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been a time when the first being, who was capable of feeling a 
sense of duty, who could bow before a moral law, and say, “ I 
ought,” began to be. The interval is one which separates the 
conception of duty from non-duty; of conscience from non- 
conscience ; of a moral nature from the want of it. The differ- 
ence is not one of degree but of kind. Between laws of motion 
and their modifications, and conceptions of duty, there is no 
one thing in common. When the idea of duty first originated 
a new order of being entered the universe. 
70. Even if the principle of the utilitarian philosophy is 
correct, that duty is the obligation to seek the greatest happi- 
ness or the greatest number, the argument is unaffected by it. 
The question still imperatively demands solution, how came 
it ever to be felt to be a duty, to seek the greatest happiness 
of the greatest number ? When and how has this sentiment 
arisen ? Of what form of motion is it the modification ? 
71. Such are some of the gaps which must be bridged over 
by means of clear and indisputable facts, before a philosophy 
which has no other forces at its command but blind, unintelli- 
gent ones, can account for the origin of things. But supposing 
for argument’s sake that these have been surmounted, the 
question at once arises, whether the pantheistic and atheistic 
theory of evolution is adequate to account for the existence of 
the various orders of beings which lie within these bounds. I 
will now examine some of the special agencies by which it has 
been attempted to be shown that the various forms of organized 
life have been developed without the agency of a being possessed 
of personal intelligence and power. The only principles which 
this philosophy presses into its service for that purpose are 
Darwin’s two principles of natural and sexual selection. 
72. I by no means wish to affirm that these may not have 
been potent instruments in the hands of Omnipotence by 
which God has carried on His creative work. That they act 
within certain limits is an obvious fact. The question is, 
what are those limits ? Are they the only agencies ? Are they 
alone adequate to the work ? Must not other principles, known 
and unknown, have contributed to it? Is their distinct and 
separate agency conceivable without Omnipotence at their back ? 
73. We must begin by assuming that life has somehow origi- 
nated in the earth. The problem before us is as follows : 
given matter and force acting in conformity with invariable 
laws, both alike destitute of intelligence, to evolve everything in 
the sentient universe, which bears the indications of the action 
of intelligence. Let us even suppose that one or more cells have 
been evolved from which our course of evolution is to com- 
