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Science halted for a time. The accepted doctrine became this: that
the only reason why all the nebula are not resolved into distinct
stars is that our telescopes are not sufficiently powerful. But in
time came the discovery of the spectroscope and spectrum analysis,
and thence Fraunhofer's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited
gaseous body is non-continuous, with interrupting lines; and
Draper's discovery that the spectrum of an ignited solid is
continuous, with no interrupting lines. And now the spectroscope
was turned upon the nebula, and many of them were found to be
gaseous. Here, then, was ground for the inference that in these
nebulous masses at different stages of condensation--some
apparently mere pitches of mist, some with luminous centres--we
have the process of development actually going on, and observations
like those of Lord Rosse and Arrest gave yet further confirmation
to this view. Then came the great contribution of the nineteenth
century to physics, aiding to explain important parts of the vast
process by the mechanical theory of heat.

Again the nebular hypothesis came forth stronger than ever, and
about 1850 the beautiful experiment of Plateau on the rotation of
a fluid globe came in apparently to illustrate if not to confirm
it. Even so determined a defender of orthodoxy as Mr. Gladstone at
last acknowledged some form of a nebular hypothesis as probably true.

Here, too, was exhibited that form of surrendering theological
views to science under the claim that science concurs with
theology, which we have seen in so many other fields; and, as
typical, an example may be given, which, however restricted in its
scope, throws light on the process by which such surrenders are
obtained. A few years since one of the most noted professors of
chemistry in the city of New York, under the auspices of one of its
most fashionable churches, gave a lecture which, as was claimed in
the public prints and in placards posted in the streets, was to
show that science supports the theory of creation given in the
sacred books ascribed to Moses. A large audience assembled, and a
brilliant series of elementary experiments with oxygen, hydrogen,
and carbonic acid was concluded by the Plateau demonstration. It
was beautifully made. As the coloured globule of oil, representing
the earth, was revolved in a transparent medium of equal density,
as it became flattened at the poles, as rings then broke forth from
it and revolved about it, and, finally, as some of these rings
broke into satellites, which for a moment continued to circle about
the central mass, the audience, as well they might, rose and burst
into rapturous applause.

Thereupon a well-to-do citizen arose and moved the thanks of the
audience to the eminent professor for "this perfect demonstration
of the exact and literal conformity of the statements given in Holy
Scripture with the latest results of science." The motion was
carried unanimously and with applause, and the audience dispersed,
feeling that a great service had been rendered to orthodoxy.
_Sancta simplicitas!_

What this incident exhibited on a small scale has been seen
elsewhere with more distinguished actors and on a broader stage.
Scores of theologians, chief among whom of late, in zeal if not in
knowledge, has been Mr. Gladstone, have endeavoured to "reconcile"
the two accounts in Genesis with each other and with the truths
regarding the origin of the universe gained by astronomy, geology,
geography, physics, and chemistry. The result has been recently
stated by an eminent theologian, the Hulsean Professor of Divinity
at the University of Cambridge. He declares, "No attempt at
reconciling genesis with the exacting requirements of modern
sciences has ever been known to succeed without entailing a degree
of special pleading or forced interpretation to which, in such a
question, we should be wise to have no recourse."[19]

The revelations of another group of sciences, though sometimes
bitterly opposed and sometimes "reconciled" by theologians, have
finally set the whole question at rest. First, there have come the
biblical critics--earnest Christian scholars, working for the sake
of truth--and these have revealed beyond the shadow of a reasonable
doubt the existence of at least two distinct accounts of creation
in our book of Genesis, which can sometimes be forced to agree, but
which are generally absolutely at variance with each other. These
scholars have further shown the two accounts to be not the
cunningly devised fables of priestcraft, but evidently fragments of
earlier legends, myths, and theologies, accepted in good faith and
brought together for the noblest of purposes by those who put in
order the first of our sacred books.

Next have come the archaeologists and philologists, the devoted
students of ancient monuments and records; of these are such as
Rawlinson, George Smith, Sayce, Oppert, Jensen, Schrader,
Delitzsch, and a phalanx of similarly devoted scholars, who have
deciphered a multitude of ancient texts, especially the
inscriptions found in the great library of Assurbanipal at Nineveh,
and have discovered therein an account of the origin of the world
identical in its most important features with the later accounts in
our own book of Genesis.

These men have had the courage to point out these facts and to
connect them with the truth that these Chaldean and Babylonian
myths, legends, and theories were far earlier than those of the
Hebrews, which so strikingly resemble them, and which we have in
our sacred books; and they have also shown us how natural it was
that the Jewish accounts of the creation should have been obtained
at that remote period when the earliest Hebrews were among the
Chaldeans, and how the great Hebrew poetic accounts of creation
were drawn either from the sacred traditions of these earlier
peoples or from antecedent sources common to various ancient nations.

In a summary which for profound thought and fearless integrity does
honour not only to himself but to the great position which he
holds, the Rev. Dr. Driver, Professor of Hebrew and Canon of Christ
Church at Oxford, has recently stated the case fully and fairly.
Having pointed out the fact that the Hebrews were one people out of
many who thought upon the origin of the universe, he says that they
"framed theories to account for the beginnings of the earth and man";
that "they either did this for themselves or borrowed those of
their neighbours"; that "of the theories current in Assyria and
Phoenicia fragments have been preserved, and these exhibit points
of resemblance with the biblical narrative sufficient to warrant
the inference that both are derived from the same cycle of tradition."

After giving some extracts from the Chaldean creation tablets he
says: "In the light of these facts it is difficult to resist the
conclusion that the biblical narrative is drawn from the same
source as these other records. The biblical historians, it is
plain, derived their materials from the best human sources
available.... The materials which with other nations were combined
into the crudest physical theories or associated with a grotesque
polytheism were vivified and transformed by the inspired genius of
the Hebrew historians, and adapted to become the vehicle of
profound religious truth."

Not less honourable to the sister university and to himself is the
statement recently made by the Rev. Dr. Ryle, Hulsean Professor of
Divinity at Cambridge. He says that to suppose that a Christian
"must either renounce his confidence in the achievements of
scientific research or abandon his faith in Scripture is a
monstrous perversion of Christian freedom." He declares: "The old
position is no longer tenable; a new position has to be taken up
at once, prayerfully chosen, and hopefully held." He then goes on
to compare the Hebrew story of creation with the earlier stories
developed among kindred peoples, and especially with the
pre-existing Assyro-Babylonian cosmogony, and shows that they are
from the same source. He points out that any attempt to explain
particular features of the story into harmony with the modern
scientific ideas necessitates "a non-natural" interpretation; but
he says that, if we adopt a natural interpretation, "we shall
consider that the Hebrew description of the visible universe is
unscientific as judged by modern standards, and that it shares the
limitations of the imperfect knowledge of the age at which it was
committed to writing." Regarding the account in Genesis of man's
physical origin, he says that it "is expressed in the simple terms
of prehistoric legend, of unscientific pictorial description."

In these statements and in a multitude of others made by eminent
Christian investigators in other countries is indicated what the
victory is which has now been fully won over the older theology.

Thus, from the Assyrian researches as well as from other sources,
it has come to be acknowledged by the most eminent scholars at the
leading seats of Christian learning that the accounts of creation
with which for nearly two thousand years all scientific discoveries
have had to be "reconciled"--the accounts which blocked the way of
Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and Laplace--were simply
transcribed or evolved from a mass of myths and legends largely
derived by the Hebrews from their ancient relations with Chaldea,
rewrought in a monotheistic sense, imperfectly welded together, and then
thrown into poetic forms in the sacred books which we have inherited.

On one hand, then, we have the various groups of men devoted to the
physical sciences all converging toward the proofs that the
universe, as we at present know it, is the result of an
evolutionary process--that is, of the gradual working of physical
laws upon an early condition of matter; on the other hand, we have
other great groups of men devoted to historical, philological, and
archaeological science whose researches all converge toward the
conclusion that our sacred accounts of creation were the result of
an evolution from an early chaos of rude opinion.

The great body of theologians who have so long resisted the
conclusions of the men of science have claimed to be fighting
especially for "the truth of Scripture," and their final answer to
the simple conclusions of science regarding the evolution of the
material universe has been the cry, "The Bible is true." And they
are right--though in a sense nobler than they have dreamed.
Science, while conquering them, has found in our Scriptures a far
nobler truth than that literal historical exactness for which
theologians have so long and so vainly contended. More and more as
we consider the results of the long struggle in this field we are
brought to the conclusion that the inestimable value of the great
sacred books of the world is found in their revelation of the
steady striving of our race after higher conceptions, beliefs, and
aspirations, both in morals and religion. Unfolding and exhibiting
this long-continued effort, each of the great sacred books of the
world is precious, and all, in the highest sense, are true. Not one
of them, indeed, conforms to the measure of what mankind has now
reached in historical and scientific truth; to make a claim to such
conformity is folly, for it simply exposes those who make it and
the books for which it is made to loss of their just influence.

