350 DARWINISM STATED BY DARWIN HIMSELF. 



some low organized form, will naturally ask, How does 

 this bear on the belief in the immortality of the soul ? 

 The barbarous races of man, as Sir J. Lubbock has shown, 

 possess no clear belief of this kind ; but arguments de- 

 rived from the primeval beliefs of savages are, as we have 

 just seen, of little or no avail. Few persons feel any anx- 

 iety from the impossibility of determining at what precise 

 period in the development of the individual, from the 

 first trace of a minute germinal vesicle, man becomes an 

 immortal being ; and there is no greater cause for anxiety 

 because the period can not possibly be determined in the 

 gradually ascending organic scale. 



I am aware that the conclusions arrived at in this 

 work will be denounced by some as highly irreligious ; 

 but he who denounces them is bound to show why it 

 is more irreligious to explain the origin of man as a 

 distinct species by descent from some lower form, 

 through the laws of variation and natural selection, 

 than to explain the birth of the individual through the 

 laws of ordinary reproduction. The birth both of the 

 species and of the individual are equally parts of that 

 grand sequence of events, which our minds refuse to 

 accept as the result of blind chance. The understand- 

 ing revolts at such a conclusion, whether or not we are 

 able to believe that every slight variation of structure — 

 the union of each pair in marriage — the dissemination 

 of each seed — and other such events, have all been or- 

 dained for some special purpose. 



Journal of Among the scenes which are deeply im- 



p^ a gQg es ' pressed on my mind, none exceed in sublim- 

 ity the primeval forests undefaced by the 

 hand of man ; whether those of Brazil, where the powers 



