CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 29 



Surely this stone has an eventful history, but I shall not tax your pa- 

 tience longer by trying to trace it conjecturally. I shall only say that 

 we can not but agree with the common opinion which regards meteor- 

 ites as fragments broken from larger masses, but we can not be satisfied 

 without trying to imagine what were the antecedents of those masses. 



CREATION OR EVOLUTION?* 



Br W. D. LE SUEUE. 



IN a recently published work, bearing the above title, we have an 

 elaborate plea, drawn by an eminent legal practitioner, against the 

 doctrine of evolution as expounded by such writers as Darwin, Huxley, 

 and Spencer. To satisfy the natural curiosity of the public as to how 

 eminent qualifications as a jurist should have come to be united with 

 competence for a very ambitious essay in biological and philosophical 

 criticism, the author informs us that, for years past, he has found re- 

 laxation from severe professional labor in the study, during his leisure 

 hours, of the works of the leading evolutionists. He believes that he 

 has fully mastered both their facts and their reasonings ; and, finding 

 the latter very weak so weak that, in one case, he almost blushes to 

 have to repeat the argument to his intelligent readers he comes for- 

 ward to level the whole structure of the evolutionary philosophy, and 

 to rebuild on its ruins the ancient theory of " special creation." It 

 must not be supposed, however, that Mr. Curtis is indebted to previous 

 writers for the arguments he now brings to bear in favor of that ven- 

 erable position. It is over forty years, he tells us, since he looked into 

 any of the great authorities in the department of natural theology ; and 

 he is not now conscious of having " borrowed an argument, imitated 

 a method, or followed an example." It is not often, perhaps, that so 

 extensive a claim can be laid to originality ; for most of us, it must be 

 confessed, borrow arguments, imitate methods, and follow examples, 

 often to our great profit, and without, in general, feeling our con- 

 sciences unduly burdened. There is no doubt in our mind that Mr. 

 Curtis has made an honest effort to understand the writers whom he 

 has set to work to criticise. He has conned his brief with a good deal 

 of care ; but the trouble is, as we conceive, that he has held a brief, 

 and has not been in contact with the actual facts. He has taken one 

 or two books of Darwin's, and one or two of Spencer's, and has sub- 

 jected them to a kind of microscopic analysis ; but there is no evi- 

 dence whatever that either his reading or his observation has been of 

 a character to enable him to do justice to the doctrine of evolution as 

 a whole. He has not even read enough o.f the authors he criticises to 



* Creation or Evolution ? A Philosophical Inquiry. By George Ticknor Curtis. 

 New York : D. Appleton and Company. 



