144 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



no doubt that many of them are quite as assailable as 

 the position of Haeckel in point of argument. It 

 may also be observed that Haeckel s argument is 

 almost exclusively biological, and confined to the 

 animal kingdom, and to the special line of descent 

 attributed to man. The monistic hypothesis be 

 comes, as already stated, still less tenable when 

 tested by the facts of palaeontology. Hence, most 

 of the palaeontologists who favour evolution appear 

 to shrink from the extreme position of Haeckel. 

 Gaudry, one of the ablest of this school, in his 

 work on the development of the mammalia, 

 candidly admits the multitude of facts for which 

 derivation will not account, and perceives in the grand 

 succession of animals in time the evidence of a wise 

 and far-reaching creative plan, concluding with the 

 words : We may still leave out of the question the 

 processes by which the Author of the world has pro 

 duced the changes of which palaeontology presents the 

 picture. In like manner the Count de Saporta, in his 

 World of Plants, closes his summary of the periods of 

 vegetation with the words : 



But if we ascend from one phenomenon to another, 

 beyond the sphere of contingent and changeable appear 

 ance, we find ourselves arrested by a being unchangeable 

 and supreme, the first expression and absolute cause of all 

 existence, in whom diversity unites with unity, an eternal 

 problem insoluble to science, but ever present to the human 

 consciousness. Here we reach the true source of the idea 

 of religion, and there presents itself distinctly to the mind 



