1884] . 
An Exegesis of Darwinism. 
729 
of the prototypes should prepare us to encounter ambiguity 
concerning their origin ; and indeed one passage, if literally 
construed, upsets the special vivification notion. Mr. 
Darwin thought that “ it accords better with what we know 
of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the 
production and extinction of the past and present inhabitants 
of the world should have been due to secondary causes ” 
(p. 428). He tells us that “ Science as yet throws no light 
on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life ” 
(p. 421). “ How a nerve comes to be sensitive to light 
hardly concerns us more than how life itself originated ” 
(p. 144). The patent ambiguity, transparent scepticism, 
and naked indifference of these passages would not gratify 
anyone who had performed the breathing feat in question. 
Assuming that the courageous Mr. Henry G. Atkinson is 
mistaken in believing that Mr. Darwin’s invocation of a 
Creator to start life upon earth was a mere subterfuge, let 
us enquire whether or no that vivification endowed the 
prototypes with anything more than life — and perhaps 
prestige ; was it the cause of the “ innate variations ” 
(p. 115), “ innate wide flexibility of constitution ” (p. 114), 
and “ innate tendency to new variations” ? This question 
will be answered in section 15. Meanwhile it will suffice to 
remark that Mr. Henry G. Atkinson is not the only traducer 
of Mr. Darwin respecting this vivification matter. From a 
diametrically opposite quarter, namely from a current 
“ Dublin Reviewer,” we have a questioning of Mr. Darwin’s 
sincerity ; while, to turn to avowed applauders, in the 
second “ Agnostic Annual,” just issued, the Secretary of the 
Darwin Institute, Birmingham, remarks that “ The early 
works of Darwin contain a phrase, “ Life breathed by the 
Creator into a few forms ; . . . Those who quote Darwin 
as giving a supernatural personal origin to life should be 
reminded that in his ‘ Descent’ he describes the enquiry as 
to ‘ how life itself first originated ’ as ‘ hopeless, and says 
that the solution lies in the ‘ distant future,’ if it is evei to 
be ‘ solved by man.” The president of that institute 
classifies “ the late Charles Darwin as one ‘ of the genus 
Humbug,” of a variety whose characteristics include “ entire 
unbelief in the supernatural at heart.” The editor of the 
“ Annual ” affirms that “ the origin of life is untrace- 
able, and absolutely inconceivable.” 
6. “As all the forms of life are the lineal descendants of 
those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we may 
feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has 
never once been broken ” (p. 428). 
VOL. VI. (third series). 3 c 
