52 The Evolutionist Question 



and that Mind was God. The same was in the begin- 

 ning with God. All things were made by it : and with- 

 out it was not anything made that was made. In it 

 was Life. ..." 



But noble and true as this answer may be, it is a 

 transcendental answer. That all came from and con- 

 tinues to express the Will of God, is part of a philo- 

 sophical or religious creed; and it does not satisfy 

 the restlessly inquisitive, continually scrutinizing, 

 and probing spirit of man. To be content with the 

 religious answer — always apt to become a soft pillow 

 to the easy-going — is to abandon the scientific prob- 

 lem as insoluble, and there can be no greater impiety 

 than that. It is surrendering our birthright — not for 

 a mess of pottage, it is true, but for peace of mind. 

 Therefore man is true to himself when he presses 

 home the question : How has this marvellous system of 

 Animate Nature come to be as it is ? Divine in origin, 

 divine in continuance, divine in its progressiveness — 

 these are religious truths ; but in other moods we are 

 bound to ask whence came these birds and beasts, 

 these flowers and trees, and what was the manner of 

 their coming. 



It is unnecessary to occupy time in re-telling a 

 story often finely told — and never more effectively 

 than in Yale — but let us briefly illustrate the facts 

 that rewarded the questions which began to be 

 pressed with insistence from the eighteenth century 

 onwards, by men like Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, and 

 Lamarck. 



