SPECIAL CREATION OR DERIVATION? 



principles, in favour of the latter. And on gen- 

 eral principles I should be quite justified in so 

 deciding. 



Happily, however, we are not called upon to 

 render a decision, upon this or upon any other 

 scientific question, with our eyes shut. In the 

 present chapter we have to examine two oppos- 

 ing hypotheses relating to the origination of the 

 multitudinous complex forms of animal and 

 vegetal life which surround us. And of these 

 two opposing hypotheses we shall find it not 

 difficult to show that the one is discredited, not 

 only by its pedigree and not only by the im- 

 possible assumptions which it would require us 

 to make, but also by every jot and tittle of the 

 scientific evidence, so far as known, which bears 

 upon the subject ; while the other is not only 

 accredited by its pedigree, and by its requiring 

 us to make no impracticable assumptions, but 

 is also corroborated by all the testimony which 

 the patient interrogation of the facts of nature 

 has succeeded in eliciting. The former hypo- 

 thesis, originating in the crude mythological 

 conceptions of the ancient Hebrews, and un- 

 critically accepted until the time of Lamarck 

 and Goethe, in deference to a tradition which 

 invested these mythological conceptions with a 

 peculiar and unwarranted sacredness, is known 

 as the Doctrine of Special Creations. The latter 

 hypothesis, originating in the methodical study 

 373 



