70 THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 



Considering the wide popularity and great authority 

 which Agassiz's work has gained, and which is perhaps 

 justified on account of earlier scientific services rendered by 

 the author, I have thought it my duty here to show the 

 utter untenableness of his general conceptions. So far as 

 this work pretends to be a scientific history of creation, it 

 is undoubtedly a complete failure. But still it has great 

 value, being the only detailed attempt, adorned with scien- 

 tific arguments, which an eminent naturalist of our day 

 has made to found a teleological or dualistic history of 

 creation. The utter impossibility of such a history has 

 thus been made obvious to every one. No opponent of 

 Agassiz could have refuted the dualistic conception of 

 organic nature and its origin more strikingly than he him- 

 self has done by the intrinsic contradictions which present 

 themselves everywhere in his theory. 



The opponents of the monistic or mechanical conception 

 of the world have welcomed Agassiz's work with delight, 

 and find in it a perfect proof of the direct creative action of 

 a personal God. But they overlook the fact that this per- 

 sonal Creator is only an idealized organism, endowed with 

 human attributes. This low dualistic conception of God 

 corresponds with a low animal stage of development of 

 the human organism. The more developed man of the pre- 

 sent day is capable of, and justified in, conceiving that 

 infinitely nobler and sublimer idea of God which alone is 

 compatible with the monistic conception of the universe, and 

 which recognizes God's spirit and power in all phenomena 

 without exception. This monistic idea of God, which belongs 

 to the future, has already been expressed by Giordano 

 Bruno in the following words: — "A spirit exists in all 