That to which the great sacred books of the world conform, and our
own most of all, is the evolution of the highest conceptions,
beliefs, and aspirations of our race from its childhood through the
great turning-points in its history. Herein lies the truth of all
bibles, and especially of our own. Of vast value they indeed often
are as a record of historical outward fact; recent researches in
the East are constantly increasing this value; but it is not for
this that we prize them most: they are eminently precious, not as
a record of outward fact, but as a mirror of the evolving heart,
mind, and soul of man. They are true because they have been
developed in accordance with the laws governing the evolution of
truth in human history, and because in poem, chronicle, code,
legend, myth, apologue, or parable they reflect this development of
what is best in the onward march of humanity. To say that they are
not true is as if one should say that a flower or a tree or a
planet is not true; to scoff at them is to scoff at the law of the
universe. In welding together into noble form, whether in the book
of Genesis, or in the Psalms, or in the book of Job, or elsewhere,
the great conceptions of men acting under earlier inspiration,
whether in Egypt, or Chaldea, or India, or Persia, the compilers of
our sacred books have given to humanity a possession ever becoming
more and more precious; and modern science, in substituting a new
heaven and a new earth for the old--the reign of law for the reign
of caprice, and the idea of evolution for that of creation--has
added and is steadily adding a new revelation divinely inspired.

In the light of these two evolutions, then--one of the visible
universe, the other of a sacred creation-legend--science and
theology, if the master minds in both are wise, may at last be
reconciled. A great step in this reconciliation was recently seen
at the main centre of theological thought among English-speaking
people, when, in the collection of essays entitled _Lux Mundi_,
emanating from the college established in these latter days as a
fortress of orthodoxy at Oxford, the legendary character of the
creation accounts in our sacred books was acknowledged, and when
the Archbishop of Canterbury asked, "May not the Holy Spirit at
times have made use of myth and legend?"[24]


    II. THEOLOGICAL TEACHINGS REGARDING THE ANIMALS AND MAN.

IN one of the windows of the cathedral at Ulm a mediaeval
glass-stainer has represented the Almighty as busily engaged in
creating the animals, and there has just left the divine hands an
elephant fully accoutred, with armour, harness, and housings,
ready-for war. Similar representations appear in illuminated
manuscripts and even in early printed books, and, as the
culmination of the whole, the Almighty is shown as fashioning the
first man from a hillock of clay and extracting from his side,
with evident effort, the first woman.

This view of the general process of creation had come from far,
appearing under varying forms in various ancient cosmogonies. In
the Egyptian temples at Philae and Denderah may still be seen
representations of the Nile gods modelling lumps of clay into men,
and a similar work is ascribed in the Assyrian tablets to the gods
of Babylonia. Passing into our own sacred books, these ideas became
the starting point of a vast new development of theology[25]

The fathers of the Church generally received each of the two
conflicting creation legends in Genesis literally, and then, having
done their best to reconcile them with each other and to mould them
together, made them the final test of thought upon the universe and
all things therein. At the beginning of the fourth century
Lactantius struck the key-note of this mode of subordinating all
other things in the study of creation to the literal text of
Scripture, and he enforces his view of the creation of man by a bit
of philology, saying the final being created "is called man because
he is made from the ground--_homo ex humo_."

In the second half of the same century this view as to the literal
acceptance of the sacred text was reasserted by St. Ambrose, who,
in his work on the creation, declared that "Moses opened his mouth
and poured forth what God had said to him." But a greater than
either of them fastened this idea into the Christian theologies.
St. Augustine, preparing his _Commentary on the Book of Genesis_,
laid down in one famous sentence the law which has lasted in the
Church until our own time: "Nothing is to be accepted save on the
authority of Scripture, since greater is that authority than all
the powers of the human mind." The vigour of the sentence in its
original Latin carried it ringing down the centuries: "_Major est
Scripturae auctoritas quam omnis humani ingenii capacitas_."

Through the mediaeval period, in spite of a revolt led by no other
than St. Augustine himself, and followed by a series of influential
churchmen, contending, as we shall hereafter see, for a
modification of the accepted view of creation, this phrase held the
minds of men firmly. The great Dominican encyclopaedist, Vincent of
Beauvais, in his _Mirror of Nature_, while mixing ideas brought from
Aristotle with a theory drawn from the Bible, stood firmly by the
first of the accounts given in Genesis, and assigned the special
virtue of the number six as a reason why all things were created in
six days; and in the later Middle Ages that eminent authority,
Cardinal d' Ailly, accepted everything regarding creation in the
sacred books literally. Only a faint dissent is seen in Gregory
Reisch, another authority of this later period, who, while giving,
in his book on the beginning of things, a full length woodcut
showing the Almighty in the act of extracting Eve from Adam's side,
with all the rest of new-formed Nature in the background, leans in
his writings, like St. Augustine, toward a belief in the
pre-existence of matter.

At the Reformation the vast authority of Luther was thrown in
favour of the literal acceptance of Scripture as the main source of
natural science. The allegorical and mystical interpretations of
earlier theologians he utterly rejected. "Why," he asks, "should
Moses use allegory when he is not speaking of allegorical creatures
or of an allegorical world, but of real creatures and of a visible
world, which can be seen, felt, and grasped? Moses calls things by
their right names, as we ought to do.... I hold that the animals
took their being at once upon the word of God, as did also the
fishes in the sea."

Not less explicit in his adherence to the literal account of
creation given in Genesis was Calvin. He warns those who, by taking
another view than his own, "basely insult the Creator, to expect a
judge who will annihilate them." He insists that all species of
animals were created in six days, each made up of an evening and a
morning, and that no new species has ever appeared since. He dwells
on the production of birds from the water as resting upon certain
warrant of Scripture, but adds, "If the question is to be argued on
physical grounds, we know that water is more akin to air than the
earth is." As to difficulties in the scriptural account of
creation, he tells us that God "wished by these to give proofs of
his power which should fill us with astonishment."

The controlling minds in the Roman Church steadfastly held this
view. In the seventeenth century Bossuet threw his vast authority
in its favour, and in his _Discourse on Universal History_, which
has remained the foundation not only of theological but of general
historical teaching in France down to the present republic, we find
him calling attention to what he regards as the culminating act of
creation, and asserting that, literally, for the creation of man
earth was used, and "the finger of God applied to corruptible matter."

The Protestant world held this idea no less persistently. In the
seventeenth century Dr. John Lightfoot, Vice-Chancellor of the
University of Cambridge, the great rabbinical scholar of his time,
attempted to reconcile the two main legends in Genesis by saying
that of the "clean sort of beasts there were seven of every kind
created, three couples for breeding and the odd one for Adam's
sacrifice on his fall, which God foresaw"; and that of unclean
beasts only one couple was created.

So literal was this whole conception of the work of creation that
in these days it can scarcely be imagined. The Almighty was
represented in theological literature, in the pictured Bibles, and
in works of art generally, as a sort of enlarged and venerable
Nuremberg toymaker. At times the accounts in Genesis were
illustrated with even more literal exactness; thus, in connection
with a well-known passage in the sacred text, the Creator was shown
as a tailor, seated, needle in hand, diligently sewing together
skins of beasts into coats for Adam and Eve. Such representations
presented no difficulties to the docile minds of the Middle Ages
and the Reformation period; and in the same spirit, when the
discovery of fossils began to provoke thought, these were declared
to be "models of his works approved or rejected by the great
Artificer," "outlines of future creations," "sports of Nature," or
"objects placed in the strata to bring to naught human curiosity";
and this kind of explanation lingered on until in our own time an
eminent naturalist, in his anxiety to save the literal account in
Genesis, has urged that Jehovah tilted and twisted the strata,
scattered the fossils through them, scratched the glacial furrows
upon them, spread over them the marks of erosion by water, and set
Niagara pouring--all in an instant--thus mystifying the world "for
some inscrutable purpose, but for his own glory."[28]

The next important development of theological reasoning had regard
to the _divisions_ of the animal kingdom.

Naturally, one of the first divisions which struck the inquiring
mind was that between useful and noxious creatures, and the
question therefore occurred, How could a good God create tigers and
serpents, thorns and thistles? The answer was found in theological
considerations upon _sin_. To man's first disobedience all woes were
due. Great men for eighteen hundred years developed the theory that
before Adam's disobedience there was no death, and therefore
neither ferocity nor venom.

Some typical utterances in the evolution of this doctrine are
worthy of a passing glance. St. Augustine expressly confirmed and
emphasized the view that the vegetable as well as the animal
kingdom was cursed on account of man's sin. Two hundred years later
this utterance had been echoed on from father to father of the
Church until it was caught by Bede; he declared that before man's
fall animals were harmless, but were made poisonous or hurtful by
Adam's sin, and he said, "Thus fierce and poisonous animals were
created for terrifying man (because God foresaw that he would sin),
in order that he might be made aware of the final punishment of hell."

In the twelfth century this view was incorporated by Peter Lombard
into his great theological work, the _Sentences_, which became a
text-book of theology through the middle ages. He affirmed that "no
created things would have been hurtful to man had he not sinned;
they became hurtful for the sake of terrifying and punishing vice
or of proving and perfecting virtue; they were created harmless,
and on account of sin became hurtful."

This theological theory regarding animals was brought out in the
eighteenth century with great force by John Wesley. He declared
that before Adam's sin "none of these attempted to devour or in
any wise hurt one another"; "the spider was as harmless as the
fly, and did not lie in wait for blood." Not only Wesley, but the
eminent Dr. Adam Clarke and Dr. Richard Watson, whose ideas had the
very greatest weight among the English Dissenters, and even among
leading thinkers in the Established Church, held firmly to this
theory; so that not until, in our own time, geology revealed the
remains of vast multitudes of carnivorous creatures, many of them
with half-digested remains of other animals in their stomachs, all
extinct long ages before the appearance of man upon earth, was a
victory won by science over theology in this field.

