FT. n. Mr. Darwin and Mr. Buckle. 87 



an Intelligent First Cause as the Great and Invisible 

 Power directing all things, than to construct by so 

 elaborate a process works bearing the stamp of the 

 Highest Intelligence and Power out of mere brute 

 matter? In his recent work on the 'Descent of 

 Man,' he applies the same process of evolution by 

 Natural Selection and Sexual Selection to Man, and 

 traces his existence in his present state to some 

 species of ape or monkey from whom he has 

 originated. I do not know if we have any ground 

 for taxing Mr. Darwin with inconsistency in pushing 

 his system to this length : it seems quite as 

 inconceivable that the ape should have originated in 

 a mass of lichen on a rock, as that Man should have 

 sprung from the ape. The fallacy appears to me to 

 exist in the assumption of a power of self-creation, 

 or of self-development anywhere, which we are 

 utterly unable to discover in nature. If we ask, 

 what is Life itself? we shall find that it is a question 

 quite beyond the faculties of man to answer ; Life, 

 like spirit, like matter, like the nature of the Deity, 

 like the difference between reason and instinct, like 

 the nature of the union of the soul and the body, is 

 among those primary ideas which it is only given to 

 Man to know and recognise by their effects, but the 



