THE DARWINIAN THEORY 



gist. The lifeless earth is the canvas on 

 which has been drawn the noblest picture 

 that modern science has produced. It is 

 Darwin who has drawn this picture. He 

 has taken up the history of the earth at 

 the point where the astronomer left it and 

 he has made discoveries which have influ- 

 enced thought and opinion more than any 

 other discoveries that have been made for 

 centuries. . . . The method Darwin 

 adopts is of the most captivating sim- 

 plicity. When the history of science in 

 our century comes to be written, the inter- 

 est will culminate in the supreme discovery 

 of Natural Selection." 



The enthusiasm of Sir Robert Ball then 

 leads him on to extend the principle of 

 Darwinism, which as usual he loosely 

 speaks of as synonomous with evolution, to 

 surmising that very little is needed now to 

 suppose that life had a spontaneous origin 

 from matter. " Can it be possible that 

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