DOCTRINE OF SPKCTAL CREATION 429 



sions are right, and in so far as we really desire to understand 

 the world about us with a \iev,- to li\"ing in it as best we may, 

 we cannot help -wishing to have our beliefs regarding origins 

 harmonize mth wliat we do l-cnow. So far as they are in 

 accord with facts, such behefs help us to put our facts in 

 order so that we may use them to best advantage in living 

 and thinking. Our supreme test of the value and truth of 

 any such belief is the extent to which it enal^les us to fit fact 

 with fact, and leads us to new facts of importance. Our 

 method must be to apply this test to those beliefs which have 

 been most ■nidel}' held about the origin of living things. We 

 may be sure that every such l>elief expresses important 

 truths because of the many facts it must explain in order 

 to be widely accepted. It is, of com'se, our business to seek 

 truths of importance wherever they may be found, and to 

 adopt the most promising belief until a plainly more truthful 

 view is presented. 



164. The doctrine of special creation. Linna-us embodied 

 the behef of his own age and of former times in the famous 

 saying, "We reckon so many species as there were distinct 

 forms created in the Ix'ginning.'' This belief assumes that 

 in somewhat the same way as men have fashioned artificial 

 objects for various uses, so superior beings or one Supreme 

 Being of transcendent wisdom and power, created in the 

 beginning originals of all the different kinds of plants and 

 animals, fitting each to occupy its proper place, and endowing 

 each with the power of perpetuating its hke in progeny. In 

 other words, all the living representatives of each species 

 are regarded as the descendants of a first original or pair which 

 was specially created by God, as a distinct and entirely new 

 production, in the most suitable part of the earth, when the 

 world was young; from which place and since which time 

 the species has been chstributed over the area that it now 

 occupies. Fmihermore, the pecuharities which characterize 

 its living representatives are held to be the same that were 

 impressed in the begimiing upon the original progenitors of 

 the species. 



The ^iew above outlined is known as the doctrine of fixity 

 of species, or special creation, or as creationisin. Since it 



