62 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



world of matter. But the objection which endeavours 

 to cut away the ground from under the doctrine of 

 Descent, not the theory of selection, and represents the 

 origin of life as incomprehensible and supernatural, we 

 naturally regard as an attempt to gain a precedent for 

 the supernatural creation of language. Between begin- 

 ning and end, we naturalists may do as we please. 



But it is strange that the very side which is so ready 

 to reproach us with a want of philosophic method and 

 induction, should here, where the material substratum 

 is deficient, dispute the claims of the investigation of 

 nature to its logical inferences. In the last page of 

 the " Origin of Species," Darwin says : " There is 

 grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, 

 having been originally breathed by the Creator into 

 a few forms or into one ; and that, whilst this planet 

 has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of 

 gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms 

 most beautiful and most wSnderful have been and 

 are being evolved." In this concession, Darwin has 

 certainly been untrue to himself; and it satisfies neither 

 those who believe in the continuous work of creation 

 by a personal God, nor the partizans of natural evolution. 

 It is directly incompatible with the doctrine of Descent, 

 or, as Zollner 52 says : " The hypothesis of an act of 

 creation (for the beginning of life) would not be a logi- 

 cal but a merely arbitrary limitation of the causal series, 

 against which our intellect rebels by reason of its inherent 

 craving for causality." Whoever does not share this crav- 

 ing is beyond help, and he cannot be convinced. To 

 hold the beginning of life as an arbitrary act of creation, 

 is to break with the whole theory of cognition. 



