WHEN DID THE SOUL ARRIVE? 401 



into indubitable man, * How do you propose to divide the 

 series presented by every individual man in his growth 

 from the egg ? At what particular phase in the embryonic 

 series is the soul with its consciousness implanted ? Is it 

 in the egg ? in the foetus of this month or that ? in the 

 new-born infant ? or at five years of age ? ' This, it is 

 notorious, is a point upon which churches have never been 

 able to agree ; and it is equally notorious that the un- 

 broken series exists that the egg becomes the foetus, the 

 foetus the .child, and the child the man. On the other 

 hand we have the historical series the series, the exist- 

 ence of which is inferred by Darwin and his adherents. 

 This is a series leading from simple egg-like organisms to 

 ape-like creatures, and from these to man. Will those who 

 cannot answer our previous inquiries undertake to assert 

 dogmatically in the present case at what point in the 

 historical series there is a break or division ? At what 

 step are we to be asked to suppose that the order of 

 nature was stopped, and a non-natural soul introduced ? 

 . . . The theologian is content in the case of individual 

 development of the egg to admit the fact of individual 

 evolution, and to make assumptions which lie altogether 

 outside the region of scientific inquiry. So, too, it would 

 seem only reasonable that he should deal with the histori- 

 cal series, and frankly accept the natural evolution of man 

 from lower animals, declaring dogmatically, if he so please, 

 but not as an inference of the same order as are the 

 inferences of science, that something called the soul 

 arrived at any point in the series which he may think suit- 

 able. At the same time, it would appear to be sufficient 

 even for the purposes of the theologian, to hold that what- 

 ever the two above-mentioned series of living thing contain 

 or imply, they do so as the result of a natural and uniform 

 process of development, that there has been one ' miracle ' 

 once and for all time. . . . 



