WHENCE AND WHITHER 13 



works by intellectual powers like those of man ? ' On 

 the same page he refers to "the works of the Creator' 

 as being superior to those of man. In the same work 

 t^vol. 2, p. 304) he refers to "the laws impressed on 

 matter by the Creator.' Again (p. 306) he refers 

 to life as "having been originally breathed by the 

 Creator into a few forms or into one, ' ' animal, at the 

 beginning of life on the earth. In his Descent of Man 

 (p. 95) he says: "There is no evidence that man was 

 aboriginally endowed with the ennobling belief in 

 the existence of the omnipotent God.' Referring to 

 the question: "Whether there exists a Creator and 

 Ruler of the Universe. ' On the same page he says : 

 "And this has been answered in the affirmative by 

 some of the highest intellects that have ever existed.' 

 In the same work (p. 627) he says: "The idea of 

 a universeal and beneficent Creator does not seem to 

 arise in the mind of man, until he has been elevated 

 by long continued culture.' On the same page he 

 says : ' * Few persons feel any anxiety from the im- 

 possibility of determining at what precise period, in 

 the development of the individual, from the first trace 

 of a minute germinal vesicle, man becomes an im- 

 mortal being." Again (pp. 627-628) he says: "The 

 birth, both of the species and of the individual are 

 equally parts of that grand sequence of events which 

 our minds refuse to accept as the result of blind 

 chance. The understanding revolts at such a conclu- 

 sion.' Thus it appears that Darwin believed in the 

 existence of a personal God and in the im- 

 mortality of the human soul. But he also believed 

 "that the production and extinction of the past and 



