EVOLUTION AND THE ORIGIN OF LIFE. 717 



Power, we must not even resort to a " moss-grown fragment from 

 the ruins of another world," unless it is really necessary to invent 

 some such hypothesis. Now, the Evolutionist repudiates the notion 

 of Creation in its ordinary sense ; he believes that the operation of 

 natural causes, working in their accustomed manner, was alone 

 quite adequate to bring into existence a kind of matter presenting a 

 new order of complexity, and displaying the phenomena which we 

 have generalized under the word "Life." Living matter is thus 

 supposed to have come into being by the further operation, under 

 new conditions, of the same agencies as had previously led to the 

 formation of the various inorganic constituents of the earth's crust — 

 such mineral and saline substances as we see around us at the present 

 day. What we call " Life," then, is regarded as one of the natural 

 results of the growing complexity of our primal nebula. So that, in 

 accordance with this view, we have no more reason to postulate a 

 miraculous interference or exercise of Creative Power to account for 

 the evolution of living matter in any suitable portion of the Universe 

 (whether it be on this earth or elsewhere), than to explain the ap- 

 pearance of any other kind of matter — the magnetic oxide of iron, for 

 instance. So far, all thorough Evolutionists are quite agreed. This 

 is the view of Spencer, Lewes, Huxley, and others — possibly of Dar- 

 win. I say possibly of Darwin, because on this subject it so happens 

 that the language of this most distinguished exponent of Evolution 

 is more than usually tinctured with a previous point of view. Speak- 

 ing of the probable commencement of Life upon our globe, Mr. Dar- 

 win says ! : "I believe that animals have descended from at most only 

 four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. 

 Analogy would lead me one step farther, namely, to the belief that 

 all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. . . . 

 There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having 

 been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms, or into 

 one ; and that while this planet has gone cycling on according to 

 the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms, 

 most beautiful and most wonderful, have been and are being evolved." 

 Taking into account the phraseology made use of in the above 

 quotation, we have little difficulty in recognizing the views of an 

 Evolutionist, dwarfed and modified though they are by an ultimate 

 appeal to a Creative act only a little less miraculous and singular 

 than the mythical origin of our reputed ancestors — Adam and Eve. 

 Some existing naturalists may perhaps contend that Mr. Darwin 

 ought to have kept more closely to the Mosaic record — replacing his 

 one primordial form by a dual birth of male and female, without 

 whose mutual influence no " biological individuals " can in their opin- 

 ion come into existence. Such a supposition, it is true, would be as 

 antiquated and unnecessary from the Evolutionist's point of view as 



1 "Origin of Species," sixth edition, 1872, pp. 424, 429. 



