Permanence and Evolution. 117 



constructed. Organised beings, whatever else 

 they are, are certainly machines far more won- 

 derful and complicated than any made by 

 human art, and towards these machines we 

 stand related as a savage does to the manu- 

 factured products of civilised ingenuity. 



The " doctrine of special creation " has been 

 sometimes opposed to that of evolution in such a 

 way as to imply that whoever is not an evolu- 

 tionist has no choice but to believe that organic 

 forms originated not only apart, i.e., not by 

 generation one from the other, but also without 

 any physical link between them, so that their 

 resemblance cannot be physically explained in 

 any way. But it is not more likely that 

 organised productions, springing up separately, 

 should not show traces of having been formed 

 under the influence of the same general laws 

 than that crystals should not. 



Let us for instance suppose that , organised 

 beings are merely chemical products of exces- 



