288 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



regard the Bible account of the introduction of life upon the earth as 

 a poem, not as a statement of fact, where are we to seek for guidance 

 as to the fact ? There does not exist a barrier possessing the strength 

 of a cobweb to oppose to the hypothesis which ascribes the appearance 

 of life to that "potency of matter" which results in natural evolution/ 

 This hj'pothesis is not without its difficulties, but they vanish when com- 

 pared with those which encumber its rivals. There are various facts in 

 science obviously connected, and whose connections we are unable to 

 trace; but we do not think of filling the gap between them by the in- 

 trusion of a separable spiritual agent. In like manner, though we are 

 unable to trace the course of things from the nebula, where there was 

 no life in our sense, to the present earth where life abounds, the spirit 

 and practice of science pronounce against the intrusion of an anthropo- 

 morphic creator. Theologians nuist liberate and refine their concep- 

 tions or be prepared for the rejection of them by thoughtful minds. 

 It is they, not we, who lay claim to knowledge never given to man. 

 " Our refusal of the creative hypothesis is less an assertion of knowl- 

 edge than a protest against the assumption of knowledge which must 

 long, if not always, lie beyond us, and the claim to which is a source 

 of perpetual confusion." At the same time, when I look with strenuous 

 gaze into the whole problem as far as my capacities allow, overwhelm- 

 ing wonder is the predominant feeling. This wonder has come to me 

 from the ages just as much as my understanding, and it has an equal 

 right to satisfaction. Hence I say, if, abandoning your illegitimate 

 claim to knowledge, you place, with Job, your forehead in the dust and 

 acknowledge the authorship of this universe to be past finding out 

 — if, having made this confession, and relinquished the views of the 

 mechanical theologian, you desire, for the satisfaction of feelings which 

 I admit to be in great part those of humanity at large, to give ideal 

 form to the Power that moves all things — it is not .by me that you will 

 find objections raised to this exercise of ideality, when consciously and 

 worthily carried out. 



Again, I think Prof. Virchow's position, in regard to the question 

 of contaghim aniinatum, is not altogether that of true philosophy. 

 He points to the antiquity of the doctrine. " It is lost," he says, " in 

 the darkness of the middle ages. "We have received this name from 

 our forefathers, and it already appears distinctly in the sixteenth cen- 

 tury. We possess several works of that time which put forward cooi- 

 tagium animatum as a scientific doctrine, with the same confidence, 

 with the same sort of proof, with which the ' Plastidulic soul ' is now 

 set forth." 



These speculations of our " forefathers " will appeal differently to 

 different minds. By some they will be dismissed with a sneer; to 



1 "We feel it an undeniable necessity," says Prof. Virchow, "not to sever the organic 

 world from the whole, as if it were something disjoined from the whole." This grave 

 statement cannot be weakened by the subsequent pleasantry regarding " Carbon & Co." 



