PROFESSOR VlRCltOW AND EVOLUTION. 627 



other influential quarters a similar spirit is at work. In a 

 remarkable article published by Professor Knight of St. 

 Andrews in the September number of the Nineteenth 

 Century, amid other free utterances, we have this one: 

 4i If matter is not eternal, its first emergence into being is 

 a miracle beside which all others dwindle into absolute 

 insignificance. But, as has often been pointed out, the 

 process is unthinkable; the sudden apocalypse of a material 

 world out of blank nonentity cannot be imagined;* its 

 emergence into order out of chaos when 'without form 

 and void " of life, is merely a poetic rendering of the doc- 

 trine of its slow evolution.' These are all bold words to 

 be spoken before the moral philosophy class of a Scotch 

 university, while those I have underlined show a remark- 

 able freedom of dealing with the sacred text. They repeat 

 in terser language what 1 ventured to utter four years ago 

 regarding the Book of Genesis. " Profoundly interesting 

 and indeed pathetic to me are those attempts of the opening 

 mind of man to appease its hunger for a Cause. But the 

 Book of Genesis has no voice in scientific questions. It is 

 a poem, not a scientific treatise. In the former aspect it is 

 forever beautiful; in the latter it has been, and it will 

 continue to be, purely obstructive and hurtful." My agree- 

 ment with Professor Knight extends still further. " Does 

 the vital," he asks, " proceed by a still remoter develop- 

 ment from the non-vital? Or was it created by a fiat of 

 volition? Or" and here he emphasizes his question 

 te has it always existed in some form or other as an eternal 

 constituent of the universe 9 I do not see," he replies, 

 " how we can escape from the last alternative." With the 

 whole force of my conviction I say, Nor do I, though our 

 modes of regarding the '' eternal constituent" may not be 

 the same. 



When matter was defined by Descartes, he deliber- 

 ately excluded the idea of force or motion from its attri- 

 butes and from his definition. Extension only was taken 

 into account. And, inasmuch as the impotence of matter 

 to generate motion was assumed, its observed motions 

 were referred to an external cause. God, resident outside 

 of matter, gave the impulse, In this connection the 



* Professor Knight will have to reckon with the English marriage 

 service, one of whose collects begins thus: " O God, who by thy 

 mighty power hast made all things of nothing." 



