MILNE-EDWARDS ON "CREATION 11 245 



independent of the general properties of organisable matter 

 such as we know them to-day?" (p. 426). 



He concluded that the action of environment, direct or 

 indirect, was insufficient to account for the diversity of 

 organic forms, and rejected Darwin's theory completely. 

 He thought it likely that the successive faunas which 

 palaeontology discloses have originated from one another by 

 descent. But he thought that the process by which they 

 evolved should rightly be called " creation." The word was 

 of course not to be taken in a crude sense. When the 

 zoologist speaks of the " creation " of a new species, " he in 

 no way means that the latter has arisen from the dust, 

 rather than from a pre-existing animal whose mode of 

 organisation was different ; he merely means that the 

 known properties of matter, whether inert or organic, are 

 insufficient to bring about such a result, and that the interven- 

 tion of a hidden cause, of a power of some higher order, 

 seems to him necessary " (p. 429). 



The criticism of Darwinism exercised by the older 

 currents of thought remained on the whole without influence. 

 It was under the direct inspiration of the Darwinian theory 

 that morphology developed during the next quarter of a 

 century. 



