7O THE HISTORY OF CREATION. 
Considering the wide popularity and great authority - 
which Agassiz’s work has gained, and which is perhaps 
justified on account of earlier scientific services rendered by 
the author, I have thought it my duty here to show the 
utter untenableness of his general conceptions. So far as 
this work pretends to be a scientific history of creation, it 
is undoubtedly a complete failure. - But still it has great 
value, being the only detailed attempt, adorned with scien- 
tific arguments, which an eminent naturalist of our day 
has made to found a teleological or dualistic history of 
creation. The utter impossibility of such a history has 
thus been made obvious to every one. No opponent of 
Agassiz could have refuted the dualistic conception of 
organic nature and its origin more strikingly than he him- 
self has done by the intrinsic contradictions which present. 
themselves everywhere in his theory. 
The opponents of the monistic or mechanical conception: 
ot the world have welcomed Agassiz’s work with delight, 
and find in it a perfect proof of the direct creative action of 
a personal God. But they overlook the fact that this per- 
sonal Creator is only an idealized organism, endowed with 
human attributes. This low dualistic conception of God 
corresponds with a low animal stage of development of 
the human organism. The more developed man of the pre- 
sent day is capable of, and justified in, conceiving that: 
infinitely nobler and sublimer idea of God which alone is 
compatible with the monistic conception of the universe, and 
which recognizes God’s spirit and power in all phenomena 
without exception. This monistic idea of God, which belongs 
to the future, has already been expressed by Giordano 
Bruno in the following words:—“A spirit exists in all. 