A curious development of this doctrine was seen in the belief drawn
by sundry old commentators from the condemnation of the serpent in
Genesis--a belief, indeed, perfectly natural, since it was
evidently that of the original writers of the account preserved in
the first of our sacred books. This belief was that, until the
tempting serpent was cursed by the Almighty, all serpents stood
erect, walked, and talked.

This belief was handed down the ages as part of "the sacred
deposit of the faith" until Watson, the most prolific writer of
the evangelical reform in the eighteenth century and the standard
theologian of the evangelical party, declared: "We have no reason
at all to believe that the animal had a serpentine form in any mode
or degree until its transformation; that he was then degraded to a
reptile to go upon his belly imports, on the contrary, an entire
loss and alteration of the original form." Here, again, was a ripe
result of the theologic method diligently pursued by the strongest
thinkers in the Church during nearly two thousand years; but this
"sacred deposit" also faded away when the geologists found
abundant remains of fossil serpents dating from periods long before
the appearance of man.

Troublesome questions also arose among theologians regarding
animals classed as "superfluous." St. Augustine was especially
exercised thereby. He says: "I confess I am ignorant why mice and
frogs were created, or flies and worms.... All creatures are either
useful, hurtful, or superfluous to us.... As for the hurtful
creatures, we are either punished, or disciplined, or terrified by
them, so that we may not cherish and love this life." As to the
"superfluous animals," he says, "Although they are not necessary
for our service, yet the whole design of the universe is thereby
completed and finished." Luther, who followed St. Augustine in so
many other matters, declined to follow him fully in this. To him a
fly was not merely superfluous, it was noxious--sent by the devil
to vex him when reading.

Another subject which gave rise to much searching of Scripture and
long trains of theological reasoning was the difference between the
creation of man and that of other living beings.

Great stress was laid by theologians, from St. Basil and St.
Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas and Bossuet, and from Luther to
Wesley, on the radical distinction indicated in Genesis, God having
created man "in his own image." What this statement meant was seen
in the light of the later biblical statement that "Adam begat Seth
in his own likeness, after his image."

In view of this and of well-known texts incorporated from older
creation legends into the Hebrew sacred books it came to be widely
held that, while man was directly moulded and fashioned separately
by the Creator's hand, the animals generally were evoked in numbers
from the earth and sea by the Creator's voice.

A question now arose naturally as to the _distinctions of species_
among animals. The Vast majority of theologians agreed in
representing all animals as created "in the beginning," and named
by Adam, preserved in the ark, and continued ever afterward under
exactly the same species. This belief ripened into a dogma. Like so
many other dogmas in the Church, Catholic and Protestant, its real
origins are to be found rather in pagan philosophy than in the
Christian Scriptures; it came far more from Plato and Aristotle
than from Moses and St. Paul. But this was not considered: more and
more it became necessary to believe that each and every difference
of species was impressed by the Creator "in the beginning," and
that no change had taken place or could have taken place since.

Some difficulties arose here and there as zoology progressed and
revealed ever-increasing numbers of species; but through the Middle
Ages, and indeed long after the Reformation, these difficulties
were easily surmounted by making the ark of Noah larger and larger,
and especially by holding that there had been a human error in
regard to its measurement.[31]

But naturally there was developed among both ecclesiastics and
laymen a human desire to go beyond these special points in the
history of animated beings--a desire to know what the creation
really _is_.

Current legends, stories, and travellers' observations, poor as
they were, tended powerfully to stimulate curiosity in this field.

Three centuries before the Christian era Aristotle had made the
first really great attempt to satisfy this curiosity, and had begun
a development of studies in natural history which remains one of
the leading achievements in the story of our race.

But the feeling which we have already seen so strong in the early
Church--that all study of Nature was futile in view of the
approaching end of the world--indicated so clearly in the New
Testament and voiced so powerfully by Lactantius and St.
Augustine--held back this current of thought for many centuries.
Still, the better tendency in humanity continued to assert itself.
There was, indeed, an influence coming from the Hebrew Scriptures
themselves which wrought powerfully to this end; for, in spite of
all that Lactantius or St. Augustine might say as to the futility
of any study of Nature, the grand utterances in the Psalms
regarding the beauties and wonders of creation, in all the glow of
the truest poetry, ennobled the study even among those whom logic
drew away from it.

But, as a matter of course, in the early Church and throughout the
Middle Ages all such studies were cast in a theologic mould.
Without some purpose of biblical illustration or spiritual
edification they were considered futile too much prying into the
secrets of Nature was very generally held to be dangerous both to
body and soul; only for showing forth God's glory and his purposes
in the creation were such studies praiseworthy. The great work of
Aristotle was under eclipse. The early Christian thinkers gave
little attention to it, and that little was devoted to transforming
it into something absolutely opposed to his whole spirit and
method; in place of it they developed the _Physiologus_ and the
Bestiaries, mingling scriptural statements, legends of the saints,
and fanciful inventions with pious intent and childlike simplicity.
In place of research came authority--the authority of the
Scriptures as interpreted by the _Physio Cogus_ and the
Bestiaries--and these remained the principal source of thought on
animated Nature for over a thousand years.

Occasionally, indeed, fear was shown among the rulers in the
Church, even at such poor prying into the creation as this, and in
the fifth century a synod under Pope Gelasius administered a rebuke
to the _Physiologus_; but the interest in Nature was too strong:
the great work on _Creation_ by St. Basil had drawn from the
_Physiologus_ precious illustrations of Holy Writ, and the strongest
of the early popes, Gregory the Great, virtually sanctioned it.

Thus was developed a sacred science of creation and of the divine
purpose in Nature, which went on developing from the fourth century
to the nineteenth--from St. Basil to St. Isidore of Seville, from
Isidore to Vincent of Beauvais, and from Vincent to Archdeacon
Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises.

Like all else in the Middle Ages, this sacred science was developed
purely by theological methods. Neglecting the wonders which the
dissection of the commonest animals would have afforded them, these
naturalists attempted to throw light into Nature by ingenious use
of scriptural texts, by research among the lives of the saints, and
by the plentiful application of metaphysics. Hence even such strong
men as St. Isidore of Seville treasured up accounts of the unicorn
and dragons mentioned in the Scriptures and of the phoenix and
basilisk in profane writings. Hence such contributions to knowledge
as that the basilisk kills serpents by his breath and men by his
glance, that the lion when pursued effaces his tracks with the end
of his tail, that the pelican nourishes her young with her own
blood, that serpents lay aside their venom before drinking, that
the salamander quenches fire, that the hyena can talk with
shepherds, that certain birds are born of the fruit of a certain
tree when it happens to fall into the water, with other masses of
science equally valuable.

As to the method of bringing science to bear on Scripture, the
_Physiologus_ gives an example, illustrating the passage in the book
of Job which speaks of the old lion perishing for lack of prey. Out
of the attempt to explain an unusual Hebrew word in the text there
came a curious development of error, until we find fully evolved an
account of the "ant-lion," which, it gives us to understand, was
the lion mentioned by Job, and it says: "As to the ant-lion, his
father hath the shape of a lion, his mother that of an ant; the
father liveth upon flesh and the mother upon herbs; these bring
forth the ant-lion, a compound of both and in part like to either;
for his fore part is like that of a lion and his hind part like
that of an ant. Being thus composed, he is neither able to eat
flesh like his father nor herbs like his mother, and so he perisheth."

In the middle of the thirteenth century we have a triumph of this
theological method in the great work of the English Franciscan
Bartholomew on _The Properties of Things_. The theological method as
applied to science consists largely in accepting tradition and in
spinning arguments to fit it. In this field Bartholomew was a
master. Having begun with the intent mainly to explain the
allusions in Scripture to natural objects, he soon rises logically
into a survey of all Nature. Discussing the "cockatrice" of
Scripture, he tells us: "He drieth and burneth leaves with his
touch, and he is of so great venom and perilous that he slayeth and
wasteth him that nigheth him without tarrying; and yet the weasel
overcometh him, for the biting of the weasel is death to the
cockatrice. Nevertheless the biting of the cockatrice is death to
the weasel if the weasel eat not rue before. And though the
cockatrice be venomous without remedy while he is alive, yet he
looseth all the malice when he is burnt to ashes. His ashes be
accounted profitable in working of alchemy, and namely in turning
and changing of metals."

Bartholomew also enlightens us on the animals of Egypt, and says,
"If the crocodile findeth a man by the water's brim he slayeth
him, and then he weepeth over him and swalloweth him."

Naturally this good Franciscan naturalist devotes much thought to
the "dragons" mentioned in Scripture. He says: "The dragon is
most greatest of all serpents, and oft he is drawn out of his den
and riseth up into the air, and the air is moved by him, and also
the sea swelleth against his venom, and he hath a crest, and
reareth his tongue, and hath teeth like a saw, and hath strength,
and not only in teeth but in tail, and grieveth with biting and
with stinging. Whom he findeth he slayeth. Oft four or five of them
fasten their tails together and rear up their heads, and sail over
the sea to get good meat. Between elephants and dragons is
everlasting fighting; for the dragon with his tail spanneth the
elephant, and the elephant with his nose throweth down the
dragon.... The cause why the dragon desireth his blood is the
coldness thereof, by the which the dragon desireth to cool himself.
Jerome saith that the dragon is a full thirsty beast, insomuch that
he openeth his mouth against the wind to quench the burning of his
thirst in that wise. Therefore, when he seeth ships in great wind
he flieth against the sail to take the cold wind, and overthroweth
the ship."

