attack. Its essential harmony with the spirit of the aire, the real learning of its author and advocates, have secured for it an influ- ence which is widespread, and, for the time, imposing.
A second remark is that the theory in question cannot be true, because it is founded on the assumption of an impossibility. It assumes that matter does the work of mind. This is an impossi- bility and an absurdity in the judgment of all men except material- ists; and materialists are, ever have been, and ever must be, a mere handful among men, whether educated or uneducated. The doctrine of Darwin is, that a primordial germ, with no inherent intelligence, develops, under purely natural influences, into all the infinite variety of vegetable and animal organisms, with all their complicated relations to each other and to the world around them. He not only asserts that all this is due to natural causes ; and, moreover, that the lower impulses of vegetable life pass, by insen- sible gradations, into the instinct of animals and the higher intelli- gence of man, but he argues against the intervention of mind any- where in the process. God, says Lamarck, created matter; God, says Darwin, created the unintelligent living cell ; both say that, after that first step, all else follows by natural law, without purpose and without design. No man can believe this, who cannot also believe that all the works of art, literature, and science in the world are the products of carbonic acid, water, and ammonia.
The Atheistic Character of the Theory.
Thirdly, the system is thoroughly atheistic, and therefore cannot possibly stand. God has revealed his existence and his government of the world so clearly and so authoritatively, that any philosophi- cal or scientific speculations inconsistent with those truths are like cobwebs in the track of a tornado. They offer no sensible resist- ance. The mere naturalist, the man devoted so exclusively to the
of the society, the Rev. H. H. Higgins, in which he says that he considered the paper of M. Agassiz, inserted in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History, against Darwin, "to be quite unworthy of so distinguished a naturalist" (p. 42). On a subsequent page he gives a selection from Agassiz's disparaging remarks. The same volume contains a paper from Dr. Collingwood in defence of Agassiz and his criticism. In the review of the argument he says he will pass over Agassiz's " caustic remarks upon the confusion of ideas implied in the general term, variability of species,''' and also "his categorical contradictions of many of Darwin's fundamental statements ; but never was a theory more sorely beset than is that of Darwin by the repeated assaults of such a giant in palasontology as Agassiz. Statement after statement, by which the whole theory hangs together, is assailed and impugned, — stone after stone of the Darwinian structure trembles before the battering-ram of the champion of species. Out of twelve such reiterated attacks, ten of which are purely palseontological, and stand unchallenged, only one has called for remarks, and tb it one, perhaps, the least important" (p. 87). Agassiz is not a theologian; he opposes tht theory as a scientific man and on scientific grounds.
16 PART n. Ch. L — ORIGI^r OF MAN.
study of nature as to believe in nothing but natural causes, is not able to understand the strength with which moral and religious convictions take liold of the minds of men. These convictions, however, are the sti'ongest, the most ennobling, and the most dangerous for any class of men to disregard or ignore.
In saying that this system is atheistic, it is not said that Mr. Darwin is an atheist. He expressly acknowledges the existence of God ; and seems to feel the necessity of his existence to account for the origin of life. Nor is it meant that every one who adopts the theory does it in an atheistic sense. It has already been remarked that there is a theistic and an atheistic form of the nebu- lar hypothesis as to the origin of the universe ; so there may be a theistic interpretation of the Darwinian theory. Men who, as the Duke of Argyle, carry the reign of law into everything, affirming that even creation is by law, may hold, as he does, that God uses everywhere and constantly physical laws, to produce not only the ordinary operations of nature, but to give rise to things specifically new, and therefore to new species in the vegetable and animal M'orlds, Such species would thus be as truly due to the purpose and power of God as though they had been created by a word. Natural laws are said to be to God what the chisel and the brush are to the artist. Then God is as much the author of species as the sculptor or painter is the author of the product of his skill. This is a theistic doctrine. That, however, is not Darwin's doc- trine. His theory is that hundreds or thousands of millions of years ago God called a living germ, or living germs, into existence, and that since that time God has no more to do with the universe than if He did not exist. This is atheism to all intents and pur- poses, because it leaves the soul as entirely without God, without a Father, Helper, or Ruler, as the doctrine of Epicurus or of Comte. Darwin, moreover, obliterates all the evidences of the being of God in the world. He refers to physical causes what all theists believe to be due to the operations of the Divine mind. There is no more effectual way of getting rid of a truth than by rejecting the proofs on which it rests. Professor Huxley says that when he first read Darwin's book he regarded it as the death-blow of teleology, i. e., of the doctrine of design and purpose in nature.^ Blichner, to whom
1 Criticisms on " The Origin of Species;" in his Lay Sermons and Addresses, p. 330. " The teleological argument," he says, " runs thus: An organ or organism is precisely' fitted to perform a function or purpose; therefore it was specially constructed to perform that function. In Paley's famous illustration, the adaptation of all the parts of the watch to tiiC function, or purpose, of showing the time, is held to be evidence that the watch was specially contriped to that end ; on the ground that the only cause we know of, competent to produce such an