uated at the head of his class in fiftyfive years who was a user of strong drink or tobacco. Assistant Geo. H. Brimhall said that knowledge was the key to success in going into the avenues of life. He was surprised at the statement that some were discouraged at the Manual before reading it. He hoped the day would speedily pass when we would fly from a shadowy form. Mind is greater than matter. Mind is the man. Food for the mind is important. One dollar spent for a book will give us a treasure house for eternity. say a Moses Thatcher said: I desire to few words about securing funds. There are insufficient funds in some Stakes. It might be a good idea to accept grain and then turn it into cash, keeping a strict account of gains and losses. On the question of scarcity of money, it may be proper to state that in this temple city, the center of learning, the seat of the Brigham Young College and the Agricultural College, there are five places in which intoxicants are sold. Each license is eight hundred dollars a year, a total of four thousand dollars to be paid out of profits of those who expend money for liquor. Thus goes the money that should buy books; thus goes the means of paying for THE CONTRIBUTOR. Choir sang, "Arise, all ye nations." Adjourned to eight o'clock. Benediction by Apostle Merrill. 8 p. m. Congregation sang "We thank Thee, O God, for a Prophet. Prayer by President Orson Smith, Remarks on the success and benefits of the conference were made by Elders W. B. Preston, Jr., Will. G. Farrell, and Geo. D. Pyper. means President Joseph F. Smith spoke of THE CONTRIBUTOR as a of educating our young men and circulating good ideas and thoughts amongst our organizations. Every talented young man should write for it and sustain it. The speaker also touched upon the subject of round dancing, saying that the Authorities did not want to curtail any legitimate recreation or enjoyment, but urged that dancing be kept under proper influences and guidance. Round dancing had a great fascination for the young, and it often led to folly if not to sin. We were not here for pleasure. The Savior denied himself pleasure. He was acquainted with grief. He was joyful, but mourned the sins of the world. He was not uncharitable, for when the sinner was brought before Him, and her accusers had slunk away, he turned to her and said, "Go thy way and sin no more.' So the speaker felt towards all, but he did not like to see our young people going down the stream. The Authorities would like to see round dancing obliterated entirely; but would it be wise to do this all at once? Rather than drive our young people to the other side, two or three of an evening had been allowed under proper regulations. Our dances should be opened and closed with prayer. Choir sang, "Joy to the Lord." Adjourned for one year. THE ORIGIN OF MAN. WHAT IS THE MOST PROBABLE THEORY? There is no subject that could Occupy the human mind that is of greater interest and importance than the study of man and his relationship. Pope says, "The proper study for mankind is man.' Huxley significantly remarks: "The question of questions for mankind, the problem that deeply underlies all others, and thought was restricted within the that is more intensly interesting than narrowest limitations, and whatever any other. is the ascertainment of freedom had been acquired in man's place in nature and the relation- metaphysical speculation among the ship he occupies to the universe of Grecians it had been destroyed by things. From whence our race has the church of Rome. From the come, the limits of nature's power over time of the Emperor Constantine, A. us and our power over nature, are D. 325, to the Reformation in the sixthe questions that present themselves teenth century, impassable barriers anew with undiminished interest to were placed upon the progress of every man born into the world." human thought and philosophy; any Whatever progress has been made deviation from the established ideas toward a reasonable adjustment of of the clergy being punished as conthese problems has been accomplished tempt and heresy: thus the great within the past few hundred years or problems of life and its complicated since the dawn of modern learning. relationships were held in abeyance It seems the deeper man delves into through the darkness of a thousand life and its appurtenant mysteries the years by the coercive weapons of the more thoroughly is he appreciative of Roman church. But from the time the vastness of the unknown. The the immortal Luther asserted the horizon of the mysterious expands right of interpretation of the scripwith the progress of his research; he tures, a scientific activity was indiscovers that after a life devoted in agurated which, with the progress of patient and ceaseless investigation liberalism and religious tolerance, has that he is just entering on the thres- resulted in that magnificent prehold of an infinite field of unexplored eminence of intellectual advancement thought possibly only known to the characteristic of the present age, so Gods. He exclaims with philosophic to-day we may say there is a comsignificance, "Amid the pomp and parative freedom of thought in which splendor of nature there is no place the danger of incurring the disleft for man." pleasure and ill-will of contemporaries is practicably eliminated. The Hindoos and Grecians speculated copiously on the clouded and mystified questions of the origin of man and his position in the universe, but the infancy of the race, so far as science was concerned, precluded the attainment of any substantial and permanent results. In their philosophy, however, they recognized that which science has so beautifully elaborated, the tangible and transient character of all natural phenomena; looking upon the grand mechanism of material embodiment as but temporary and limited manifestations of an infinite principle upon which universal nature is fashioned. It may be said to the credit of those venerable nations that a broad and commendable latitude was permitted in their