PROFESSOR VIllCHOW AND EVOLUTION. 657 
which finds expression in natural evolution.* This 
hypothesis is not without its difficulties, but theyjvanish 
when compared with those which encumber its rivals. 
There are various facts in science obviously connected, and 
whose connections we are unable to trace; but we do not 
think of filling the gap between them by the intrusion of 
a separable spiritual agent. In like manner though we 
are unable to trace the course of things from the nebula, 
when there was no life in our sense, to the present earth 
where life abounds, the spirit and practice of science pro- 
nounce against the intrusion of an anthropomorphic 
creator. Theologians must liberate and refine their con- 
ceptions or be prepared for the rejection of them by 
thoughtful minds. It is they, not we, who lay claim to 
knowledge never given to man. Our refusal of the creative 
hypothesis is less an assertion of knowledge than a protest 
against the assumption of knowledge which must long, if 
7iot always, lie beyond us, and the claim to which is a 
source of perpetual confusion. At the same time, when 
I look with strenuous gaze into the whole problem as far 
as my capacities allow, overwhelming wonder is the pre- 
dominant feeling. This wonder has come to me from the 
ages just as much as my understanding, and it has an* 
equal right to satisfaction. Hence I say, if, abandoning 
your illegitimate claim to knowledge, you place, with Job, 
your forehead in the dust and acknowledge the authorship 
of this universe to be past finding out if, having made 
this confession, and relinquished the views of the mechan- 
ical theologian, you desire for the satisfaction of feelings 
which I admit to be, in great part, those of humanity at 
large, to give ideal form to the Power that moves all things 
it is not by me that you will find objections raised to 
this exercise of ideality, if it be only consciously and 
worthily carried out. 
Again, I think Professor Virchow's position, in regard 
to the question of contagium animatum, is not altogether 
that of true philosophy. He points to the antiquity of the 
doctrine. "It is lost/' he says, " in the darkness of the 
*" We feel it an undeniable necessity," says Professor Virchow, 
" not to sever the organic world from the whole, as if it were some- 
thing disjoined from the whole." This grave statement cannot be 
weakened by the subsequent pleasantry regarding " Carbon & Co." 
