THE StECIAL-CREATION-HYPOTHESIS. 335 



familiar is the truth, that while accumulating knowledge 

 makes these conceptions of personal causal agents gradually 

 more vague, as it merges them into general causes, it also 

 destroys the habit of thin king of them as working after the 

 methods of personal agents. We do not now, like Kepler, 

 assume guiding spirits to keep the planets in their orbits. 

 It is no longer the universal belief that the sea was once for 

 all mechanically parted from the dry land; or that the 

 mountains were placed where we see them by a sudden cre- 

 ative act. All but a narrow class have ceased to suppose 

 sunshine and storm to be sent in some arbitrary succession. 

 The majority of educated people have given up thinking of 

 epidemics as punishments inflicted by an angry deity. Nor 

 do even the common people regard a madman as one pos- 

 sessed by a demon. That is to say, we everywhere see 

 fading away the anthropomorphic conception of the Un- 

 known Cause. In one case after another, is abandoned that 

 interpretation which ascribes phenomena to a will analogous 

 to the human will, working by methods analogous to human 

 methods. 



If, then, of this once-numerous family of beliefs, the im- 

 mense majority have become extinct, we may not unrea- 

 sonably expect that the few remaining members of the family 

 will become extinct. One of these is the belief we are here 

 considering — the belief that each species of organism was 

 specially created. Many who in all else have abandoned 

 the aboriginal theory of things, still hold this remnant of the 

 aboriginal theory. Ask any tolerably-informed man whether 

 he accepts the cosmogony of the Indians, or the Greeks, or 

 the Hebrews, and he will regard the question as next to an 

 insult. Yet one element common to these cosmogonies he 

 very likely retains : not bearing in mind its origin. For 

 whence did he get the doctrine of special creations ? Catechise 

 him, and he is forced to confess that it was put into his mind 

 in childhood, as one portion of a story which, as a whole, he 

 has long since rejected. Why this fragment is likely to be 



