2-H TIIE EVOLUTION OF LIFE. 



tinding tueir way into the human body. In short, elaborate 

 contrivances were combined to insure the continuance of 

 their respective races ; and to make it impossible for the suc- 

 cessive generations of men to avoid being preyed upon by 

 them. What shall we say to this arrangement ? Shall we 

 eay that man, " the head and crown of things," was provided 

 as a habitat for these parasites P Or shall we say that these 

 degraded creatures, incapable of thouglit or enjoyment, weie 

 created that they might cause unhaj)piness to man ? Ono 

 ■ or other of these alternatives must be chosen by those who 

 contend that every kind of organism was separately devised 

 by tlie Creator. Which do they prefer ? With the concep- 

 tion of two antagonistic powers, which severally ivoi'k good 

 and evil in the world, the facts are congruous enough. But 

 with the conception of a supreme beneficence, this gratuitous 

 infliction of misery on man, in common with all other terres 

 trial creatures capable of feeling, is absolutely incompatible. 



§ 1U>. See then the results of our examination. The 

 belief in special creations of organisms, is a belief that arose 

 among men during the era of profoundest darkness ; and it 

 belongs to a family of beliefs which have nearly all died out 

 es enlightenment has increased. It is ■without a solitary 

 established fact on which to stand ; and when the attempt is 

 made to put it into definite shape in the mind, it turns out to 

 be only a pseud-idea. This mere verbal hypothesis, which 

 men idly accept as a real or thinkable hypothesis, is of the 

 same nature as would be one, based on a day's observation of 

 human life, that each man and woman was specially created 

 — an hj'pothesis not suggested by evidence, but by lack of 

 .ividence — an hypothesis ^^hich formulates absolute ignorance 

 into a semblance of positive knowledge. Further, we see that 

 this hypothesis, wholly without sup)port, essentially inconceiv- 

 able, and thus failing to satisfy men's intellectual need of an 

 interpretation, fails also to satisfy their moral sentiment. 

 It is quite inconsistent with those conceptions of the divinfl 



