70 ORGANIC EVOLUTION CONSIDERED 



Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the 

 Extinction of less improved forms. Thus from the 

 war of Nature, from famine and death, the most 

 exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, 

 namely, the production of the higher animals, directly 

 follows. 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, 

 while this planet has gone cycling on according to the 

 fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning, end- 

 less forms, most beautiful and most wonderful, have 

 been, and are being, evolved." 



From this passage it is seen that Darwin did not 

 accept the theory of spontaneous generation. He 

 speaks of " life with its several powers, having been 

 originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms, 

 or into one." This first form was the egg from which 

 all subsequent organic beings have been hatched by 

 incubation through the long ages. This primordial 

 protoplasm, which, according to most evolutionists, 

 was produced by spontaneous generation, was, it 

 seems to me, endowed with miraculous power, as 

 shown by its ability to vary without limitation in 

 countless directions, to produce the most complex 

 physical results and all the varied and wonderful 

 phenomena, of life, together with the human mind 

 with all of its marvelous powers. 



If the Creator could breathe life into " a few forms 

 or into one," as Darwin thinks he did, without vio- 

 lating the law of his own being, and in accordance 

 with the laws which he has established, it seems 

 evident that he might at other times breathe life into 

 other forms in accordance with his laws. I see no 

 necessity for a logic that would compel the Creator to 

 confine the number of his creative fiats to a few, or to 

 one, nor which would limit the fiats to one time. 



