DOCTRINE OF SPECIAL CREATION 429 



sions are right, and in so far as we really desire to understand 

 the world about us with a view to living in it as best we may, 

 we cannot help wishing to have our beliefs regarding origins 

 harmonize with what we do know. So far as they are in 

 accord with facts, such beliefs help us to put our facts in 

 order so that we may use them to best advantage in living 

 and thinking. Our supreme test of the value and truth of 

 any such belief is the extent to which it enables us to fit fact 

 with fact, and leads us to new facts of importance. Our 

 method must be to apj^ly this test to those beliefs which have 

 been most ^videly held about the origin of living things. We 

 may be sure that every such belief expresses important 

 truths because of the many facts it must explain in order 

 to be widely accepted. It is, of course, our business to seek 

 truths of importance wherever they may be found, and to 

 adopt the most promising belief until a plainly more truthful 

 view is presented. 



164. The doctrine of special creation. Linnaeus embodied 

 the belief of his own age and of former times in the famous 

 saying, "We reckon so many species as there were distinct 

 forms created in the beginning." This belief assumes that 

 in somewhat the same way as men have fashioned artificial 

 objects for various uses, so superior beings or one Supreme 

 Being of transcendent wisdom and power, created in the 

 beginning originals of all the different kinds of plants and 

 animals, fitting each to occupy its proper place, and endowing 

 each with the power of perpetuating its like in progeny. In 

 other words, all the living representatives of each species 

 are regarded as the descendants of a first original or pair which 

 was speciall}" created by God, as a distinct and entirely new 

 production, in the most suitable part of the earth, when the 

 world was young; from which place and since which time 

 the species has been chstributed over the area that it now 

 occupies. Furthermore, the peculiarities which characterize 

 its living representatives are held to be the same that were 

 impressed in the beginning upon the original progenitors of 

 the species. 



The view above outlined is known as the doctrine oi fixity 

 of species, or special creation, or as creationism. Since it 