These ideas of Friar Bartholomew spread far and struck deep into
the popular mind. His book was translated into the principal
languages of Europe, and was one of those most generally read
during the Ages of Faith. It maintained its position nearly three
hundred years; even after the invention of printing it held its
own, and in the fifteenth century there were issued no less than
ten editions of it in Latin, four in French, and various versions
of it in Dutch, Spanish, and English. Preachers found it especially
useful in illustrating the ways of God to man. It was only when the
great voyages of discovery substituted ascertained fact for
theological reasoning in this province that its authority was broken.

The same sort of science flourished in the _Bestiaries_, which were
used everywhere, and especially in the pulpits, for the edification
of the faithful. In all of these, as in that compiled early in the
thirteenth century by an ecclesiastic, William of Normandy, we have
this lesson, borrowed from the _Physiologus_: "The lioness giveth
birth to cubs which remain three days without life. Then cometh the
lion, breatheth upon them, and bringeth them to life.... Thus it is
that Jesus Christ during three days was deprived of life, but God
the Father raised him gloriously."

Pious use was constantly made of this science, especially by
monkish preachers. The phoenix rising from his ashes proves the
doctrine of the resurrection; the structure and mischief of monkeys
proves the existence of demons; the fact that certain monkeys have
no tails proves that Satan has been shorn of his glory; the weasel,
which "constantly changes its place, is a type of the man
estranged from the word of God, who findeth no rest."

The moral treatises of the time often took the form of works on
natural history, in order the more fully to exploit these religious
teachings of Nature. Thus from the book _On Bees_, the Dominican
Thomas of Cantimpre, we learn that "wasps persecute bees and make war
on them out of natural hatred"; and these, he tells us, typify the
demons who dwell in the air and with lightning and tempest assail
and vex mankind--whereupon he fills a long chapter with anecdotes
of such demonic warfare on mortals. In like manner his
fellow-Dominican, the inquisitor Nider, in his book _The Ant Hill_,
teaches us that the ants in Ethiopia, which are said to have horns
and to grow so large as to look like dogs, are emblems of atrocious
heretics, like Wyclif and the Hussites, who bark and bite against
the truth; while the ants of India, which dig up gold out of the
sand with their feet and hoard it, though they make no use of it,
symbolize the fruitless toil with which the heretics dig out the
gold of Holy Scripture and hoard it in their books to no purpose.

This pious spirit not only pervaded science; it bloomed out in art,
and especially in the cathedrals. In the gargoyles overhanging the
walls, in the grotesques clambering about the towers or perched
upon pinnacles, in the dragons prowling under archways or lurking
in bosses of foliage, in the apocalyptic beasts carved upon the
stalls of the choir, stained into the windows, wrought into the
tapestries, illuminated in the letters and borders of psalters and
missals, these marvels of creation suggested everywhere morals from
the Physiologus, the Bestiaries, and the Exempla.[36]

Here and there among men who were free from church control we have
work of a better sort. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Abd
Allatif made observations upon the natural history of Egypt which
showed a truly scientific spirit, and the Emperor Frederick II
attempted to promote a more fruitful study of Nature; but one of
these men was abhorred as a Mussulman and the other as an infidel.
Far more in accordance with the spirit of the time was the
ecclesiastic Giraldus Cambrensis, whose book on the topography of
Ireland bestows much attention upon the animals of the island, and
rarely fails to make each contribute an appropriate moral. For
example, he says that in Ireland "eagles live for so many ages that
they seem to contend with eternity itself; so also the saints,
having put off the old man and put on the new, obtain the blessed
fruit of everlasting life." Again, he tells us: "Eagles often fly
so high that their wings are scorched by the sun; so those who in
the Holy Scriptures strive to unravel the deep and hidden secrets
of the heavenly mysteries, beyond what is allowed, fall below, as
if the wings of the presumptuous imaginations on which they are
borne were scorched."

In one of the great men of the following century appeared a gleam
of healthful criticism: Albert the Great, in his work on the
animals, dissents from the widespread belief that certain birds
spring from trees and are nourished by the sap, and also from the
theory that some are generated in the sea from decaying wood.

But it required many generations for such scepticism to produce
much effect, and we find among the illustrations in an edition of
Mandeville published just before the Reformation not only careful
accounts but pictured representations both of birds and of beasts
produced in the fruit of trees.[37]

This general employment of natural science for pious purposes went
on after the Reformation. Luther frequently made this use of it,
and his example controlled his followers. In 1612, Wolfgang Franz,
Professor of Theology at Luther's university, gave to the world his
sacred history of animals, which went through many editions. It
contained a very ingenious classification, describing "natural
dragons," which have three rows of teeth to each jaw, and he
piously adds, "the principal dragon is the Devil."

Near the end of the same century, Father Kircher, the great Jesuit
professor at Rome, holds back the sceptical current, insists upon
the orthodox view, and represents among the animals entering the
ark sirens and griffins.

Yet even among theologians we note here and there a sceptical
spirit in natural science. Early in the same seventeenth century
Eugene Roger published his _Travels in Palestine_. As regards the
utterances of Scripture he is soundly orthodox: he prefaces his
work with a map showing, among other important points referred to
in biblical history, the place where Samson slew a thousand
Philistines with the jawbone of an ass, the cavern which Adam and
Eve inhabited after their expulsion from paradise, the spot where
Balaam's ass spoke, the place where Jacob wrestled with the angel,
the steep place down which the swine possessed of devils plunged
into the sea, the position of the salt statue which was once Lot's
wife, the place at sea where Jonah was swallowed by the whale, and "the
exact spot where St. Peter caught one hundred and fifty-three fishes."

As to natural history, he describes and discusses with great
theological acuteness the basilisk. He tells us that the animal is
about a foot and a half long, is shaped like a crocodile, and kills
people with a single glance. The one which he saw was dead,
fortunately for him, since in the time of Pope Leo IV--as he tells
us--one appeared in Rome and killed many people by merely looking
at them; but the Pope destroyed it with his prayers and the sign of
the cross. He informs us that Providence has wisely and mercifully
protected man by requiring the monster to cry aloud two or three
times whenever it leaves its den, and that the divine wisdom in
creation is also shown by the fact that the monster is obliged to
look its victim in the eye, and at a certain fixed distance, before
its glance can penetrate the victim's brain and so pass to his
heart. He also gives a reason for supposing that the same divine
mercy has provided that the crowing of a cock will kill the basilisk.

Yet even in this good and credulous missionary we see the
influence of Bacon and the dawn of experimental science; for,
having been told many stories regarding the salamander, he secured
one, placed it alive upon the burning coals, and reports to us that
the legends concerning its power to live in the fire are untrue. He
also tried experiments with the chameleon, and found that the stories
told of it were to be received with much allowance: while, then, he
locks up his judgment whenever he discusses the letter of Scripture,
he uses his mind in other things much after the modern method.

In the second half of the same century Hottinger, in his
_Theological Examination of the History of Creation_, breaks from
the belief in the phoenix; but his scepticism is carefully kept
within the limits imposed by Scripture. He avows his doubts, first,
"because God created the animals in couples, while the phoenix is
represented as a single, unmated creature"; secondly, "because
Noah, when he entered the ark, brought the animals in by sevens,
while there were never so many individuals of the phoenix species"
thirdly, because "no man is known who dares assert that he has
ever seen this bird"; fourthly, because "those who assert there
is a phoenix differ among themselves."

In view of these attacks on the salamander and the phoenix, we are
not surprised to find, before the end of the century, scepticism
regarding the basilisk: the eminent Prof. Kirchmaier, at the
University of Wittenberg, treats phoenix and basilisk alike as old
wives' fables. As to the phoenix, he denies its existence, not only
because Noah took no such bird into the ark, but also because, as
he pithily remarks, "birds come from eggs, not from ashes." But
the unicorn he can not resign, nor will he even concede that the
unicorn is a rhinoceros; he appeals to Job and to Marco Polo to
prove that this animal, as usually conceived, really exists, and
says, "Who would not fear to deny the existence of the unicorn,
since Holy Scripture names him with distinct praises?" As to the
other great animals mentioned in Scripture, he is so rationalistic
as to admit that behemoth was an elephant and leviathan a whale.

But these germs of a fruitful scepticism grew, and we soon find
Dannhauer going a step further and declaring his disbelief even in
the unicorn, insisting that it was a rhinoceros--only that and
nothing more. Still, the main current continued strongly
theological. In 1712 Samuel Bochart published his great work upon
the animals of Holy Scripture. As showing its spirit we may take
the titles of the chapters on the horse:

"Chapter VI. Of the Hebrew Name of the Horse."

"Chapter VII. Of the Colours of the Six Horses in Zechariah."

"Chapter VIII. Of the Horses in Job."

"Chapter IX. Of Solomon's Horses, and of the Texts wherein the
Writers praise the Excellence of Horses."

"Chapter X. Of the Consecrated Horses of the Sun."

