MODERN EVOLUTION. 175 



natural, we mean that great body of assumptions out 

 of which are constructed all theologies, the essential 

 element in these being the intimate relation between 

 spiritual beings, of whom certain qualities are predi- 

 cated, and man. These beings have no longer any 

 place in the efifective belief of intelligent and unpre- 

 judiced men, because they are found to have no 

 correspondence with the ascertained operations of 

 Nature. 



2. Herbert Spencer. 



Contact with many " sorts and conditions of 

 men " brings home the need of ceaselessly dinning 

 into their ears the fact that Darwin's theory deals only 

 with the evolution of plants and animals from a common 

 ancestry. It is not concerned with the origin of life 

 itself, nor with those conditions preceding life which 

 are covered by the general term. Inorganic Evolution. 

 Therefore, it forms but a very small part of the gen- 

 eral theory of the origin of the earth and other bodies, 

 " as the sand by the seashore innumerable," that fill 

 the infinite spaces. 



We have seen that speculation about the universe 

 had its rise in Ionia. After centuries of discourage- 

 ment, prohibition, and, sometimes, actual persecu- 

 tion, it was revived, to advance, without further seri- 

 ous arrest, some three hundred years ago. A survey 

 of the history of philosophies of the origin of the 

 cosmos from the time of the renascence of inquiry, 

 shows that the great Immanuel Kant has not had his 



