The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-10-12

| selection, for the first time, was sug
 gested force, whose existence in na ture could not be doubted, and whose tendency, conservative in stable envir' | onment, progressive in changing envir- Onment would account at once for the permanence of species through long ages and for epoChs of relatively rapid
 change. However Darwins work may
 be discredited by the congregations ot
 Weismannism, however 1t may be min
 flied by Neo-L -Lamarckians, it is the the
 ory of natural selection which has SC
 nearly removed the barrier in the path
 of evolution, impossible before, as to
 lead first the scientific world and later
 world of thought in general to sub
 stantially unanimous belief in the de-
 rivative origin of species, Certain it is
 that no discovery since Newton's dis
 covery of universal gravitation has pro-
 duced so profound an effect upon the
 intellectual life of mankind. The tombS
 of Newton and Darwin lie close together
 In England's Vaihala, and together
 their names must stand as the two great
 enochmaking names in the history or
 science.
 Darwins discovery relates primarily
 to the origin of species by descent Wlth
 qualifications from pre-eXisting specles.
 It throws no direct light upon the
 question of the origin of life But analogy is a guide that we may reason-
 ably follow in our thinking, provided
 only We bear in mind that she is
 treacherous guide and soemtimes leads astray Conclusions that rest only on analogy must be held tentatively and
 not dogmatically. Yet it would be an unreasonable excess of caution that would refuse to recognize the direction in which analogy points. When we recognize the continuous evolution from the nebula to the dawn of life, and again the continuous evolution from the dawn of life to the varied flora and fauna of to-day, crowned as it is with glory in the appearance or man himself, we can hardly fail to ac- cept the suggestion that the transition from the lifeless to the living was it. self a process of evolution. Though the supposed instances of spontaneous generation all resolve themselves into errors of experimentation, though the
  of the vast progress it has made, stops far short of the compeXity of proto- plasm, though we must confess our selves unable to imagine any hypothe- sis for the origin of that complex appa- ratuS which the microscope is reveal ing to us in the infinitesimal laboratory of the cell, are we not compelled to be- lieve that the law of continuity has not been broken, and that a process of nat ural transition from the lifeless to the living may yet be within reach of hu- man discovery?
 Still further Are we content to be- lieve that evolution began with the ne- bula? Are we satisfied to assume our chemical atoms as an ultimate and in- applicable fact? Herschel and Maxwell indeed, have reasoned from the suppos- ed absolute likeness of atoms of any particular element that they bear the stamp of a manufactured article" and must therefore' be supposed to have | been specially created at some definite epoch of beginning. But, when we are speaking of things of which We know SO little as we know of atoms, there is | ogically a boundless difference between | he two propositions, that we know no | difference between the atoms of hydro 1 gen and that we know there is no diff | terence. Is it not legitimate for us to | 'ecognize here again the direction in | which analogy points, and to ask whether those fundamental units of | physical nature, the atoms themselves. nay not be products of evolution? 1 Thus analogy suggests to us the ques- ion, whether there is any beginning of he series of evolutionary changes which we see stretching backwards nto the remote past, whether the nebu- ae from which systems have been volVed were not themselves evolved; whether existing forms of matter were lot evolved from other forms that we now not; whether creative power and reative intelligence have not been eter- ally immanent in an eternal universe.
 cannot help thinking that theology nay tltly welcome such suggestion, S relieving it from the incongruous otlon Of benevolent Deity spending n eternity in solitude and idIeness. he contemplation of His own attrib- tes might seem fitting employment pr Hlndoo Brahm. It hardly fits the haracter of the Heavenly Father of 'hom We are told that He worketh itherto."
 In the last suggestion I have ven ured outside the realm of science. But lost men are not so constituted that hey can carry their scientific and their philosophical and religious beliefs in separated by thought roof bulkheads Scientific and pbilo- )phic and religious thought, in the in ividual and in the race, must act and eact upon each other. It was, there ,re, inevitable that our century of ,ientific progress should disturb the { eligious beliefs of men. When concep- ons of the cosmos, with which relg- 1 JUS beliefs had been associated, were , ldely shattered, 1t was inevitable that 1 lose religious beliefs themselves i lould seem to be imperlled And SO (
 the early years of the century it ( as said, if the world is more than six lousand years old, the Bible is z aud, and the Christian religion a C cram. And later it was said, if physi- i Il and vital forces are correlated with t lch other, there is no soul and no inn i ortality. And again it was said, if Y 'ecies originate by evolution, and not a 7 special crea ation, there is no God So $
 had been said centuries before, if V e earth revOlVes around the sum- f