THE DOGMA OF EVOLUTION 



from Empedocles and are hostile to the Mosaic legend 

 in Genesis. If we substitute a divine Creator for the 

 vague self-creative principles of love and hate and if 

 we accept a final and perfect creation of each species 

 which was progressive in time for a tentative and 

 fortuitous creation which by stages produced the fixed 

 type, there is little to choose between the two cos- 

 mogonies, except that the Biblical account is not 

 ludicrous. 



No biologist or evolutionist ever refers to Milton 

 except to sneer at him as the refuge of bigoted special 

 creationists, and yet his description of the creation 

 in the seventh book of Paradise Lost is quite Em- 

 pedoclean, barring the monstrosities, and gives us a 

 well-ordered progression in the creation from lower 

 to higher forms. Certainly Empedocles would not 

 have objected to these lines: 



The grassy clods now calved ; now half appeared 

 The tawny lion, pawing to get free 

 His hinder parts. 



If evolutionists must find a corner-stone in Greek 

 philosophy for their doctrine, they should give this 

 honour to Democritus. His doctrine of mechanical 

 and atomistic monism in which all phenomena are re- 

 duced to material particles moving according to nat- 

 ural law is, in the real sense of the word, modern 

 science. But those who hold that evolution, and all 

 science, must be inductive and rest only on a founda- 

 tion of observation, will derive but little comfort 



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