ch. ix. J SPECIAL-CREATION, OR DERIVATION? 458 



into a palace and that again into a museum ? Yet this is the 

 sort of succession on which organisms are constructed." It 

 is out of this very uncomfortable corner that metaphysical 

 naturalists have sometimes attempted to slip, by gravely 

 asserting that Nature is obliged to work tentatively ! Thus 

 we see that the habit of personifying Nature may sometimes 

 be made to serve an argumentative purpose. When theo- 

 logians are molested by uncomfortable questions concerning 

 the existence of phenomena which seem incompatible with 

 the perfect wisdom of an anthropomorphic Deity, they are 

 wont to ascribe them to the Devil. It must be acknowledged 

 that metaphysical naturalists practise a mure graceful, though 

 not a more candid, method of evasion, when they erect 

 Nature (spelled with a capital) into a person distinct from 

 phenomena, and coolly ascribe to her the shortcomings which, 

 they dare not lay to the account of a personal Deity. 



Viewed in the light of a scientific logic, this argument 

 from embryology, like the argument from classification, seems 

 powerful enough, when taken alone, to decide the case in 

 favour of the derivation theory. As already hinted, these 

 phenomena are in general explicable by the Doctrine of 

 Evolution. But to the special-creation hypothesis they are 

 unmanageable stumbling-blocks. Even without any profound 

 knowledge of embryology, one may readily see that if the 

 tadpoles of the black salamander were anciently born as tad- 

 poles, and swam in the water, they may still retain their ex- 

 quisite gills while nourished to a later stage of development 

 in the maternal organism. But on the opposite theory the 

 existence of these gills is meaningless. 



III. The equally significant facts of morphology may be 

 more concisely presented. Why, unless through common in- 

 heritance, should all the vertebrata be constructed on the same 

 type ? Structurally considered, man, elephant, mouse, ostrich, 

 humming-bird, tortoise, snake, frog, crocodile, halibut, herring, 

 and shark, are but diiierent modifications of one commoij 



