SPECIAL CREATION THEORY 



between two creeds, the one above, the other against 

 our reason, we prefer the first, willingly admitting that 

 our present intelligence is not able to understand most 

 of the phenomena we are acquainted with though we 

 sincerely expect it to become so in the course of 

 ages and that any adequate idea of the origin of 

 the world is a thing much above the grasping powers 

 of our intellect. Suppose some savages discovering one 

 morning on a sea-beach a watch stranded from some 

 shipwreck. No doubt, they all will come and cluster 

 eagerly around it, and if the unfortunate machine be 

 water-proof, they will listen to the ticking with great 

 wonder, and will furthermore believe that this watch is 

 some new and curious sort of animal which takes 

 more pleasure in ticking than in anything else. If 

 those savages are not mere brutes I presume some old 

 wise man will express his astonishment, and im- 

 mediately advise his slaves and followers to go and 

 give fruit and hogs to the priests, because this is an 

 extraordinary event which has some extraordinary 

 origin. And if you were to tell him that this watch had 

 been made by the rushing together of fragments of 

 stone and sand, he would not believe it. At least, I 



tion has taken place, and is even taking place daily. He supposes that 

 the inferior organisms are of very recent, contemporary origin, while 

 the superior are derived from similar inferior organisms which have 

 sprung into life in periods which are remote in proportion to the 

 degree of perfection reached by the higher species. 