Among the other titles of chapters are such as: Of Balaam's Ass; Of
the Thousand Philistines slain by Samson with the Jawbone of an
Ass; Of the Golden Calves of Aaron and Jeroboam; Of the Bleating,
Milk, Wool, External and Internal Parts of Sheep mentioned in
Scripture; Of Notable Things told regarding Lions in Scripture; Of
Noah's Dove and of the Dove which appeared at Christ's Baptism.
Mixed up in the book, with the principal mass drawn from Scripture,
were many facts and reasonings taken from investigations by
naturalists; but all were permeated by the theological spirit.[40]

The inquiry into Nature having thus been pursued nearly two
thousand years theologically, we find by the middle of the
sixteenth century some promising beginnings of a different
method--the method of inquiry into Nature scientifically--the
method which seeks not plausibilities but facts. At that time
Edward Wotton led the way in England and Conrad Gesner on the
Continent, by observations widely extended, carefully noted, and
thoughtfully classified.

This better method of interrogating Nature soon led to the
formation of societies for the same purpose. In 1560 was founded an
Academy for the Study of Nature at Naples, but theologians,
becoming alarmed, suppressed it, and for nearly one hundred years
there was no new combined effort of that sort, until in 1645 began
the meetings in London of what was afterward the Royal Society.
Then came the Academy of Sciences in France, and the Accademia del
Cimento in Italy; others followed in all parts of the world, and a
great new movement was begun.

Theologians soon saw a danger in this movement. In Italy, Prince
Leopold de' Medici, a protector of the Florentine Academy, was
bribed with a cardinal's hat to neglect it, and from the days of
Urban VIII to Pius IX a similar spirit was there shown. In France,
there were frequent ecclesiastical interferences, of which Buffon's
humiliation for stating a simple scientific truth was a noted
example. In England, Protestantism was at first hardly more
favourable toward the Royal Society, and the great Dr. South
denounced it in his sermons as irreligious.

Fortunately, one thing prevented an open breach between theology
and science: while new investigators had mainly given up the
medieval method so dear to the Church, they had very generally
retained the conception of direct creation and of design throughout
creation--a design having as its main purpose the profit,
instruction, enjoyment, and amusement of man.

On this the naturally opposing tendencies of theology and science
were compromised. Science, while somewhat freed from its old
limitations, became the handmaid of theology in illustrating the
doctrine of creative design, and always with apparent deference to
the Chaldean and other ancient myths and legends embodied in the
Hebrew sacred books.

About the middle of the seventeenth century came a great victory of
the scientific over the theologic method. At that time Francesco
Redi published the results of his inquiries into the doctrine of
spontaneous generation. For ages a widely accepted doctrine had
been that water, filth, and carrion had received power from the
Creator to generate worms, insects, and a multitude of the smaller
animals; and this doctrine had been especially welcomed by St.
Augustine and many of the fathers, since it relieved the Almighty
of making, Adam of naming, and Noah of living in the ark with these
innumerable despised species. But to this fallacy Redi put an end.
By researches which could not be gainsaid, he showed that every one
of these animals came from an egg; each, therefore, must be the
lineal descendant of an animal created, named, and preserved from
"the beginning."

Similar work went on in England, but under more distinctly
theological limitations. In the same seventeenth century a very
famous and popular English book was published by the naturalist
John Ray, a fellow of the Royal Society, who produced a number of
works on plants, fishes, and birds; but the most widely read of all
was entitled _The Wisdom of God manifested in the Works of
Creation_. Between the years 1691 and 1827 it passed through nearly
twenty editions.

Ray argued the goodness and wisdom of God from the adaptation of the
animals not only to man's uses but to their own lives and surroundings.

In the first years of the eighteenth century Dr. Nehemiah Grew, of
the Royal Society, published his _Cosmologia Sacra_ to refute
anti-scriptural opinions by producing evidences of creative design.
Discussing "the ends of Providence," he says, "A crane, which is
scurvy meat, lays but two eggs in the year, but a pheasant and
partridge, both excellent meat, lay and hatch fifteen or twenty."
He points to the fact that "those of value which lay few at a time
sit the oftener, as the woodcock and the dove." He breaks decidedly
from the doctrine that noxious things in Nature are caused by sin,
and shows that they, too, are useful; that, "if nettles sting, it
is to secure an excellent medicine for children and cattle";
that, "if the bramble hurts man, it makes all the better hedge";
and that, "if it chances to prick the owner, it tears the thief."
"Weasels, kites, and other hurtful animals induce us to
watchfulness; thistles and moles, to good husbandry; lice oblige
us to cleanliness in our bodies, spiders in our houses, and the
moth in our clothes." This very optimistic view, triumphing over
the theological theory of noxious animals and plants as effects of
sin, which prevailed with so much force from St. Augustine to
Wesley, was developed into nobler form during the century by
various thinkers, and especially by Archdeacon Paley, whose
_Natural Theology_ exercised a powerful influence down to recent
times. The same tendency appeared in other countries, though
various philosophers showed weak points in the argument, and Goethe
made sport of it in a noted verse, praising the forethought of the
Creator in foreordaining the cork tree to furnish stoppers for
wine-bottles.

Shortly before the middle of the nineteenth century the main
movement culminated in the _Bridgewater Treatises_. Pursuant to the
will of the eighth Earl of Bridgewater, the President of the Royal
Society selected eight persons, each to receive a thousand pounds
sterling for writing and publishing a treatise on the "power,
wisdom, and goodness of God, as manifested in the creation." Of
these, the leading essays in regard to animated Nature were those
of Thomas Chalmers, on _The Adaptation of External Nature to the
Moral and Intellectual Condition of Man_; of Sir Charles Bell, on
_The Hand as evincing Design_; of Roget, on _Animal and Vegetable
Physiology with reference to Natural Theology_; and of Kirby, on _The
Habits and Instincts of Animals with reference to Natural Theology_.

Besides these there were treatises by Whewell, Buckland, Kidd, and
Prout. The work was well done. It was a marked advance on all that
had appeared before, in matter, method, and spirit. Looking back
upon it now we can see that it was provisional, but that it was
none the less fruitful in truth, and we may well remember Darwin's
remark on the stimulating effect of mistaken _theories_, as
compared with the sterilizing effect of mistaken _observations_:
mistaken observations lead men astray, mistaken theories suggest
true theories.

An effort made in so noble a spirit certainly does not deserve the
ridicule that, in our own day, has sometimes been lavished upon it.
Curiously, indeed, one of the most contemptuous of these criticisms
has been recently made by one of the most strenuous defenders of
orthodoxy. No less eminent a standard-bearer of the faith than the
Rev. Prof. Zoeckler says of this movement to demonstrate creative
purpose and design, and of the men who took part in it, "The earth
appeared in their representation of it like a great clothing shop
and soup kitchen, and God as a glorified rationalistic professor."
Such a statement as this is far from just to the conceptions of
such men as Butler, Paley, and Chalmers, no matter how fully the
thinking world has now outlived them.[44]

But, noble as the work of these men was, the foundation of fact on
which they reared it became evidently more and more insecure.

For as far back as the seventeenth century acute theologians had
begun to discern difficulties more serious than any that had before
confronted them. More and more it was seen that the number of
different species was far greater than the world had hitherto
imagined. Greater and greater had become the old difficulty in
conceiving that, of these innumerable species, each had been
specially created by the Almighty hand; that each had been brought
before Adam by the Almighty to be named; and that each, in couples
or in sevens, had been gathered by Noah into the ark. But the
difficulties thus suggested were as nothing compared to those
raised by the _distribution_ of animals.

Even in the first days of the Church this had aroused serious
thought, and above all in the great mind of St. Augustine. In his
_City of God_ he had stated the difficulty as follows: "But there
is a question about all these kinds of beasts, which are neither
tamed by man, nor spring from the earth like frogs, such as wolves
and others of that sort,... as to how they could find their way to
the islands after that flood which destroyed every living thing not
preserved in the ark.... Some, indeed, might be thought to reach
islands by swimming, in case these were very near; but some islands
are so remote from continental lands that it does not seem possible
that any creature could reach them by swimming. It is not an
incredible thing, either, that some animals may have been captured
by men and taken with them to those lands which they intended to
inhabit, in order that they might have the pleasure of hunting; and
it can not be denied that the transfer may have been accomplished
through the agency of angels, commanded or allowed to perform this
labour by God."

But this difficulty had now assumed a magnitude of which St.
Augustine never dreamed. Most powerful of all agencies to increase
it were the voyages of Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Magellan, Amerigo
Vespucci, and other navigators of the period of discovery. Still
more serious did it become as the great islands of the southern
seas were explored. Every navigator brought home tidings of new
species of animals and of races of men living in parts of the world
where the theologians, relying on the statement of St. Paul that
the gospel had gone into all lands, had for ages declared there
could be none; until finally it overtaxed even the theological
imagination to conceive of angels, in obedience to the divine
command, distributing the various animals over the earth, dropping
the megatherium in South America, the archeopteryx in Europe, the
ornithorhynchus in Australia, and the opossum in North America.

The first striking evidence of this new difficulty was shown by the
eminent Jesuit missionary, Joseph Acosta. In his _Natural and Moral
History of the Indies_, published in 1590, he proved himself honest
and lucid. Though entangled in most of the older scriptural views,
he broke away from many; but the distribution of animals gave him
great trouble. Having shown the futility of St. Augustine's other
explanations, he quaintly asks: "Who can imagine that in so long
a voyage men woulde take the paines to carrie Foxes to Peru,
especially that kinde they call `Acias,' which is the filthiest I
have seene? Who woulde likewise say that they have carried Tygers
and Lyons? Truly it were a thing worthy the laughing at to thinke
so. It was sufficient, yea, very much, for men driven against their
willes by tempest, in so long and unknowne a voyage, to escape with
their owne lives, without busying themselves to carrie Woolves and
Foxes, and to nourish them at sea."

