Io EVOLUTION AND THE 
the Earth was first fit for life there were no living 
things on it. There were rocks, solid and disintegrated, 
water, air all round, warmed and illuminated by a 
brilliant sun, ready to become a garden.” Living 
things must, however, have appeared upon its surface 
at some very remote epoch, since their remains are 
to be found far down in the rocks which at present 
constitute its crust. How, therefore, it may be asked, 
is the first appearance of ‘Living matter’ upon the 
earth to be accounted for? 
We should not needlessly invoke an unknown act 
of Creative Power—we must not, even with Sir 
William Thomson, resort to the strange notion of an 
importation of living germs upon a “ moss-grown 
fragment from the ruins of another world,” unless 
more ordinary natural causes fail and it be found really 
necessary to invent some such hypothesis—and the 
necessity here could never be shown since:Sir W. 
Thomson’s hypothesis shirks the question of the Origin 
of Life so far as our earth is concerned, and merely 
hands it over as an unsolved problem to the denizens 
of another sphere. Now, the thoroughgoing Evolu- 
tionist repudiates the notion of Creation in its ordi- 
nary sense ; he believes that the operation of natural 
causes, working in their accustomed manner, were 
alone quite adequate to bring into existence a kind 
of matter presenting a new order of complexity, and 
