1 8 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



powers from generation to generation, from age to 

 age. If we ask modern science what are the agencies 

 and conditions implied in the introduction on the 

 earth of the multitudinous forms of humble marine 

 life which we find in the oldest rocks, its answer is in 

 no essential respect different It says that these 

 creatures, endowed with powers of reproduction and 

 possibly of variation, increased and multiplied and 

 filled the waters with varied forms of life ; in other 

 words, they were sheretzim, or swarmers. It further 

 says that their oceanic environment supplied the ex 

 ternal conditions of their introduction and continu 

 ance, and all the varieties of station suited to their 

 various forms the waters brought them forth. 1 

 Lastly, since biology cannot show any secondary 

 cause adequate to produce out of dead matter even 

 the humblest of these swarmers, it must here either 

 confess its ignorance, and say that it knows nothing 

 of such abiogenesis, ! or must fall back on the old 

 formula, * God said. 



Let it be further observed that creation or making, 

 as thus stated in the Bible, is not of the nature of what 

 some are pleased to call an arbitrary intervention and 

 miraculous interference with the course of nature. It 

 leaves quite open the inquiry how much of the vital 



1 It is sometimes urged against the idea of creation that it implies 

 abiogenesis or production without previous life. But there must have 

 been abiogenesis at some time, and probably more than once, else no 

 living thing could have existed. 



