GOD IN NATURE. 143 
well knows that he cannot do so. In his outline of the 
Darwinian hypothesis he says :—‘* The theory which, through 
Darwin, has been placed at the head of all our knowledge 
of nature is usually called the doctrine of filiation, or the 
theory of descent. This doctrine affirms that all organisms 
ae . are derived from one single, or from a few simple 
original, forms; and that they have developed themselves 
from these in the natural course of a gradual change.’* 
Here ‘one single, or a few simple original, forms,” are 
postulated; but we are not informed whence they came, 
or how they are to be accounted for. Unless it is affirmed 
that purely inorganic matter has had the power in the be- 
ginning of organic creation of developing out of itself these 
“few simple forms,’ or even one of them (an impossible 
hypothesis) then certainly we must call in the exercise of a 
Creative Power outside our world. ‘There appears no escape 
from this alternative ; and once Creative Power has been ad- 
mitted it is futile to deny its exercise for all future time. It 
is surprising that Haeckel has not seen that his position is 
untenable. In adopting Darwin’s hypothesis, Haeckel has 
omitted to adopt his master’s declaration that he inferred 
“from analogy that probably all the organic beings which 
have ever lived on this earth have descended from some one 
primordial form into which life was first breathed by the 
Creator."{ This one form in a further page is amplified 
into “a few forms”{ Whether the Darwinian hypothesis 
of Natural Selection is sufficient to account for the changes 
which organic bodies have undergone from the end of the 
Azoic period down to recent times is a question on which we 
may differ, and on which I may have something to say 
presently ; but our great English naturalist clearly attributed 
both the original living forms and their supposed inherent 
laws of development to the interposition of a Divine Creator; 
and this being so, it is not necessary (in order to accept the 
Darwinian hypothesis) that we should banish the Creator 
from the universe.$ 
* 'The theory thus stated is not very different from that of Lamarck ; 
and it is scarcely full enough. aturliche Schopfungsgeschichte, trans. by 
E. R. Lankester (1876). 
+ The Origin of Species, Edit., 1860, p. 484. t P. 490. 
§ Professor Sir W. Thomson in his Presidential Address at the meeting 
of the British Association at Edinburgh (1871) has hazarded an hypothesis 
to account for the origin of life on the globe which has few (if any) 
advocates ; and which if proved correct would only move the question 
a step further back instead of answering it. Believing that there are 
