CREATION OR EVOLUTION? 33 



and development to the unceasing operation of laws inherent (as would 

 appear) in things themselves. What strikes us with wonder, however, 

 is that our author, after explaining that on Plato's theory man was 

 first made, and after him the other animals in the order of their dig- 

 nity, the lowest forms of aquatic life coming last, should proceed to 

 say that there is as much in Nature to support this view of creation 

 as to support the Darwinian theory, according to which life, beginning 

 with the lowliest forms, worked upward to the highest. These are his 

 words : "Xor had Plato less of probability to support bis theory than 

 Darwin to support his. ... If Plato had known as much about the 

 animal kingdom as is now known, he could have arrayed the same 

 facts in support of his theory by an argument as powerful as that 

 which now supports the doctrine of evolution " (pp. 73, 74). This, in 

 face of the fact that the geological record is there for every one who 

 has eyes to read, showing that the highest forms of life were not first 

 in the order of creation or development, but last, and the lowest forms 

 first ! Surely it is not the doctrine of evolution that will suffer by 

 such an attack as this. The influence of the "postulate" must have 

 been making itself very strongly felt when the author contrived to 

 overlook simply the broadest, the most conspicuous, and the most im- 

 portant fact of all bearing on the question of the relative claims of 

 the two theories he was comparing. It is not an encouraging example 

 of the effect of theological or metaphysical prepossessions. The Pla- 

 tonic theory of the soul has also, it would seem, made much impression 

 on our author. The Demiurgus makes it entirely " distinct from mat- 

 ter," and places it in some star, where it is to await the birth of the 

 body with which it is destined to be united, and which it is to govern, 

 if it can, " according to the eternal laws of reason and rectitude." If 

 it succeeds in this duty, it flies back at the death of the body to its 

 own star ; if not, it passes into some more degraded body, for the pur- 

 pose, apparently, of getting another chance under worse conditions. 

 " Stripped," says the writer, " of the machinery by which Plato sup- 

 poses the soul to have come into existence, his conception of its origin 

 and its nature is the most remarkable contribution which philosophy, 

 apart from the aid of what is called inspiration, has made to our means 

 of speculating upon this great theme." Surely it is not our "means of 

 speculating " upon this or any other theme that we want to have en- 

 larged ; it is our knowledge of the facts of the case ; in general, the 

 less we know the more freely we can speculate. We fail to see that 

 as a contribution to knowledge the Platonic conception is of any value 

 whatever. 



The strictly scientific arguments brought by our author against the 

 doctrine of evolution present, we feel justified in saying, no character of 

 originality. They are such as every one in the least acquainted with 

 the literature of the subject is thoroughly familiar with. Against Dar- 

 win is urged the absence of the intermediate forms which, upon his 

 VOL. xxxi. 3 



