40 THE SCIENCE OF LIFE. 



CHAPTER III. 



PARENTAGE. 



We must get rid of all these complications of an erring philosophy, this 

 floating chaos of mist and phantasms, and return to the Natural Realism, 

 which all men have been learning from their first hours of childhood, and 

 can never unlearn, before a science of Physics can be really founded. Its 

 first principle is that we are real persons, living amid a real world of ma- 

 terial objects distinct from ourselves. And this double truth leads upward 

 to One who is the cause both of matter and mind, the Supreme Reality, 

 who dwells in light inaccessible, but who can reveal himself, and has re- 

 vealed himself, in love and mercy to the souls he has made. Modern 

 Physical Fatalism, by T. R. BlRKS. 



1. Two theories divide the learned world respecting 

 the genesis of living things ; the doctrine of parentage, 

 or the descent from living creatures each created " after 

 his kind," and the theory of spontaneous generation of 

 the living from the non-living, and the transmutation of 

 one kind of living beings into another. The first theory 

 is sometimes called the doctrine of Creation, the latter 

 that of Evolution. 



2. The word Evolution simply means to unfold, and 

 may be used to express the life-history of individuals or 

 of species, or the development of the plans of the Crea- 

 tor in the natural world. To such a meaning there 

 would be no objection by any one, but as it is generally 

 understood to mean the mechanical or monistic view of 

 the universe, which ignores a Creator, and teaches the 

 eternity of substance, the invariability of law, and the 

 transmutation of living beings, its use should be re- 



