The central Presbyterian. [volume] (Richmond, Va.) 1856-1908, 1885-10-14
THE ECCENTRICITIES OF
PHILOSOPHERS.

1t is certainly a strange feature in
DR.. Woodrow's theory of evolution
that Eve was created, but that Adam
was the result of descent with modif-
cation The human mind is one of the
most mysterious and most unfathoma
bic things in the universe of God
and who shall know it? There is
hardly any line of thought that some
mind will not take, and hardly any
thing so fantastic that some intellect
will not embrace it. The vagaries of
the human reason are simply unaccount-
able so long as we fail to remember that
sin has clouded our perceptions so that
the mental eye is color-blind until it
meets the light from heaven. The
more we study, the more are we con-
WINGED that it is not mere empty de-
claration of st. James, that elf any
man lack wisdom, let him ask of God"
If God does not give us wisdom, woe
to the man that thinks
A very learned professor indeed,
President of Boston University, author
of "Anfangsgrunde der Logik," "Ein-
leitung in die Systematische Theolo-
gle" etc., ETC., has just written a book
to prove that Paradise was at the
North Pole, and he invoices Geology,
archaeological Anthropology, Cos
mology, and the most ancient books
ofsthe Asiatic races, to establish his
positionl
Mr.. Darwin's theory of natural Sc
lection is itself one of the most extra
ordinary thoughts that ever possessed
the human mind, and the curious part
of the matter is that for time so many
accepted it as an explanation of the
existence of all the wonderful animal
and vegetable forms that people earth,
air, and sea with their myriad types.
To begin with an oyster and soberly to
urge before the British Association and
other learned bodies that by a series of
accidents this oyster had developed into
whales and fishes, and lions, and tigers,
and bears, and elephants, and even into
man himself, does seem very, very
odd. 1t was all done by the sur
vival Of the fttest. And Mr.. Herbert
Spencer took up the doctrine, and ap-
piled it in every conceivable direction.
If man wanted an eye, all he had to
do was to feel the want of it quite pas
sionately sufficiently long time, and
the eye would come. Any animal
could get good pair of ears, or pair
of wings, or pair of lungs, in the same
way.
DR.. Woodrow's idea that evolution
suficed to produce male human being
only, is a chivalrous conception, and
pays deserved compliment to the SUI
perior complexity of womans nature,
and its greater fneness of organisation.
The impulse Of mankind has charac-
terised woman as "divine," and it was
rather stroke of genius in the "Per-
kins Professor" as his admirers delight
to call him, to take woman out of the
operation of natural selection, and
make her an exception to the law of
evolution She came like Minerva,
fully equipped at once-and surely
never lighted on this earth" as Burk @
said Of Marie Antoinette of France.
(which she hardly seemed to touch, a
more delightful vision !" 1t is incon-
sistent, we think, with the theory, that
the Bible makes the divinely originated
being the prime mover, and the descen-
dant of the brute, the mere accomplish,
in the primeval sin. 1t looks a little
strange that the angel should have
given the incipiency to all the irregu-
larities that have followed the coniunc-
ton Of this queerly mated pair.
1t is our belief that DR.. Woodrow
has made fatal mistake for his repu-
tation as naturalist in taking Eve
out Of the pale of science. She and
Adam ought to have made their debut
in the world of nature on equal terms
sink or swim, live or die, they ought to
have both been sucked by a wolf, or