WHAT IS DARWINISM? 143 



lieve it. Let any one ask himself, suppose 

 this fact was not thus famiHar, what amount 

 of speculation, of arguments from analogies, 

 possibilities, and probabilities, could avail to 

 produce conviction of its truth. But who can 

 believe that all the plants and animals which 

 have ever existed upon the face of the earth, 

 have been evolved from one such germ ? This 

 is Darwin's doctrine. We are aware that this 

 apparent impossibility is evaded by the be- 

 lievers in spontaneous generation, who hold 

 that such germ cells may be produced any- 

 where and at all times. But this is not Dar- 

 winism. Darwin wants us to believe that all 

 living things, from the lowly violet to the giant 

 redwoods of California, from the microscopic 

 animalcule to the .Mastodon, the Dinotherium, 

 — monsters the very description of which fill us 

 with horror, — bats with wings twenty feet in 

 breadth, flying dragons, tortoises ten feet high 

 and eighteen feet long, etc., etc., came one and 

 all from the same primordial germ. This de- 

 mand is the more unreasonable when we re- 

 member that these living creatures are not 

 only so different, but are, as to plants and ani- 

 mals, directly opposed in their functions. The 

 function of the plant, as biologists express it, is 



