454 



THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY, 



If, stepping beyond that which may be learned from the facts of 

 the successive appearance of the forms of animal life upon the surface 

 of the globe, in so far as they are yet made known to us by natural 

 science, we apply our reasoning faculties to the task of finding out 

 what those observed facts mean, the present conclusions of the inter- 

 preters of Nature appear to be no less directly in conflict with those of 

 the latest interpreter of Genesis. 



Mr. Gladstone appears to admit that there is some truth in the 

 doctrine of evolution, and indeed places it under very high patronage : 



I contend that evolution in its highest form has not been a thing heretofore 

 unknown to history, to philosophy, or to theology. I contend that it was before 

 the mind of Saint Paul when he taught that in tlie fullness of time God sent forth 

 his Son, and of Eusebius, when he wrote the "Preparation for the Gospel," and 

 of Augustine when he composed the " City of God " (p. 706). 



Has any one ever disputed the contention thus solemnly enunciated 

 that the doctrine of evolution was not invented the day before yester- 

 day ? Has any one ever dreamed of claiming it as a modern innova- 

 tion ? Is there any one so ignorant of the history of philosophy as to 

 be unaware that it is one of the forms in which speculation embodied 

 itself long before the time either of the Bishop of Hippo or of the 

 Apostle to the Gentiles ? Is Mr. Gladstone, of all people in the world, 

 disposed to ignore the founders of Greek philosophy, to say nothing of 

 Indian sages, to whom evolution was a familiar notion ages before Paul 

 of Tarsus was born ? But it is ungrateful to cavil at even the most 

 oblique admission of the possible value of one of those afiirmations of 

 natural science which really may be said to be "a demonstrated con- 

 clusion and established fact." I note it with pleasure, if only for the 

 purpose of introducing the observation that, if there is any truth what- 

 ever in the doctrine of evolution as applied to animals, Mr. Gladstone's 

 gloss on Genesis in the following passage is hardly happy : 



God created — 



{a) The water-population ; 



(J) The air-population. 



And they receive his benediction (verses 20-23). 



6. Pursuing tliis regular progression from the lower to the higher, from the 

 simple to the complex, the text now gives us tlie work of the sixth " day,'' wliich 

 supplies the land-population, air and water having been already supplied (pp. 

 095, 696). 



The gloss to which I refer is the assumption that the " air-popula- 

 tion " forms a term in the order of progression from lower to higher, 

 from simple to complex — the place of which lies between the water- 

 population below and the land-population above — and I speak of it 



the certainty that they existed, which is derived from the occurrence of the wing in the 

 Middle Silurian. In fact, I have stretched a point in admitting that these fossils afford a 

 colorable pretext for the assumption that the land and air population were of contempo- 

 raneous oririn. 



