150 GENESIS VERSUS NATURE IV 



Has any one ever disputed the contention, thus 

 solemnly enunciated, that the doctrine of evolu- 

 tion was not invented the day before yesterday ? 

 Has any one ever dreamed of claiming it as a 

 modern innovation ? Is there any one so ignorant 

 of the history of philosophy as to be unaware that 

 it is one of the forms in which speculation em- 

 bodied itself long before the time either of the 

 Bishop of Hippo or of the Apostle to the Gentiles ? 

 Is Mr. Gladstone, of all people in the world, 

 disposed to ignore the founders of Greek philo- 

 sophy, to say nothing of Indian sages to whom 

 evolution was a familiar notion ages before Paul 

 of Tarsus was born ? But it is ungrateful to cavil 

 at even the most oblique admission of the possible 

 value of one of those affirmations of natural science 

 which really may be said to be " a demonstrated 

 conclusion and established fact." I note it with 

 pleasure, if only for the purpose of introducing 

 the observation that, if there is any truth what- 

 ever in the doctrine of evolution as applied to 

 animals, Mr. Gladstone's gloss on Genesis in the 

 following passage is hardly happy : 



God created 



(a) The water-population ; 



(b) The air-population. 



And they receive His benediction (v. 20-23). 



6. Pursuing this regular progression from the lower to the 

 higher, from the simple to the complex, the text now gives 

 us the work of the sixth "day," which supplies the land-popu- 

 lation, air and water having been already supplied (pp. 695, 696). 



