

XII.] THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION. 319 



This leads to the final consideration, a difficulty by no 

 means to be passed over in silence, namely, the OEIGIN OF 

 MAN. 1 To the general theory of Evolution, and to the 

 special Darwinian form of it, no exception, it has been 

 shown, need be taken on the ground of orthodoxy. But in 

 saying this, it has not been meant to include in the pro- 

 cess of evolution the soul of man. 



It is a generally received doctrine that the soul of every 

 individual man is absolutely created in the strict and 

 primary sense of the word, that it is produced by a direct 

 or supernatural 2 act, and, of course, that by such an act 

 the soul of the first man was similarly created. It is there- 

 fore important to inquire whether " evolution " conflicts 

 with th s doctrine. 



Now the two beliefs are in fact perfectly compatible, and 

 this is the case, either on the hypothesis (1) that man's 



* Since the first edition of this work appeared, Mr. Darwin has pub- 

 lished his "Descent of Man." Therein he shows elaborately the resem- 

 blances which exist both in structure and; mode of development between 

 man's body and the bodies of inferior forms. He also calls attention to 

 similarity in diseases, parasites, the effects of medicines, stimulants, &c. 

 All this, however, merely amounts to a proof of what no one denies, 

 namely, that man is an animal ; and consequently to the establishment of 

 an a priori probability that if other animals have arisen by " Natural 

 Selection," the animal man has also arisen in like manner, unless a valid 

 objection can be raised from some other part of his nature. It is patent 

 that an objection can be raised from his intellectual and moral faculties, and 

 accordingly Mr. Darwin endeavours to show that there is no difference of 

 kind between these faculties and the psychical powers of brutes. In this 

 endeavour he fails utterly. The result is that Man (the totality of his 

 being and not his anatomy only being considered) is seen, yet more clearly 

 from this very failure, to differ from every other animal by a distinction 

 far more profound than any which separates each irrational animal from 

 every other. 



2 The term, as before said, not being used in its ordinary theological 

 sense, but to denote an immediate Divine action as distinguished from 

 God's action through the powers conferred on the physical universe. 



