CHAPTER VI 



LIFE AND ITS PHENOMENA 



We will now suppose the first living organism to have 

 appeared upon this earth somehow ; but as to the method 

 of procedure by which it came into existence, it seems 

 wiser to confess our entire ignorance than to frame im- 

 possible theories when we have no facts to go upon. 



At this point Darwin enters upon the scene, as his 

 theory of the " Origin of Species by Means of Natural 

 Selection " was concerned with the evolution of animals 

 and plants since the commencement of life upon earth. 



Comparing Evolution with the previous conception of 

 Creation by Design, he wrote as follows at the close of 

 his work : — 



" There is a 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 wonderful, have been 

 and are being evolved." ^ 



It will be here seen that Darwin believed in a Con- 

 scious, Omnipotent Creator, and evidently did not realise 

 when he wrote his books that his own theory in ex- 

 planation of Evolution would supply a basis for the 

 Atheistic Monism of to-day which ignores the existence 

 '^Origin of Species, 6th ed., 1878, p. 429. 



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