EVOLUTION AND THEISM. .403 



unprejudiced mind, its truth seems almost irresistible. Thus 

 the Zoolo2;ist and the Botanist, who have been accustomed to 

 classify their multitudinous and diversified types of vegetable and 

 animal life according to their " natural affinities," find a real 

 meaning in their classification, a new significance in their terms 

 of relationship, when these are used to represent what may be 

 regarded with probability as actual community of descent. The 

 Morphologist, who has been accustomed to trace a "unity of type" 

 in each great group, and especially to recognize this in the presence 

 of rudimentary parts which must be entirely useless to the animals 

 that possess them, delights in the new idea that gives a perfect 

 ratiofiale of what had previously seemed an inexplicable superfluity. 

 And the Embryologist, who carries back his studies to the earliest 

 phases of development, and follows out the grand law of Von 

 Baer, "from the general to the special," in the evolution of every 

 separate type^ finds the extension of that law from the individual 

 to the whole succession of organic life, impart to his soul a feeling 

 of grandeur, like that which the physical philosopher of two hun- 

 dred years ago must have experienced when he came to recognize 

 the full significance of Newton's law of universal gravitation. 



I find myself quite unable to understand why the doctrine of 

 organic evolution should have been stigmatized as atheistic. We 

 have before us the every-dayy^7(r/ of the " evolution " of plants and 

 animals of every type from germ-particles of a common simplicity; 

 and, scientifically speaking, we must assign to each of these germs 

 a determinate capacity for a particular mode of development, in 

 virtue of which one evolves itself under certain conditions into a 

 zoophyte, and another (not originally distinguishable from it) into 

 a man. But 'f we do not, in so describing the process, set aside 

 the Creator — any more than in scientifically describing the self- 

 formation of a crystal — why should we be charged with doing so, 

 if we attribute to t\\t primordial gtrvn. that capacity for a particular 

 course of development^ in virtue of which it has evolved the whole 

 succession of forms that has ultimately proceeded from it, — these 

 forms constantly becoming more complex in organization and 

 more elevated in the scale of being ? Attach what weight we 

 may to the physical causes which have brought about this evolution, 

 I cannot see how it is possible to conceive of any but a moral 

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