ii6 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



growtli or evolution, which is quite contrary to what is known 

 g-s special creation. And when we remember that the schoolmen 

 held what is now called abiogenesis and generation from putre- 

 faction, both in botany and zoology, we feel at once how infinitely 

 more elastic their theory of Nature was than that implied in the 

 doctrine of special creation. But if special creation is a doctrine 

 unknown to Bacon and rejected by St. Thomas, it is not likely to 

 be essential either to science or religion. 



Where, then, did it come from ? It includes elements both 

 scientific and religious, and it is interesting to notice how the 

 elements combined. 



Half a century after Bacon's " Novum Organum " was pub- 

 lished, a great poem appeared, which has since then, often un- 

 consciously, influenced theologians and apologists. It is, no 

 doubt, a thankless and ungenerous task to bring the heavy 

 artillery of science to bear upon poetry, and it is only justifiable 

 when truth is endangered. Some time ago ISTasmyth, by the help 

 of the " Nautical Almanac," discovered that, if Sir John Moore 

 was buried " at dead of night," he could not have had the advan- 

 tage of " the struggling moonbeam's misty light," because the 

 moon must have been far below the horizon at the time. When 

 this criticism was reported to the late President of the Royal 

 Irish Academy by Sir R. S. Ball, he is said to have replied, " I'll 

 tell you what it is, the time will come when that little poem will 

 be taken as the sole authority about the matter, and all your 

 astronomical calculations will go for nothing at all." This is 

 very much what has happened in the case of " Paradise Lost." 

 People have come to think of it as a sort of inspired gloss on the 

 early chapters of Genesis. Yet there is a huge difference 

 between the text and the commentary. In the Bible we have, 

 "And God said, 'Let the earth bring forth,' " etc., words which 

 are at least consistent with a gradual development. But Milton 



says : 



" The grassy clods now calved : now half appeared 



The tawny lion, pawing to get free 



His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, 



And rampant shakes his brinded mane ; the ounce, 



The libbard, and the tiger, as the mole 



Eising, the crumbled earth above them threw 



In hillocks; the swift stag from underground 



Bore up his branching head," etc., etc.* 



This is literalism and realism with a vengeance ! And yet it 

 is hard to see why Milton should not do in poetry what Raphael 

 in the Vatican had done in art. 



But what gives such importance to the account of creation in 



* " Paradise Lost,'' vii, 414, et seq. 



