PROFESSOR VIRCHOW AND EVOLUTION, 



wliich finds expression in natural evolution.* This 

 hypothesis is not without its difficulties, but they vanish 

 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 

 & separable spiritual agent. In like manner though we 

 iire 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 

 not 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 pf 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 Vircbow, 

 " not to sever tbe organic world from tbe wbole, as if it were some- 

 tbing disjoined from the wbole." Tbis grave statement cannot be 

 weakened by tbe subsequent pleasantry regarding " Carbon & Co." 



