72 ESSAYS SCIENTIFIC AND PHILOSOPHICAL. 



evolution, and evolution I fully and gladly accept, 

 not as a theory, but as a scientific fact, which in 

 one region of Biology I have had some opportunity 

 of appreciating, evolution has done nothing to 

 explain Creation. It has won from the unknown 

 law of primary creation much which it has trans- 

 ferred to the more familiar law of evolution. We 

 do not now seek by artificial or natural systems of 

 classification to discover the original creations of 

 God. Probably all known varieties came from one. 

 At all events, the sharp line which separates kind 

 from kind is gone, that which separates animal 

 from vegetable is gone, the line which separates 

 organic from inorganic exists still, but how long it 

 will exist who knows, and what does it matter ? 1 

 But if primary creation is thus limited to a point, 

 whatever that point may be, the line between crea- 

 tion and evolution is still as fixed as ever. We are 

 no nearer knowing, or expressing in terms of reason, 

 the truth that " in the beginning God created." 



Creation, it is said, is an idea never found apart 

 from Christianity. An eternal chaos, an un- 



1 See W. S. Lilly's Article on the religious future of the world, 

 Cont. Rev., January and February, 1883, p. 213. "And what 

 do you say to spontaneous generation? I would say, first that I 

 hardly see how it touches the Theistic or the Catholic position. 

 As a matter of fact, Catholics generally believed it until the other 

 day. St. Thomas Aquinas and Suarez seem to have taken it for 

 granted." So did Bacon. See his Hist. Naturalis., vol. iii. It is 

 only the odittm scientificum which has tried to make it a theological 

 question at all. 



