HIS GENETIC RELATIONS. 141 



the side of Adam ; while according to the first version 

 man is simply said to have been created on the sixth 

 day — male and female, and in the image of his Maker. 

 But however curious the fable, or mysterious the 

 myth, none of them is of the least avail to science, 

 and reason is driven, in the long run, either to abide 

 by the belief in a direct creative act or to seek for the 

 solution of the problem in the theory of derivative 

 descent. To this it comes at last, and on this ground, 

 and this alone, must the question of man's origin be 

 combated. 



If we abide by the simple, generalised statement, 

 that in the beginning God created man, and believe 

 that this was a miraculous act of the Creator, then it 

 is placed at once beyond human research and scien- 

 tific investigation. If, on the other hand, we regard 

 it merely as a statement of God's working in creation, 

 and of God's working by secondary processes, then 

 science may humbly and devoutly approach the prob- 

 lem. This is all, in indicating the origin of man, 

 that science proposes to do ; and seeing that the 

 whole animal scheme is bound together by community 

 of plan, that physiology can trace variations in exist- 

 ing Ufe, that palaeontology has demonstrated variation 

 in extinct life, and that ascent from lower to higher 

 forms in time has been brought about by the prin- 

 ciple of adaptive modification of structural parts 



