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species. This is the known present; and, proceeding from 
this known present to the unknown past, we conclude that 
what is true in the present in this particular was true in the 
past ; and hence we say to the evolutionist; you are not justified 
in assuming that at some period in the unknown past all was 
different from the present. Now the animals of a particular 
species breed true; then they did not: now species are per- 
sistent ; then they were not. Surely such an argument as 
this is illogical. 
Such being the case; we hold that it is both reasonable and 
scientific to believe that at some time in the far distant past; 
a certain number of distinct species or typeS; — if one may so 
speak; — were created by the Great First Cause; and that when 
they were called into existence each was endowed with the 
power of producing progeny after its kind; and that to each 
seed was given its own body.-’^ Such a faith commends itself 
to human reason; because it attributes a great efiect to its 
commensurate cause. 
Evolution; as taught by Professor Haeckel, on the other 
hand; does not commend itself to reason; because it attributes 
great effects to insufficient causes. 
Evolution and natural selection require us to believe two 
most extraordinary things. 
First. — That there was selection by the lowest form of 
animal life to a higher; when there was nothing higher than 
itself from which to select. For if life commenced with the 
monera; which were structureless — life without organs — and 
nothing higher; whence the struggle for existence; which, 
according to the advocates of the theory, led to the improve- 
ment of the race ? 
Second. — That the lowly-formed mass of jelly was impelled 
in some way to alter its form and improve its condition when 
there was really no necessity to do so. For the monera were 
as adapted to their mode of life as the amoeba, the hydra, or 
any of their immediate descendants. 
As we asked at a previous stage of our investigations. 
Whence came life at the first ? so 'we ask now, AVhence 
came the power, the desire, the will — call it what you please — 
that led some of the monera to assume a more complex struc- 
ture ? and why all did not do so, when all were subjected to 
the same influences, and placed in the same circumstances ? 
For if ‘‘ natural selection does nothing without variability, 
and this depends in some manner on the action of surrounding 
circumstances on the organisms,^^ then there could have beeu 
no room for its action when there were no organisms to be 
improved by the surrounding circumstances. 
