The Daily state journal. [volume] (Alexandria, Va.) 1868-1874, 1873-11-20
PROFESSOR AGAssIz AND DARWIN.

10 otilO"fteNNt w thO pubiohSic VI shS
Atlantic Monthly that Professor Agassiz
is about to demollsh Darwinism in the
columns of that journal. No one can
doubt the ability of the Professor to deal
giant blows against the system Of evolu-
ton SO deliberately upreared by Mr.. Oar
win, in his great work on ''The Descent Of
Man." The principles on which his
theory is constructed contain much that
is genuine scientific truth, but more that is
merely fanciful and hap-hazard. We refer, Of
course, to the principles laid down in his
work and treated exclusively as Darwinian.
lie has evidently collected from the fields
of geology, archaeology, history, language
and ethnology, a most formidable array Of
convergent facts, all tending, as is claimed,
to demonstrate the several propositions on
which his magnificent theory of evolution
is built; and it is evident that none but o
master hand can effectually demolish sys.
tenn which has taken so strong hold apon
the popular belief of the day.
We have no difficulty in settling his
bold and startling utterances in our own
mind but it is another thing to settle
them in the minds of others. The grand
insuperable objection to it, in our judg-
inent, is, that it limits the creative hand
of Deity to mere protoplasmic life in an
ovule, and leaves the whole work OF
subsequent development, or more pro-
perly, subsequent creation, to the cum
ming hand of Nature. Launched into ex.
istence in this little ovule-bark, or the
smallest possible mass Of rudimentary
tissue, man has made his way by the kind
ly hand Of Nature, mo God-guidance any
where,) from the lowest group of organic
fishes, or mere gelatinous matter, through
the Ganoids and Lepidosirens up to am.
phibians and reptiles, and from these to
birds and Misunderstanding from the in.
vertebrate to the vertebrate, and then on
to the placental classes-until he has reached
the quadramanel family, where no happily
branches off into two great stems, the
New World and Old World monkeys, o,
the immediate progenitors of the human
race! This is, in brief, the Darwinar
theory of human life, in its origin and
development, from the protoplasmic oyule
up to the browning wonder and glory oil
the visible universe-the lord of all
developed life! This is the Darwiniau
universe, as seen without God.
For we have only to take one step back
ward from his startling standpoint, in the
line of presumptive argument, to get at a
grand experimenting Nature, working by
protoplasm, to accomplish the whole task
assigned to creative intelligence in the
universe. God with his creative fiat is no.
where; Nature with her protocol is every.
where. The sublime account given of
creation in Genesis, in that majestic dawn
when the spirit of God moved upon the
lace OF the waters and commanded the
light to dispel the darkness and it was so.
disappears before the marvellous embryonic
fact that man originates in a molus.
cous something which has an ovule
and in that ovule protoplasm
and in that protoplasm life, which
develops itself through infinitely successive
stages of growth from tadpole to q
monkey, when he becomesa man wonder
ful transformation simply because he has
lost his tail by "the atrophy of its
terminal JOINTS" or because his great toe
has ceased to be prehensile and he has lost
his power to climb trees! All this is
proved. so claim the "Evolutionists, by
the principles OF morphology and the
embryological facts at the command of Mr..
Darwin. All this is as clear as mud in the
Miocene period
And this is Darwinsm-the mighty sys-
tenn which Professor Agassiz is called up-
on to demolish in the Atlantic Monthly,
the Bluckwood Of New England. How
beautifully it harmonizes with the creative
order of things in the Universe, may be
gathered from almost any pag
of the pretentious work. Many are
ready to accept the theory because it allies
man to monkey and makes as one all
human origins-placing the Caucasian on
the same seminal stem with the Tasmanian
and other inferior races. The idea that
GOD should have created different races of
men as he has different species of animals,
is 10 truth SO repugnant to their preconceiyed
notions that they are ready to accept Mr..
Darwin's theory and dethrone God by
protoplasm, (how potential is single word,)
rather than admit the only foundation on
which Religion and Science can stand as
twin-sisters together.
Charles Lamb once said that he would
like, as matter of curiosity, to see the
greatest ninny'' that ever lived. Alas,
poor Ella died too young! He should
have lived to the present day and seen the
man who gulps the Darwinian theory as
Ling Look does an unshelled egg. His
curiosity would then have been fully salts
fled. We say this much, however, of Mr..
Darwin's book, that it has never been ex-
celled, in scientific excellence and theoreti-
cal brillancy, since the writer Of Peter
Wkina yvant iptn tho boIa Of tbo Nu