investigations. On turning to Rome after her assumption of imperial power, we find that The first statement we encounter of the origin of man is that recorded in the first chapter of Genesis, according to which man was formed from the dust of the earth, and woman was manufactured from a rib taken from her lord and master. The Christian world generally have no hesitancy in accepting this mode of creation, and rest content, taking it for granted because contained within the lids of that reverenced book, the Bible, that it must be true. The feasibility of a Being endowed with infinite wisdom and intelligence creating a man by the above process is not so questionable as the method of the introduction of the first woman into earthly environments. To people whose minds are occupied with the emotional, fanciful and poetical, such a scheme perhaps can be quite easily reconciled to their mode of thought; but the mind that is only satisfied with the rigorous test of reason, basing its deductions on the grounds of scientific certainty, requires something more substantial and tangible. The Mosaic theory of the creation proceeds upon the supposition that at a period comparatively recent, nature had for its antecedent nothing but chaos and discordancy, that the present phenomena were the product of a separate and distinctive act of divine creative intelligence, eliminating altogether progressive continuity and spontaneous development. To properly test the accuracy and genuineness of this hypothesis, recourse must be had to the evidence of archæology and geology. It is said "That the occurrence of an historical fact is said to be demonstrated when the evidence that it did not occur renders the assumption that it did occur in the highest degree improbable." Now in the absence of human testimony we must resort to circumstantial evidence, which, though not so desirable, is, however, in the question we are now discussing, from the very necessity of the case, the only evidence available. Human affairs are made up of such a complication of circumstances, so intimately interwoven that there is absolutely no link missing in the chain of continuity; in other words every cause has its effect, the effect in turn being a cause; this same order is prominently manifested throughout all the grand mechanism of the universe, therefore it is reasonable to infer from our observation of the constancy of the order of nature that a like process has always been employed in the growth and development of life, varying only with the oscillations of geological activity. It is this presumption that gives to circumstantial evidence its probative force and significance. Therefore in any theory accounting for the origin of animal life, inasmuch as chronological records cover compar atively so brief a period, it must be tested by this evidence. If it were a fact that the introduction of life upon the globe occurred in the manner described by Moses, the evidence of archæology and geology is unavailing; on the contrary if the indications afforded by those sciences be trustworthy, then the Biblical account is visionary and inaccurate; as it will subsequently appear, however, there must be a harmony between what Huxley terms the "Miltonic hypothesis" and geology, in order to render the former worthy of credence. Both theories may be correct, but one may be more complete and elaborate than the other. Dr. Winchell in his work on "Pre-Adamites," maintains that from the fact that the introduction of life on earth occurred as recorded in the Bible, it did not necessarily antagonize the existence of life before that time; therefore, while the Bible does not affirmatively deny a previous course of evolution, it does not support it. Prof. Huxley, however, undertakes to show a direct conflict between the "Miltonic hypothesis" and geology. If the succession of strata in geological history occurred with its alleged regularity, and the evidence these distinctive formations contain of the existence of life by reason of fossil remains, be genuine, then of course life existed in great abundance for an indefinite period of time antecedent to the alleged introduction of life by Moses. According to Genesis the present phenomena were established in the course of six days. On the first day light appeared; on the second day the waters from above separated from those beneath the firmament; on the third day vegetable life was produced; on the fourth day the heavens were chequered by the appearance of the sun, moon and stars, etc.; on the fifth day the fishes of the sea and waters were created; and on the sixth day all terrestrial animals appeared, including man, excepting which was itself the product of the birds whose creation was contempor- action of light and heat upon the aneous with aquatic life. Huxley chemical constituents of an ancient has shown that this order cannot be ocean. From the homogeneous it reconciled with the evidence of has assumed the heterogeneous, geology; for instance, land animals and all terrestrial life excepting birds did not appear until the sixth day, therefore in geological history, if the above be true, we could not look for any evidence of the existence of terrestrial animals other than birds only in formations subsequent to those affording evidence of the existence of birds, but such is not the case, for in the carboniferous age of the Paleozoic era according to LeConte we have abundant evidence indicating the existence of grasshoppers, cockroaches, spiders, scorpions and centipedes, and we find no traces of birds until the Jurassic age of the Mesozoic era, so then if this be true the creation of birds should have been postponed to the sixth day. It is very obvious from what has been adduced that there is not a perfect harmony prevailing between the "Miltonic hypothesis' and the evidence of geology. There is another theory which during the past century has obtained great prominence in the scientific world, and claimed by its disciples to be the method that nature has employed in the history of the growth and