SO[JKCE OF THE NOTION OF SPECIAL CREATIONS. 371 



men in this controversy of " Law versus Miracle," a good 

 illustration of the tenacious vitality of superstitions. Ask 

 one of our leading geologists or physiologists whether he 

 believes in the Mosaic account of the creation, and he will 

 take the question as next to an insult. Either he rejects 

 the narrative entirely, or understands it in some vague 

 non-natural sense. Yet one part of it he unconsciously 

 adopts ; and that, too, literally. For whence has he got 

 this notion of " special creations," which he thinks so 

 reasonable, and fights for so vigorously ? Evidently he 

 can trace it back to no other source than this myth which 

 he reiDudiates. He has not a single fact in nature to quote 

 in proof of it; nor is he prepared with any chain of abstract 

 reasoning by which it may be established. Catechise him, 

 and he will be forced to confess that the notion was put into 

 his mind in childhood as part of a story which he now 

 thinks absurd. And why, after rejecting all the rest of this 

 story, he should strenuously defend this last remnant of it 

 as though he had received it on valid authority, he would 

 be puzzled to say. 



