DARWIN. 193 



but the attribute of the carbon compounds, nor the 

 dogmatist, to whom the advent of a species is an 

 interruption of the laws of the universe, has yet set 

 it aside. Says Mr. Darwin : — 



" To my mind it accords better with what we know of 

 the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the 

 production and extinction of the past and present inhab- 

 itants of the world should have been due to secondary 

 causes, like those determining the birth and death of an in- 

 dividual. When I view all beings, not as special creations, 

 but as the lineal descendants of some few beings who 

 lived before the first bed of the Silurian was deposited, 

 they seem to me to become ennobled. There is a gran- 

 deur in this view of life, with its several powers having 

 been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms 

 or into one, and that while this planet has gone cycling 

 on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a 

 beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonder- 

 ful have been and are being evolved." 



With the growth of the race has steadily grown 

 our conception of the omnipotence of God. Our 

 ancestors felt, as many races of men still feel, that 

 they were forsaken unless each household had a god 

 of its own. For numerous as the greater gods 

 were, they could care for nothing lower than kings. 

 They could hardly believe that the god of their 

 tribe could be God of the Gentiles also. That he 

 should dwell in temples not made with hands, re- 

 moved him far from human sight. That there 

 could be two continents, was deemed impossible, 

 for one God could not watch them both. That the 

 earth was the central and sole inhabited planet, 

 rested on the same limited conception of the 



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