ioo DISCRIMINATIONS CHAP. 



all animals appeared suddenly, ready- 

 made, complete in all their parts, out of 

 the dust of the ground and the elements 

 of the atmosphere. This, indeed, may 

 have been the crude idea of many men in 

 former times, in so far (which was very 

 little) as they gave themselves any time 

 to think, or to form any definite concep- 

 tions, on the meaning of the words they 

 used. But the late Mr. Aubrey Moore, 

 in an interesting essay, 1 has reminded us 

 that it was the extravagant literalism of 

 Puritan theology which first embodied 

 in popular form this coarser view of 

 Creation, in a famous passage of Para- 

 dise Lost? Yet this is a passage which 

 probably no man can now read, notwith- 

 standing the splendid diction of the poet, 

 without feeling the picture it presents to 



1 Science and Faith, 1889, "Darwinism and the 

 Christian Faith." 



2 Book vii. 



