1 62 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 



world of matter. But the objection which endeavours 

 to cut away the ground from under the doctrine of 

 Descent, not the theory of selection, and represents the 

 origin of life as incomprehensible and supernatural, we 

 naturally regard as an attempt to gain a precedent for 

 the supernatural creation of language. Between begin- 

 ning and end, we naturalists may do as we please. 



But it is strange that the very side which is so ready 

 to reproach us with a want of philosophic method and' 

 induction, should here, where the material substratum 

 is deficient, dispute the claims of the investigation of 

 nature to its logical inferences. In the last page of 

 the " Origin of Species," Darwin says : " There is 

 grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, 

 having been originally breathed by the Creator into a 

 few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has 

 gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, 

 from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful 

 and most wonderful have been and are being 

 evolved." In this concession, Darwin has certainly been 

 untrue to himself; and it satisfies neither those who be- 

 lieve in the continuous work of creation by a personal 

 God, nor the partizans of natural evolution. It is directly 

 incompatible with the doctrine of Descent, or, as Zollner ^' 

 says : " The hypothesis of an act of creation* (for the be- 

 ginning of life) would not be a logical but a merely 

 arbitrary limitation of the causal series, against which 

 our intellect rebels by reason of its inherent craving for 

 causality." Whoever does not share this craving is be- 

 yond help, and he cannot be convinced. To hold the 

 beginning of life as an arbitrary act of creation, is to 

 break with the whole theory of cognition. 



