324 The Critics of Evolution. [ May, 
Like other accepted theories, evolution is the natural growth 
of closer and deeper observation, and therefore of more accurate 
knowledge of the relations of facts. The doctrines of evolution 
have been reached in the perfectly legitimate manner by which 
all the other great truths of science have been discovered. It has 
been a natural outgrowth from facts, and is not, as some suppose, 
an invention sprung from the imagination of a dreamer. It is one 
department of “ that science which is but common sense method- 
ized and extended,” and “ is indeed the highest stage of human 
knowledge.” 
It has appeared to us to be a reasonable opinion that any one 
endowed with the scientific spirit would not go to a theologian 
to obtain a just estimate of the value of a scientific theory, but 
would visit an enlightened expert for an opinion. “The former 
class continually labor to make tradition confront discovery and 
feel constrained to view with jealous distrust the rapid advance- 
ment of practical knowledge.” Their inquiries are not whether 
any new fact is absolutely true, but whether it is in accordance 
with conceptions they consider established. Those who really 
desire to learn what evolution is, and its profound significance, and 
are possessed of the proper faith in nature as a revealer of intel- 
lectual truth, will not consult Joseph Cook’s “ Biology,” the scien- 
tific charlatanry of which has been thoroughly exposed in the 
New Englander for January, 1879, where its taste and rhetoric 
have been pronounced “execrable,” and which in the Saturday 
Review is the subject of an article entitled “ Spread Eagle Philoso- 
phy.” With his religious sentiments properly, we have no contro- 
versy. Nor would they look with any confidence upon the 
objections of writers whom they should no more regard as 
authority on scientific questions than they incline to accept their 
views on theology. Dr. Hodge, of Princeton, has been well 
answered by Dr. Gray in his “ Darwiniana,’”! to which I would 
refer the reader. One of his remarks may as well here be repro- 
duced; “It may be well to remember that of the two great 
minds of the 17th century, Newton and Leibnitz, both profoundly 
religious as well as philosophical, one produced the theory © 
gravitation, the other objected to that theory, that it was subver- 
sive of natural religion; also that the nebular hypothesis, a natu- 
1 What is Darwinism ? by Charles Hodge, Princeton N. J. By Asa Gray in his 
Darwiniana, pp. 266-282, and pp. 137-258. 
