I A CHAPTER IN DARWINISM 53 



make such an assumption if their particular form of 

 philosophy or of religion requires it. Such an assump- 

 tion does not in any way traverse the inferences from 

 facts to which Darwinism leads us ; at the same time 

 zoological science does not, and cannot be expected to, 

 give any support to such an assumption. The 

 gratuitous and harmless nature of the assumption so 

 far as zoological science is concerned, and accordingly 

 the baselessness of the hostility to Darwinism of those 

 who choose to make it, may be seen by the considera- 

 tion of a parallel series of facts and assumptions, 

 which puts the matter clearly enough in its true light. 

 No one ventures to deny, at the present day, that 

 every human being grows from the egg in utero, just 

 as a dog or a monkey does ; the facts are before us 

 and can be scrutinised in detail. We may ask of 

 those who refuse to admit the gradual and natural 

 development of man's consciousness in the ancestral 

 series, passing from ape-like forms into indubitable 

 man, " How do you propose to divide the series pre- 

 sented by every individual man in his growth from 

 the egg ? At what particular phase in the embryonic 

 series is the soul with its potential consciousness 

 implanted ? Is it in the egg ? in the foetus of this 

 month or of that ? in the new-born infant ? or at five 

 years of age ? " This, it is notorious, is a point upon 

 which Churches have never been able to agree ; and 

 it is equally notorious that the unbroken series exists 

 that the egg becomes the foetus, the foetus the 

 child, and the child the man. On the other hand we 

 have the historical series the series, the existence of 



