1 2 Introduction 



If the former is true, there can be no " survival of 

 the fittest," depending upon a " struggle for exist- 

 ence " ; natural selection no longer operates as a law 

 of nature ; and its inapplicability to the " genus homo 

 sapiens " becomes evident. Moreover, the downfall of 

 the Malthusian doctrine has shaken Darwinism to its 

 foundations, and we are assured that its collapse is 

 certain and cannot be long delayed. 



Darwin attempts no explanation of how life origi- 

 nated on the globe ; he does not boldly say, like 

 Haeckel, that certain atoms of carbon, hydrogen, 

 oxygen, and nitrogen, under the influence of sunlight, 

 combined fortuitously to form living protoplasm. 

 As he could not account for it, he ought logically to 

 have admitted a special creative act in order to explain 

 the origin of life. Pasteur's law of " omne vivum ex 

 vivo" holds the field. As Professor Bergson says: 

 " chemical synthesis has never succeeded in recon- 

 structing anything but the waste products of vital 

 activity." As living protoplasm has never been 

 produced from its organic elements, Darwin was bound 

 to admit that life could not exist without a special 

 creative act. The more particularly do we realise this 

 since Pasteur's demonstration that life does not exist 

 except from pre-existing life. It may be said that 

 Darwin should not be asked to say how life originated. 

 All he knew was that life began on the earth some 

 time, and he had only to deal with living matter as he 

 found it. But it ought to be remembered that, without 

 demonstration of any kind, he assumes the evolution 

 of man upwards through all the intermediate forms 

 directly from the primeval protoplasmic unit or cell 

 by the operation of a law which he calls natural 

 selection. We hold that this law cannot be proved to 

 rest on established and observed phenomena. Surely 

 if he is allowed this much of a hypothesis, we are 



