EVOLUTION 



8S 



But to state that species were created by God does not 

 satisfy the legitimate curiosity of the scientific man. 

 What he wishes to know is : By what method was creation 

 accomphshed? God might have worked in various ways. 

 Now, the study of Nature has never revealed to us but one 

 method by which living things originate, and that is by 

 descent from preexisting parents. Agassiz's hypothesis 



Fig. 45. — Louis Agassiz. (From Ballard's "Three Kingdom.") 



contradicts this. All oaks now-a-days are derived by 

 descent from preexisting oaks, but the first oak, accord- 

 ing to the doctrine of special creation, was created by 

 supernatural means ; it had no ancestors. The chief objec- 

 tion to the acceptance of this hypothesis is that the more 

 profoundly and accurately we study living things, the more 

 obvious it becomes that truth Hes in another direction. 



