2^4 ^he University of California Magazine. 



most biologists had gone over to the evolutionary side. Now, 

 a superficial consideration of the matter might regard his 

 slowness in accepting the doctrine as savoring somewhat of 

 narrowness and bigotry. But two facts that stand out clear 

 enough as soon as we look more carefully must dispel even a 

 suggestion of such an interpretation. In the first place, so 

 much to him by both nature and nurture was his religious 

 faith — not his theological creed — that it would have been self- 

 destructive for him to accept any scientific doctrine that his 

 reason affirmed to be in deadly opposition to that faith. To 

 estimate him fairly here, one must consider carefully his relig- 

 ious nature and training. Into this it is not my province to 

 enter now. 



In the second place, it must be understood that in all things 

 and always he was philosophical. A common meeting ground 

 he always must have for two elements so large and precious 

 to his life as were his science and his religion. This he found 

 for biological science in the doctrine of organic types, first 

 made prominent in zoology by Cuvier, and later adopted and 

 defended by Sir Richard Owen and Louis Agassiz, three of 

 the greatest names, perhaps, it must be observed, in the whole 

 history of the sciences of comparative anatomy and palaeon- 

 tology. 



Four and only four great types of animal organization, this 

 doctrine said. Four and only four Divine conceptions or 

 plans in the whole animal creation, round which all the 

 myriad variety of forms have been wrought out by modifica- 

 tion through the infinite wisdom and power and resource of 

 the Divine Architect. All the kinds of living things are the 

 thoughts of God. 



No conception of organic creation has ever been proposed 

 that appeals to the poetic imagination so strongly as this; 

 none more better adapted to a naive faith in a personal Deity 

 imminent in the natural world. 



It is certainly a lofty, ennobling conception, one that has 

 satisfied, in one form and another, both the religious and the 



