THE ORIGIN OF LIFE 65 



Darwin himself, in his very last volume, in spite 

 of his untenable conclusions regarding the origin 

 of man, felt bound to confess no less. There is 

 no solution for the problem of the origin of life 

 except to acknowledge an ordained purpose, which 

 necessarily postulates a directive and intelligent 

 cause. This much even the most degraded savage, 

 grovelling in fear before his totem of wood or 

 idol of stone, has been able to perceive. However 

 superstitious his form of worship, his act implies 

 a recognition of the great laws of cause and ef- 

 fect, though erroneously applied. With a glim- 

 mer at least of intelligence and a memory of 

 better things, he blunderingly seeks to express 

 the same truth that Darwin protested he had 

 never denied, that nature postulates an intelli- 

 gent maker, that its wonderful laws, doubly won- 

 derful on the hypothesis of evolution, presup- 

 pose of necessity a giver of those laws. This 

 even Plate, the Monist, could not but confess in 

 his Berlin discussion : "Personally I always main- 

 tain that, if there are laws of nature, it is only 

 logical to admit a law-giver." 16 



To conceive of this giver of nature's laws, this 

 great originator of life, as a mere pantheistic 

 force, is nugatory and unworthy of a thinking 



direct language of the speech. We have deleted an adjective 

 that Lord. Kelvin, in a letter to the Times, May 4, 1903, desired 

 should be dropped, thus showing his careful revision of the 

 text. 



" Wasmann, "The Problem of Evolution," pp. 108, ff. 