It was under the impression made by this new array of facts that
in 1667 Abraham Milius published at Geneva his book on _The Origin
of Animals and the Migration of Peoples_. This book shows, like that
of Acosta, the shock and strain to which the discovery of America
subjected the received theological scheme of things. It was issued
with the special approbation of the Bishop of Salzburg, and it
indicates the possibility that a solution of the whole trouble may
be found in the text, "Let the earth bring forth the living
creature after his kind." Milius goes on to show that the ancient
philosophers agree with Moses, and that "the earth and the waters,
and especially the heat of the sun and of the genial sky, together
with that slimy and putrid quality which seems to be inherent in
the soil, may furnish the origin for fishes, terrestrial animals,
and birds." On the other hand, he is very severe against those who
imagine that man can have had the same origin with animals. But the
subject with which Milius especially grapples is the _distribution_
of animals. He is greatly exercised by the many species found in
America and in remote islands of the ocean--species entirely
unknown in the other continents--and of course he is especially
troubled by the fact that these species existing in those
exceedingly remote parts of the earth do not exist in the
neighbourhood of Mount Ararat. He confesses that to explain the
distribution of animals is the most difficult part of the problem.
If it be urged that birds could reach America by flying and fishes
by swimming, he asks, "What of the beasts which neither fly nor
swim?" Yet even as to the birds he asks, "Is there not an
infinite variety of winged creatures who fly so slowly and heavily,
and have such a horror of the water, that they would not even dare
trust themselves to fly over a wide river?" As to fishes, he says,
"They are very averse to wandering from their native waters," and
he shows that there are now reported many species of American and
East Indian fishes entirely unknown on the other continents, whose
presence, therefore, can not be explained by any theory of natural
dispersion.

Of those who suggest that land animals may have been dispersed over
the earth by the direct agency of man for his use or pleasure he
asks: "Who would like to get different sorts of lions, bears,
tigers, and other ferocious and noxious creatures on board ship?
who would trust himself with them? and who would wish to plant
colonies of such creatures in new, desirable lands?"

His conclusion is that plants and animals take their origin in the
lands wherein they are found; an opinion which he supports by
quoting from the two narrations in Genesis passages which imply
generative force in earth and water.

But in the eighteenth century matters had become even worse for the
theological view. To meet the difficulty the eminent Benedictine,
Dom Calmet, in his _Commentary_, expressed the belief that all the
species of a genus had; originally formed one species, and he dwelt
on this view as one which enabled him to explain the possibility of
gathering all animals into the ark. This idea, dangerous as it was
to the fabric of orthodoxy, and involving a profound separation
from the general doctrine of the Church, seems to have been abroad
among thinking men, for we find in the latter half of the same
century even Linnaeus inclining to consider it. It was time,
indeed, that some new theological theory be evolved; the great
Linnaeus himself, in spite of his famous declaration favouring the
fixity of species, had dealt a death-blow to the old theory. In his
_Systema Naturae_, published in the middle of the eighteenth
century, he had enumerated four thousand species of animals, and
the difficulties involved in the naming of each of them by Adam and
in bringing them together in the ark appeared to all thinking men
more and more insurmountable.

What was more embarrassing, the number of distinct species went on
increasing rapidly, indeed enormously, until, as an eminent
zoological authority of our own time has declared, "for every one
of the species enumerated by Linnaeus, more than fifty kinds are
known to the naturalist of to-day, and the number of species still
unknown doubtless far exceeds the list of those recorded."

Already there were premonitions of the strain made upon Scripture
by requiring a hundred and sixty distinct miraculous interventions
of the Creator to produce the hundred and sixty species of land
shells found in the little island of Madeira alone, and fourteen
hundred distinct interventions to produce the actual number of
distinct species of a single well-known shell.

Ever more and more difficult, too, became the question of the
geographical distribution of animals. As new explorations were made
in various parts of the world, this danger to the theological view
went on increasing. The sloths in South America suggested painful
questions: How could animals so sluggish have got away from the
neighbourhood of Mount Ararat so completely and have travelled so far?

The explorations in Australia and neighbouring islands made matters
still worse, for there was found in those regions a whole realm of
animals differing widely from those of other parts of the earth.

The problem before the strict theologians became, for example, how
to explain the fact that the kangaroo can have been in the ark and
be now only found in Australia: his saltatory powers are indeed
great, but how could he by any series of leaps have sprung across
the intervening mountains, plains, and oceans to that remote
continent? and, if the theory were adopted that at some period a
causeway extended across the vast chasm separating Australia from
the nearest mainland, why did not lions, tigers, camels, and
camelopards force or find their way across it?

The theological theory, therefore, had by the end of the eighteenth
century gone to pieces. The wiser theologians waited; the unwise
indulged in exhortations to "root out the wicked heart of
unbelief," in denunciation of "science falsely so called," and in
frantic declarations that "the Bible is true"--by which they
meant that the limited understanding of it which they had happened
to inherit is true.

By the middle of the nineteenth century the whole theological
theory of creation--though still preached everywhere as a matter of
form--was clearly seen by all thinking men to be hopelessly lost:
such strong men as Cardinal Wiseman in the Roman Church, Dean
Buckland in the Anglican, and Hugh Miller in the Scottish Church,
made heroic efforts to save something from it, but all to no
purpose. That sturdy Teutonic and Anglo-Saxon honesty, which is the
best legacy of the Middle Ages to Christendom, asserted itself in
the old strongholds of theological thought, the universities.
Neither the powerful logic of Bishop Butler nor the nimble
reasoning of Archdeacon Paley availed. Just as the line of
astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the
old astronomy, in which the earth was the centre, and the Almighty
sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies
about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers
had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and
fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man. They
had developed a system of a very different sort, and this we shall
next consider.[49]


         III. THEOLOGICAL AND SCIENTIFIC THEORIES, OF AN
                  EVOLUTION IN ANIMATED NATURE.

WE have seen, thus far, how there came into the thinking of
mankind upon the visible universe and its inhabitants the idea of
a creation virtually instantaneous and complete, and of a Creator
in human form with human attributes, who spoke matter into
existence literally by the exercise of his throat and lips, or
shaped and placed it with his hands and fingers.

We have seen that this view came from far; that it existed
in the Chaldaeo-Babylonian and Egyptian civilizations, and
probably in others of the earliest date known to us; that its
main features passed thence into the sacred books of the Hebrews
and then into the early Christian Church, by whose theologians it
was developed through the Middle Ages and maintained during the
modern period.

But, while this idea was thus developed by a succession of noble
and thoughtful men through thousands of years, another
conception, to all appearance equally ancient, was developed,
sometimes in antagonism to it, sometimes mingled with it--the
conception of all living beings as wholly or in part the result
of a growth process--of an evolution.

This idea, in various forms, became a powerful factor in nearly
all the greater ancient theologies and philosophies. For very
widespread among the early peoples who attained to much thinking
power was a conception that, in obedience to the divine fiat, a
watery chaos produced the earth, and that the sea and land gave
birth to their inhabitants.

This is clearly seen in those records of Chaldaeo-Babylonian
thought deciphered in these latter years, to which reference has
already been made. In these we have a watery chaos which, under
divine action, brings forth the earth and its inhabitants; first
the sea animals and then the land animals--the latter being
separated into three kinds, substantially as recorded afterward
in the Hebrew accounts. At the various stages in the work the
Chaldean Creator  pronounces it "beautiful," just as the Hebrew
Creator in our own later account pronounces it "good."

In both accounts there is placed over the whole creation a
solid, concave firmament; in both, light is created first, and
the heavenly bodies are afterward placed "for signs and for
seasons"; in both, the number seven is especially sacred, giving
rise to a sacred division of time and to much else. It may be
added that, with many other features in the Hebrew legends
evidently drawn from the Chaldean, the account of the creation in
each is followed by a legend regarding "the fall of man" and a
deluge, many details of which clearly passed in slightly modified
form from the Chaldean into the Hebrew accounts.

It would have been a miracle indeed if these primitive
conceptions, wrought out with so much poetic vigour in that
earlier civilization on the Tigris and Euphrates, had failed to
influence the Hebrews, who during the most plastic periods of
their development were under the tutelage of their Chaldean
neighbours. Since the researches of Layard, George Smith, Oppert,
Schrader, Jensen, Sayce, and their compeers, there is no longer
a reasonable doubt that this ancient view of the world,
elaborated if not originated in that earlier civilization, came
thence as a legacy to the Hebrews, who wrought it in a somewhat
disjointed but mainly monotheistic form into the poetic whole
which forms one of the most precious treasures of ancient thought
preserved in the book of Genesis.

Thus it was that, while the idea of a simple material creation
literally by the hands and fingers or voice of the Creator
became, as we have seen, the starting-point of a powerful stream
of theological thought, and while this stream was swollen from
age to age by contributions from the fathers, doctors, and
learned divines of the Church, Catholic and Protestant, there was
poured into it this lesser current, always discernible and at
times clearly separated from it--a current of belief in a process
of evolution.

