each species reg- ularly and inevitably propagates substantially its own pattern, with no such variations as the three classes of phenomena referred to exhibit; or else refuses to repro-
duce permanent organisms at all. The grand fallacy in the evolution argimient — even as a presumption (and we might truly call it such in more than one sense) — is the mistaking of analogy for identity. A sitiiilar law of progress is seen in all God's works; but this does not prove, nor even render it probable, that each step was historically developed out of the preceding. Wherever we have been able to record the process, the succession of order has been found to be maintained, but there has been a break in the genetic production of the individu- als. The same mistake has been committed by those who confound the geological cycles with the "days" of the demiurgic week, llesemblances in plan have been thought to prove historical identity. See Geology.
Accordingly, a recent writer, Mr. A. De Quatrefages, professor of anthropology in the Jluseura of Natural History at Paris, who may be taken as the representa- tive of moderate conservatism in the scientific disputes about the origin of species, but whose eminent posi- tion as an anthropologist has been fully recognised by Mr. Huxley, is decidedly opposed to evolutionary ideas; he draws out an elaborate argument to prove that, in his opinion, " species is a reality." Many readers, therefore, will turn with especial interest to the divis- ion of his subject in which he examines in succession the theories of Darwin, Hiickel, Vogt, Wallace, Naudin, and others. The anticiuity of the human species; how the globe was peopled, and races formed; their physi- cal, mental, and moral characteristics: such is the pro- gramme of the twenty-sixth volume of the " Interna- tional Scientific Series" entitled The Human Species (Lond. 1879). See also Biblioth. Sacra, Oct. 1857 ; Meth. Quar. Rev. Oct. 18C1.
Species, a term used in eucharistic theologj' to de- note the outward and visible part in the Lord's supper.
Speckled is the rendering in the A. V. of three Heb. words, which have very different significations : 1. "IpS, naked, spotted, as black goats or sheep with white spots, or vice versa ( Gen. xxx, 32, 33, 35, 39 ; xxxi, 8, 10, 12); 2. p"iil3, saiok, hoy, as reddish horses (Zech.i, 8); 3. ^'13^, tsahiia, strijted, as the hyena (Jer. xii, 9). SeeCoLOu; Hykna.
Speckter, Euwin, a German painter, was born at Hamburg in 1806. Encouraged by Von Rumohr, he made an artistic tour, in 1823, through Schleswig and the neighboring country. In 1825 he visited Munich and placed himself under the direction of Cornelius, re- turning to Hamburg in 1829. In September, 1830, he started for Itah', where he remained until the summer of 1834. His "death took place Nov. 23, 1835. His paintings on sacred subjects are, Christ and the Woman of Samaria : — The Women at the Tomb. See English Cyclop, s. V.
Spectre. A belief in apparitions was universal among the ancients, especially in the East; and the Is- raelites, even before the Captivity, notwithstanding the aversion of their religion to dremonology (see Crusius [B.], Bibl. Theol. p. 293), had in popular superstition their spectral forms with which the\' peopled desert re- gions. See AzAZKL. At a later period the spectres and evil spirits were confoimded together (Tobit viii, 3; Baruch iv, 35). The canonical books refer (Isa. xxxiv, 13) to a female night-monster (n'^?"?) and goatlike savages (D'^'nS'ilJ), who danced and called to each other (xiii, 21). See Satyr. In the Targum, and by the rabbins, this popular belief is more fully unfolded as a part of foreign da;monology ; but much of it may have come down from earlier times. These ghostly beings are classed as night, morning, and mid -day spectres (Targum at Cant, iv, 9). The last {caifiovia ^Ka^fijipi.- va, Sept. at Psa. xc, 6 ; "'^"in'^13, Targum at Cant, iv, 6) appear at noon, when people unconcernedly resign them- selves to repose (the siesta; see Philostr. Her. i, 4) ; and they are especially dangerous (Aben-Ezra, On Job Hi, 5).