CHAPTER IX 



SPECIAL CREATION OR DERIVA- 

 TION? 1 



WHATEVER may be said in condem- 

 nation or approval of the method 

 of estimating the worth of men and 

 women by an inquiry into their pedigrees, it 

 cannot be denied that there is often much value 

 in such a method of estimating the worth of 

 current ideas. Obviously a theory which was 

 framed in a barbarous age, when men were alike 

 unfamiliar with the conceptions of physical cau- 

 sation and uniformity of law and ignorant of the 

 requirements of a valid scientific hypothesis, and 

 which has survived until the present day, not 

 because it has been uniformly verified by ob- 

 servation or deduction, but because it has been 

 artificially protected from critical scrutiny by 

 incorporation with a system of theological dog- 

 mas assumed to be infallible, — obviously such 

 a theory is at the outset discredited by its pedi- 

 gree. A presumption is at once raised against it, 

 which a critical examination may indeed do away 

 with, but which for the moment cannot fail to 

 1 [See Introduction, § 18.] 

 371 