The Rev. Prof. Sayce, of Oxford, than whom no English-speaking
scholar carries more weight in a matter of this kind, has
recently declared his belief that the Chaldaeo-Babylonian theory
was the undoubted source of the similar theory propounded by the
Ionic philosopher Anaximander--the Greek thinkers deriving this
view from the Babylonians through the Phoenicians; he also
allows that from the same source its main features were adopted
into both the accounts given in the first of our sacred books,
and in this general view the most eminent Christian
Assyriologists concur.

It is true that these sacred accounts of ours contradict each
other. In that part of the first or Elohistic account given in
the first chapter of Genesis the _waters_ bring forth fishes,
marine animals, and birds (Genesis, i, 20); but in that part of
the second or Jehovistic account given in the second chapter of
Genesis both the land animals and birds are declared to have been
created not out of the water, but "_out of the ground_"
(Genesis, ii, 19).

The dialectic skill of the fathers was easily equal to explaining
away this contradiction; but the old current of thought,
strengthened by both these legends, arrested their attention, and,
passing through the minds of a succession of the greatest men of
the Church, influenced theological opinion deeply, if not widely,
for ages, in favour of an evolution theory.

But there was still another ancient source of evolution ideas.
Thoughtful men of the early civilizations which were developed
along the great rivers in the warmer regions of the earth noted how
the sun-god as he rose in his fullest might caused the water and
the rich soil to teem with the lesser forms of life. In Egypt,
especially, men saw how under this divine power the Nile slime
brought forth "creeping things innumerable." Hence mainly this
ancient belief that the animals and man were produced by lifeless
matter at the divine command, "in the beginning," was supplemented
by the idea that some of the lesser animals, especially the
insects, were produced by a later evolution, being evoked after the
original creation from various sources, but chiefly from matter in
a state of decay.

This crude, early view aided doubtless in giving germs of a better
evolution theory to the early Greeks. Anaximander, Empedocles,
Anaxagoras, and, greatest of all, Aristotle, as we have seen,
developed them, making their way at times by guesses toward truths
since established by observation. Aristotle especially, both by
speculation and observation, arrived at some results which, had
Greek freedom of thought continued, might have brought the world
long since to its present plane of biological knowledge; for he
reached something like the modern idea of a succession of higher
organizations from lower, and made the fruitful suggestion of "a
perfecting principle" in Nature.

With the coming in of Christian theology this tendency toward a yet
truer theory of evolution was mainly stopped, but the old crude
view remained, and as a typical example of it we may note the
opinion of St. Basil the Great in the fourth century. Discussing
the work of creation, he declares that, at the command of God,
"the waters were gifted with productive power"; "from slime and
muddy places frogs, flies, and gnats came into being"; and he
finally declares that the same voice which gave this energy and
quality of productiveness to earth and water shall be similarly
efficacious until the end of the world. St. Gregory of Nyssa held
a similar view.

This idea of these great fathers of the Eastern Church took even
stronger hold on the great father of the Western Church. For St.
Augustine, so fettered usually by the letter of the sacred text,
broke from his own famous doctrine as to the acceptance of
Scripture and spurned the generally received belief of a creative
process like that by which a toymaker brings into existence a box
of playthings. In his great treatise on _Genesis_ he says: "To
suppose that God formed man from the dust with bodily hands is very
childish.... God neither formed man with bodily hands nor did he
breathe upon him with throat and lips."

St. Augustine then suggests the adoption of the old emanation or
evolution theory, shows that "certain very small animals may not
have been created on the fifth and sixth days, but may have
originated later from putrefying matter." argues that, even if this
be so, God is still their creator, dwells upon such a potential
creation as involved in the actual creation, and speaks of animals
"whose numbers the after-time unfolded."

In his great treatise on the _Trinity_--the work to which he
devoted the best thirty years of his life--we find the full growth
of this opinion. He develops at length the view that in the
creation of living beings there was something like a growth--that
God is the ultimate author, but works through secondary causes; and
finally argues that certain substances are endowed by God with the
power of producing certain classes of plants and animals.[53]

This idea of a development by secondary causes apart from the
original creation was helped in its growth by a theological
exigency. More and more, as the organic world was observed, the
vast multitude of petty animals, winged creatures, and "creeping
things" was felt to be a strain upon the sacred narrative. More
and more it became difficult to reconcile the dignity of the
Almighty with his work in bringing each of these creatures before
Adam to be named; or to reconcile the human limitations of Adam
with his work in naming "every living creature"; or to reconcile
the dimensions of Noah's ark with the space required for preserving
all of them, and the food of all sorts necessary for their
sustenance, whether they were admitted by twos, as stated in one
scriptural account, or by sevens, as stated in the other.

The inadequate size of the ark gave especial trouble. Origen had
dealt with it by suggesting that the cubit was Six times greater
than had been supposed. Bede explained Noah's ability to complete
so large a vessel by supposing that he worked upon it during a
hundred years; and, as to the provision of food taken into it, he
declared that there was no need of a supply for more than one day,
since God could throw the animals into a deep sleep or otherwise
miraculously make one day's supply sufficient; he also lessened the
strain on faith still more by diminishing the number of animals
taken into the ark--supporting his view upon Augustine's theory of
the later development of insects out of carrion.

Doubtless this theological necessity was among the main reasons
which led St. Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, to
incorporate this theory, supported by St. Basil and St. Augustine,
into his great encyclopedic work which gave materials for thought
on God and Nature to so many generations. He familiarized the
theological world still further with the doctrine of secondary
creation, giving such examples of it as that "bees are generated
from decomposed veal, beetles from horseflesh, grasshoppers from
mules, scorpions from crabs," and, in order to give still stronger
force to the idea of such transformations, he dwells on the
biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar, which appears to have taken
strong hold upon medieval thought in science, and he declares that
other human beings had been changed into animals, especially into
swine, wolves, and owls.

This doctrine of after-creations went on gathering strength until,
in the twelfth century, Peter Lombard, in his theological summary,
_The Sentences_, so powerful in moulding the thought of the Church,
emphasized the distinction between animals which spring from
carrion and those which are created from earth and water; the former
he holds to have been created "potentially" the latter "actually."

In the century following, this idea was taken up by St. Thomas
Aquinas and virtually received from him its final form. In the
_Summa_, which remains the greatest work of medieval thought, he
accepts the idea that certain animals spring from the decaying
bodies of plants and animals, and declares that they are produced
by the creative word of God either actually or virtually. He
develops this view by saying, "Nothing was made by God, after the
six days of creation, absolutely new, but it was in some sense
included in the work of the six days"; and that "even new
species, if any appear, have existed before in certain native
properties, just as animals are produced from putrefaction."

The distinction thus developed between creation "causally" or
"potentially," and "materially" or "formally," was made much of
by commentators afterward. Cornelius a Lapide spread it by saying
that certain animals were created not "absolutely," but only
"derivatively," and this thought was still further developed three
centuries later by Augustinus Eugubinus, who tells us that, after
the first creative energy had called forth land and water, light
was made by the Almighty, the instrument of all future creation,
and that the light called everything into existence.

All this "science falsely so called," so sedulously developed by
the master minds of the Church, and yet so futile that we might
almost suppose that the great apostle, in a glow of prophetic
vision, had foreseen it in his famous condemnation, seems at this
distance very harmless indeed; yet, to many guardians of the
"sacred deposit of doctrine " in the Church, even so slight a
departure from the main current of thought seemed dangerous. It
appeared to them like pressing the doctrine of secondary causes to
a perilous extent; and about the beginning of the seventeenth
century we have the eminent Spanish Jesuit and theologian Suarez
denouncing it, and declaring St. Augustine a heretic for his share
in it.

But there was little danger to the older idea just then; the main
theological tendency was so strong that the world kept on as of
old. Biblical theology continued to spin its own webs out of its
own bowels, and all the lesser theological flies continued to be
entangled in them; yet here and there stronger thinkers broke loose
from this entanglement and helped somewhat to disentangle others.[56]

At the close of the Middle Ages, in spite of the devotion of the
Reformed Church to the letter of Scripture, the revival of learning
and the great voyages gave an atmosphere in which better thinking
on the problems of Nature began to gain strength. On all sides, in
every field, men were making discoveries which caused the general
theological view to appear more and more inadequate.

First of those who should be mentioned with reverence as beginning
to develop again that current of Greek thought which the system
drawn from our sacred books by the fathers and doctors of the
Church had interrupted for more than a thousand years, was Giordano
Bruno. His utterances were indeed vague and enigmatical, but this
fault may well be forgiven him, for he saw but too clearly what
must be his reward for any more open statements. His reward indeed
came--even for his faulty utterances--when, toward the end of the
nineteenth century, thoughtful men from all parts of the world
united in erecting his statue on the spot where he had been burned
by the Roman Inquisition nearly three hundred years before.

After Bruno's death, during the first half of the seventeenth
century, Descartes seemed about to take the leadership of human
thought: his theories, however superseded now, gave a great impulse
to investigation then. His genius in promoting an evolution
doctrine as regards the mechanical formation of the solar system
was great, and his mode of thought strengthened the current of
evolutionary doctrine generally; but his constant dread of
persecution, both from Catholics and Protestants, led him steadily
to veil his thoughts and even to suppress them. The execution of
Bruno had occurred in his childhood, and in the midst of his Career
he had watched the Galileo struggle in all its stages. He had seen
his own works condemned by university after university under the
direction of theologians, and placed upon the Roman _Index_.
Although he gave new and striking arguments to prove the existence
of God, and humbled himself before the Jesuits, he was condemned by
Catholics and Protestants alike. Since Roger Bacon, perhaps, no
great thinker had been so completely abased and thwarted by
theological oppression.

