ADHESION OF A DIVINE. 317 
endless variety of the different animals and plants, which 
have the appearance of being organized according to a plan 
for a definite purpose. Meanwhile the question must have 
already repeatedly presented itself to the reader, how did 
the first organisms, or that one original and primeeval organ- 
ism arise, from which we derive all the others ? 
This question Lamarck * answered by the hypothesis 
of spontaneous generation, or archigony. ‘ But Darwin 
passes over and avoids this subject, as he expressly 
remarks that he has “nothing to do with the origin of 
the soul, nor with that of life itself.” At the conclusion 
of his work he expresses himself more distinctly in the 
following words :—“I imagine that probably all organic 
beings which ever lived on this earth descended from 
some primitive form, which was first called into life by 
the Creator.” Moreover, Darwin, for the consolation of 
those who see in the Theory of Descent the destruction of 
the whole “moral order of the universe,” appeals to the 
celebrated author and divine who wrote to him, that 
“he has gradually learnt to see that it is just as noble a 
conception of the Deity to believe that he created a few 
original forms capable of self-development into other and 
needful forms, as to believe that he required a fresh act 
of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of his 
laws.” 
Those to whom the belief in a supernatural creation is an 
emotional necessity may rest satisfied with this conception. 
They may reconcile that belief with the Theory of Descent; 
for in the creation of a single original organism possessing 
the capability to develop all others out of itself by inherit- 
ance and adaptation, they can really find much more cause 