development of life upon the globe. It is the evolution hypothesis. It proceeds upon the supposition that the present condition of things has sprung gently and imperceptibly by a process of orderly sequence out of the past; that the further we go back in the history of the earth the greater will be the contrast between existing animals and those that then obtained, until we reach a period when no life of any kind existed. As fundamental it is affirmed by evolutionists, "That the great variety of plant and animal life now scattered over the globe, have been driven from a single primitive living creature, modifying and developing from its original form into the great variety of plant, animal life distributed over the earth, even emerging into the more varied shapes, till at last they have attained their present enormous variety of tree and shrub, of herb and sea weed, of beast and bird, and fish and creeping insect. Evolution throughout has been one and continuous, from nebula to sun, from gas cloud to planet, from early jelly fish to man or elephant.' It is further alleged in substance, that mind has been subject to a similar process of development; the very delicate tissue of the jelly fish slowly but definitely evolved in harmony with the transformation of its physical structure into a nervous system, gradually assuming in its varied cycles of progress finer shades or degrees of feeling until conscience was developed, finally resulting in a thinking brain. Such are the cardinal points of the perplexing theory of evolution. If all animal life including man, as it affirms, was derived originally from a single creature, which was itself produced by the action of certain agencies, why, upon the same principle and under the same law, could not the great variety of organic life have been produced? Analogy teaches us it would have been just as reasonable and as probable. By this it is not to be inferred that all animal life must necessarily have been produced simultaneously; as a matter of geology the earth in its earliest stage of progress was in such a condition that only the lower forms of animal life could have existed, but the idea is that organic forms made their appearance successively at separate and distinct intervals, only when the physical conditions were compatible to their existence. The unconform ity of the rock and life systems of the earth indicate the probability of an instantaneous destruction and recreation of animal life; for instance, the Mesozoic rocks are nearly universally uncomformable on the Carboniferous. This uncomformity is accompanied by a great revolution in the fauna and flora. So it is highly probable, founded upon the evolution hypothesis of the origin of a single creature, that an infinite variety of life has been produced in the same way only at different intervals. No doubt a great variety of life has ininhabited the earth whose remains through metamorphic action and other agencies have become so completely obliterated, that geology in its present state is unable to detect them. If the diversity of animals that now exist, not including man, have been evolved from a jelly fish, why at the present time do we not observe those wonderful modifications taking place? But we find that jelly fish produce no other species but its kind, not losing in the process any fundamental part of its individuality. So the parental identity of the whole animal world is perpetuated in the same manner, exhibiting only in a few instances marked degrees of change, and these modifications are peculiar to the frog, caterpillar, and perhaps one or two other forms exclusively. What does it signify because the fossil remains of an animal (Orohippus) have been discovered among the Eocene rocks, exhibiting on the terminus of its limbs a formation similar to that of the human hand, that is to say, an animal about the size of a fox, having four toes each on its front feet, with the addition of a rudimentary splint, and on its hind feet but three toes each. Ascending the strata and coming to the Miocene epoch, we discover an animal Miohippus, largely similar to the Eocene type, and resembling in some features the horse. The rudimentary splint has disappeared, and the fourth toe occupies relatively the same position that the fifth did of the Eocene, that is, a mere rudimentary splint. The middle hoof has also become larger. This animal it seems was about the size of a sheep. Climbing up the rugged rocks of the Miocene we are suddenly in the midst of a new world of creation, the Pliocene. Another animal (Protohippus) has been discovered in this formation, approaching nearer the structure of the modern horse. The fourth splint in this animal is completely gone, the middle hoof being still larger. Coming further up the Pliocene we have an animal almost identical with the American horse. Huxley maintains that the contrast exhibited by those animals which he calls the horse, is demonstrative evidence in support of the evolution hypothesis. It would be more con sistent to believe that the Eocene and Miocene types are separate and distinct having no relationship to the present horse, that the Pliocene type, being almost identical with the modern horse in its anatomy, is but a sport of nature. We could as consistently believe that man and the gorilla sustain a like relationship. which is far from being an established fact. It has been maintained by some authorities who have studied the conditions attendant to rudimentary or embryonic development, that the fossil remains that have been found, resembling fundamentally in structure some of the present known animals, but differing in some minor details, are only freaks of nature, and therefore should not be regarded as natural modifications of a primitive stock. It is unquestionably true that there have existed in geological history a great variety of animals that have become extinct in bygone ages. In the second volume of the great book of geology, that is to say in the reptilian age, we are informed that lizards and other huge monsters ex |