52 DEGENERATION : I 



It seems worth while, in order to secure a calm 

 and unprejudiced consideration for the teachings of 

 Darwinism, to point out to such persons that, as a 

 matter of fact, whatever views we may hold with 

 regard to a soul and the Christian doctrines, they 

 cannot be in the smallest degree affected by the ad- 

 mission that man has been derived from ape-like 

 ancestors by a process of natural selection, so long as 

 the demonstrable fact, not denied by any sane person, 

 is admitted, namely, that every individual man grows 

 by a process of natural modification from a homogene- 

 ous egg-cell or corpuscle. Assuredly it cannot lower 

 our conception of man's dignity if we have to regard 

 him as " the flower of all the ages," bursting from the 

 great stream of life which has flowed on through 

 countless epochs mth one increasing purpose, rather 

 than as an isolated, miraculous being, put together 

 abnormally from elemental clay, and cut off" by such 

 portentous origin from his fellow-animals, and from 

 that gracious Nature to whom he yearns with filial 

 instinct, knowing her, in spite of fables, to be his dear 

 mother. 



A certain number of thoughtful persons admit the 

 development of man's body by natural processes from 

 ape -like ancestry, but believe in the non- natural 

 intervention of a Creator at a certain definite stage in 

 that development, in order to introduce into the 

 animal which was at that moment a man -like ape, 

 something termed " a conscious soul," in virtue of 

 which he became an ape-like man. It appears to me 

 perfectly legitimate and harmless for individuals to 



