i 7 8 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



accepts the reality of spontaneous generation by means of putrefac- 

 tion and the action of the sun. These philosophers did not hesitate 

 to say that the dogma of creation is an impossibility, an absurd 

 opinion, only fit for the vulgar who will believe anything. According 

 to these elevated views, living beings are merely a movement of mat- 

 ter under the influence of heat. Man himself is like the flame of a 

 lamp, a form or shape through which material substance is passing, 

 receiving supplies, dismissing wastes, and evolving force. As regards 

 transmutation, Al Khazini says that an animal passes through succes- 

 sive stages of development, but we must not suppose that naturalists 

 mean to say that " man was once a bull, and was changed into an ass, 

 and afterward into a horse, and after that into an ape, and finally be- 

 came a man." 



Arabian philosophers had therefore speculated on spontaneous 

 generation, and the conditions necessary for its occurrence ; on the 

 development of a germ by the latent force it contains ; on the trans- 

 mutation of species ; and the production of the animal series. They 

 had rejected the theory of creation, and adopted that of evolution. 

 They had gained ideas respecting the unceasing dominion of law, but 

 at these they had arrived through their doctrine of emanation and 

 absorption, rather than from an investigation of visible Nature. In 

 the religious revolt against philosophy that took place toward the 

 twelfth century, these ideas were exterminated and never again ap- 

 peared in Islam. 



If the doctrine of the government of the world by law was thus 

 held in detestation by Islam, it was still more bitterly refused by 

 Christendom, in which the possibility of changing the divine pur- 

 poses was carried to its extreme by the invocation of angels and saints, 

 and great gains accrued to the Church through its supposed influence 

 in procuring these miraculous interventions. The Papal Government 

 was no more disposed to tolerate universal and irreversible law than 

 its Paynim antagonist had been. The Inquisition had been invented 

 and set at work. It speedily put an end, not only in the south of 

 France, but all over Europe, to everything supposed to be not in har- 

 mony with the orthodox faith, by instituting a reign of terror. 



The Reign of Terror in revolutionary France lasted but a few 

 months ; the atrocities of the Commune at the close of the Franco- 

 German War only a few days ; but the Reign of Terror in Christen- 

 dom has continued from the thirteenth century with declining en- 

 ergy to our times. Its object has been the forcible subjugation of 

 thought. 



The Mohammedans had thus brought the theory of evolution up to 

 that point at which, for any further advance, clear views of the opera- 

 tion of law in the government of the world were necessary. In their 

 speculations in this particular they had been guided by theological 



