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other writers. Mr. Darwin and his disciples have taught in 
their works that 
5. A primitive speck of matter originally came into being. 
Some admit that such primordial plasm was an act of creation; 
others, like Dr. Bastian, that it was evolved from not-living 
matter by the agency of physical forces. Professor Huxley has 
called it “ Protoplasm/” or the “physical basis of life.” Pro- 
fessor Haekel and Dr. Bastian believe that such specks of 
protoplasm, in the form of protistse ^nd protamoebse are con- 
stantly being evolved in myriads in the fine mud of our ponds 
and ditches. 
6. Given the speck of matter, Mr. Darwin and his followers 
have taught, that by inherent blind physical forces, such speck 
or specks of living matter have given origin to every plant, tree, 
animal, and human being in the world. I expressly, in the 
beginning of my remarks, for reasons which I will give in the 
end, decline to associate men and animals together. 
7. Mr. Darwin and his followers have taught that such pri- 
mitive specks of living matter have been endowed with a 
potentiality, by means of which they varied into other living 
things, slightly dissimilar from their predecessors ; that these 
again varied in some way advantageous to themselves, and so 
survived in what they term the “ struggle for existence,” 
while the weaker or less fortunate forms perished and went out 
of existence. 
8. They have taught that these survivors, by reason of their 
innate potentiality and the operation of molecular forces and 
interchanges, “ evolved ” themselves into other forms, which 
“struggled” and were “selected,” as the “survival of the 
fittest” to vary again, diverge into new lines of development, 
and so, through vast periods of time, become the living world 
we now see around us. 
9. Darwinism essentially consists in the belief that living 
things have been perfected from the weak to the strong — from 
the formless to the formed — from the meanest fungi to the oak 
of the forest— from the lowest animalcule to the most perfectly 
organized animal, and man himself, by forces which are known 
to obtain in the inorganic world and are termed physical — 
and those which, only existing in living beings, are termed 
vital — such forces being correlated, and convertible into each 
other. They deny the existence of any external or miraculous 
power, and consequently ignore a controlling and designing 
Providence. They believe that the forces of the world are 
self-acting and “self-adjusting.”* 
* Wallace, 
