12 EVOLUTION AND THE 
descended from at most only four or five progenitors, 
and plants from an equal or lesser number. Analogy 
would lead me one step further, namely, to the 
belief that all animals and plants have descended 
from some one prototype.. . . 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.” Taking into account the phraseology 
made use of in the above quotation, we have little 
difficulty in recognising the views of an Evolutionist, 
dwarfed and modified tnough they are by an _ ulti- 
mate appeal to a Creative act only a little less 
miraculous and singular than the mythical origin of 
our reputed ancestors— Adam and Eve. Some exist- 
ing naturalists may perhaps contend that Mr. Darwin 
ought to have kept more closely to the Mosaic record 
—replacing his one primordial form by a dual birth 
of male and female, without whose mutual influence 
no “biological individuals” can in their opinion 
come into existence. Such a supposition, it is true, 
would be as antiquated and unnecessary from the 
Evolutionist’s point of view as is the whole notion 
of life having been originally “breathed” into one 
