6 LUCRETIUS' 'DE RERUM NATURA.' 



affording no explanation of the mode in which the 

 alleged progressive transmutation of organic bodies 

 from the lowest to the highest grades has taken 

 place. 



Before proceeding to consider Mr. Darwin's own 

 edition of Evolution, let rne stop to declare more 

 particularly what the doctrine, under whatever aspect 

 or form it may be viewed, logically implies in regard 

 to Nature and the non-existence of God. The 

 doctrine of Evolution excludes, as I have before 

 said, all idea of a personal Creator. According 

 to it, all that we have been accustomed to re- 

 gard as evidences of design, and as the \vork 

 of an Almighty, Wise, and Beneficent God, 

 are the result merely of the spontaneous and 

 necessary operation of the inherent properties of 

 matter. 



Evolution, we thus see, is in its very first prin- 

 ciples virtually a reproduction improved, indeed, 

 by a more advanced science of the old Epicurean 

 doctrine recited by Lucretius in his poem ' De Rerum 

 Natura.' ' It was not by design,' said he, ' that 

 atoms framed the world ; but after many fruitless 

 collisions they chanced to fall into such motions as 

 produced the world and all that is in it. At first 

 monsters of all kinds were formed which could not 

 grow up nor continue their kind. They all, therefore, 

 perished off.' ' The members and organs of the 

 body,' further said Lucretius, ' were not formed by 

 design, but, having been formed, they came to be 



