TEE ORIGIN OF SPECIES 5°5 



It is time to proceed to the proof of the contentions of this paper. 

 In presenting it, I shall first recall to the reader passages — some of 

 them, doubtless, already familiar — from Huxley or other post-Dar- 

 winian defenders of the evolution theory, and then exhibit the parallel 

 arguments found in Chambers, Spencer and other pre-Darwinians. 

 Since, in such a case, textual precision is of some importance, it is 

 hardly needful to apologize for copious citation of the ipsissima verba 

 of the authors in question. The arguments for evolution will be taken 

 up in the order of their generality or of their logical interconnection. 



It is necessary first of all, however, to remind the reader of the gen- 

 eral outlines of the situation in the science of the time. It was a situation 

 essentially different from that in which Lamarck had carried on the prop- 

 aganda of transformism. The difference was due to two changes that 

 had taken place in the intervening period. First, the science of geology 

 had gone through a brilliant development, and had fought and won its 

 battle against religious orthodoxy ; and in England, though not all geol- 

 ogists were consistent uniformitarians, all geology had been profoundly 

 influenced by the principles and the methods of Hutton and Lyell. 

 Second, the two allied subsidiary sciences of paleontology and strati- 

 graphic geology had been created, through the work of Cuvier and of 

 William Smith. One result was that the recognized age of the planet 

 had been vastly extended; enough time was thus granted for the evo- 

 lutionary process. A still more significant result was that the Mosaic 

 cosmogony had been entirely abandoned by even the most orthodox of 

 men of science. The doctrine of creation which such men defended 

 against the hypothesis of development no longer bore any close re- 

 semblance to the narratives of Genesis; it was no longer a question of 

 a single, original creation of all things, but of a large number of re- 

 peated acts of " special creation," separated from one another by wide 

 intervals of time, and confined to the production of organisms. Mean- 

 while, it was assumed, in the organic realm things were going on in an 

 orderly and normal manner, in accordance with natural laws of geologic 

 change ; even the Cuvierian " catastrophes " were " natural " phenom- 

 ena. The effect, in short, of the triumph of geology had been, curiously 

 enough, to increase the resort to supernatural agency in the current 

 accounts of the genesis of the existing order of nature. In place of one 

 great, obscure miracle at the origination of the universe, the revised 

 version of the doctrine of creation assumed a large number of petty 

 and definite miracles ; it supposed, in Chambers's words, " an immediate 

 exertion of the creative power, at one time to produce zoophytes, at 

 another time to add a few marine mollusks, another to bring in one 

 or two Crustacea, again to produce crustaceous fishes, again perfect 

 fishes, and so on to the end." 9 Creationism, to conform to the accepted 

 principles and accumulated knowledge of geological science, had been 



9 Chambers, " Vestiges," 1844, Ch. XI. 



