OX THE EVOLUTION MATERIALISM AND THEOLOGY. 327 



as it was evolved in yourself, who, between birth and 

 maturity, have passed through precisely similar stages. 

 This wonderful miracle of evolution has happened in 

 your own case, as it has in that of all men ever born, 

 who attained to man's estate; why, then, may it not 

 have happened in the entire animal kingdom ? Doubt- 

 less the supposition implies the descent of man from the 

 brute, as well as of all conscious life from unconscious- 

 ness. But we show you, there is no a priori impossi- 

 bility in either of these suppositions, and we refer you 

 to Darwin for further proofs of the first, and to Haeckel 

 for a probable proof of the second. Moreover, science at 

 the present moment shows us conscious and sentient life 

 fading into unconscious and insentient forms in the 

 debatable border-land between the plant and animal 

 world ; it shows us unbroken continuity from the plant 

 to the human soul, as it is trying to show and has all 

 but succeeded in showing unbroken continuity between 

 chemistry and consciousness. You think, however, there 

 is a gap between chemistry and consciousness shown in 

 the first appearance of life itself. But why resort to the 

 Deus ex machine*, here more than elsewhere ? The first 

 appearance of life, as of all things, is mysterious : we 

 grant it. It is difficult to trace the laws which govern 

 the successive stages of the evolutionary process: still, 

 science is fast discovering them in embryology ; and life, 

 you must allow, now begins with matt'er, whether you 

 admit or deny the possibility of spontaneous generation. 

 Matter is unquestionably first in the field to-day, in all 

 cases where life afterwards emerges. Matter must be 

 first given, without life or mind, even though life and 

 mind afterwards result. But a Creator, you think, with 

 Darwin, must be postulated at the beginning, in order to 

 produce the first few forms of life, granting that the 