Near the close of the same century another great thinker, Leibnitz,
though not propounding any full doctrine on evolution, gave it an
impulse by suggesting a view contrary to the sacrosanct belief in
the immutability of species--that is, to the pious doctrine that
every species in the animal kingdom now exists as it left the hands
of the Creator, the naming process by Adam, and the door of Noah's ark.

His punishment at the hands of the Church came a few years later,
when, in 1712, the Jesuits defeated his attempt to found an Academy
of Science at Vienna. The imperial authorities covered him with
honours, but the priests--ruling in the confessionals and
pulpits--would not allow him the privilege of aiding his fellow-men
to ascertain God's truths revealed in Nature.

Spinoza, Hume, and Kant may also be mentioned as among those whose
thinking, even when mistaken, might have done much to aid in the
development of a truer theory had not the theologic atmosphere of
their times been so unpropitious; but a few years after Leibnitz's
death came in France a thinker in natural science of much less
influence than any of these, who made a decided step forward.

Early in the eighteenth century Benoist de Maillet, a man of the
world, but a wide observer and close thinker upon Nature, began
meditating especially upon the origin of animal forms, and was led
into the idea of the transformation of species and so into a theory
of evolution, which in some important respects anticipated modern
ideas. He definitely, though at times absurdly, conceived the
production of existing species by the modification of their
predecessors, and he plainly accepted one of the fundamental maxims
of modern geology--that the structure of the globe must be studied
in the light of the present course of Nature.

But he fell between two ranks of adversaries. On one side, the
Church authorities denounced him as a freethinker; on the other,
Voltaire ridiculed him as a devotee. Feeling that his greatest
danger was from the orthodox theologians, De Maillet endeavoured to
protect himself by disguising his name in the title of his book,
and by so wording its preface and dedication that, if persecuted,
he could declare it a mere sport of fancy; he therefore announced
it as the reverie of a Hindu sage imparted to a Christian
missionary. But this strategy availed nothing: he had allowed his
Hindu sage to suggest that the days of creation named in Genesis
might be long periods of time; and this, with other ideas of
equally fearful import, was fatal. Though the book was in type in
1735, it was not published till 1748--three years after his death.

On the other hand, the heterodox theology of Voltaire was also
aroused; and, as De Maillet had seen in the presence of fossils on
high mountains a proof that these mountains were once below the
sea, Voltaire, recognising in this an argument for the deluge of
Noah, ridiculed the new thinker without mercy. Unfortunately, some
of De Maillet's vagaries lent themselves admirably to Voltaire's
sarcasm; better material for it could hardly be conceived than the
theory, seriously proposed, that the first human being was born of
a mermaid.

Hence it was that, between these two extremes of theology, De
Maillet received no recognition until, very recently, the greatest
men of science in England and France have united in giving him his
due. But his work was not lost, even in his own day; Robinet and
Bonnet pushed forward victoriously on helpful lines.

In the second half of the eighteenth century a great barrier was
thrown across this current--the authority of Linnaeus. He was the
most eminent naturalist of his time, a wide observer, a close
thinker; but the atmosphere in which he lived and moved and had his
being was saturated with biblical theology, and this permeated all
his thinking.

He who visits the tomb of Linnaeus to-day, entering the beautiful
cathedral of Upsala by its southern porch, sees above it, wrought
in stone, the Hebrew legend of creation. In a series of
medallions, the Almighty--in human form--accomplishes the work of
each creative day. In due order he puts in place the solid
firmament with the waters above it, the sun, moon, and stars within
it, the beasts, birds, and plants below it, and finishes his task
by taking man out of a little hillock of "the earth beneath," and
woman out of man's side. Doubtless Linnaeus, as he went to his
devotions, often smiled at this childlike portrayal. Yet he was
never able to break away from the idea it embodied. At times, in
face of the difficulties which beset the orthodox theory, he
ventured to favour some slight concessions. Toward the end of his
life he timidly advanced the hypothesis that all the species of one
genus constituted at the creation one species; and from the last
edition of his _Systema Naturae_ he quietly left out the strongly
orthodox statement of the fixity of each species, which he had
insisted upon in his earlier works. But he made no adequate
declaration. What he might expect if he openly and decidedly
sanctioned a newer view he learned to his cost; warnings came
speedily both from the Catholic and Protestant sides.

At a time when eminent prelates of the older Church were eulogizing
debauched princes like Louis XV, and using the unspeakably obscene
casuistry of the Jesuit Sanchez in the education of the priesthood
as to the relations of men to women, the modesty of the Church
authorities was so shocked by Linnaeus's proofs of a sexual system
in plants that for many years his writings were prohibited in the
Papal States and in various other parts of Europe where clerical
authority was strong enough to resist the new scientific current.
Not until 1773 did one of the more broad-minded cardinals
--Zelanda--succeed in gaining permission that Prof. Minasi should
discuss the Linnaean system at Rome.

And Protestantism was quite as oppressive. In a letter to Eloius,
Linnaeus tells of the rebuke given to science by one of the great
Lutheran prelates of Sweden, Bishop Svedberg. From various parts of
Europe detailed statements had been sent to the Royal Academy of
Science that water had been turned into blood, and well-meaning
ecclesiastics had seen in this an indication of the wrath of God,
certainly against the regions in which these miracles had occurred
and possibly against the whole world. A miracle of this sort
appearing in Sweden, Linnaeus looked into it carefully and found
that the reddening of the water was caused by dense masses of
minute insects. News of this explanation having reached the bishop,
he took the field against it; he denounced this scientific
discovery as "a Satanic abyss" (_abyssum Satanae_), and declared
"The reddening of the water is _not_ natural," and "when God allows
such a miracle to take place Satan endeavours, and so do his
ungodly, self-reliant, self-sufficient, and worldly tools, to make
it signify nothing." In face of this onslaught Linnaeus retreated;
he tells his correspondent that "it is difficult to say anything
in this matter," and shields himself under the statement "It is
certainly a miracle that so many millions of creatures can be so
suddenly propagated," and "it shows undoubtedly the all-wise power
of the Infinite."

The great naturalist, grown old and worn with labours for science,
could no longer resist the contemporary theology; he settled into
obedience to it, and while the modification of his early orthodox
view was, as we have seen, quietly imbedded in the final edition of
his great work, he made no special effort to impress it upon the
world. To all appearance he continued to adhere to the doctrine that
all existing species had been created by the Almighty "in the
beginning," and that since "the beginning" no new species had appeared.

Yet even his great authority could not arrest the swelling tide;
more and more vast became the number of species, more and more
incomprehensible under the old theory became the newly ascertained
facts in geographical distribution, more and more it was felt that
the universe and animated beings had come into existence by some
process other than a special creation "in the beginning," and the
question was constantly pressing, "By _what_ process?"

Throughout the whole of the eighteenth century one man was at work
on natural history who might have contributed much toward an answer
to this question: this man was Buffon. His powers of research and
thought were remarkable, and his gift in presenting results of
research and thought showed genius. He had caught the idea of an
evolution in Nature by the variation of species, and was likely to
make a great advance with it; but he, too, was made to feel the
power of theology.

As long as he gave pleasing descriptions of animals the Church
petted him, but when he began to deduce truths of philosophical
import the batteries of the Sorbonne were opened upon him; he was
made to know that "the sacred deposit of truth committed to the
Church" was, that "in the beginning God made the heavens and the
earth" and that "all things were made at the beginning of the
world." For his simple statement of truths in natural science which
are to-day truisms, he was, as we have seen, dragged forth by the
theological faculty, forced to recant publicly, and to print his
recantation. In this he announced, "I abandon everything in my
book respecting the formation of the earth, and generally all which
may be contrary to the narrative of Moses."[62]

But all this triumph of the Chaldeo-Babylonian creation legends
which the Church had inherited availed but little.

For about the end of the eighteenth century fruitful suggestions
and even clear presentations of this or that part of a large
evolutionary doctrine came thick and fast, and from the most
divergent quarters. Especially remarkable were those which came
from Erasmus Darwin in England, from Maupertuis in France, from
Oken in Switzerland, and from Herder, and, most brilliantly of all,
from Goethe in Germany.

Two men among these thinkers must be especially
mentioned--Treviranus in Germany and Lamarck in France; each
independently of the other drew the world more completely than ever
before in this direction.

From Treviranus came, in 1802, his work on biology, and in this he
gave forth the idea that from forms of life originally simple had
arisen all higher organizations by gradual development; that every
living feature has a capacity for receiving modifications of its
structure from external influences; and that no species had become
really extinct, but that each had passed into some other species.
From Lamarck came about the same time his _Researches_, and a little
later his _Zoological Philosophy_, which introduced a new factor into
the process of evolution--the action of the animal itself in its
efforts toward a development to suit new needs--and he gave as his
principal conclusions the following:

1. Life tends to increase the volume of each living body and of all
its parts up to a limit determined by its own necessities.

2. New wants in animals give rise to new organs.

3. The development of these organs is in proportion to their employment.

4. New developments may be transmitted to offspring.

His well-known examples to illustrate these views, such as that of
successive generations of giraffes lengthening their necks by
stretching them to gather high-growing foliage, and of successive
generations of kangaroos lengthening and strengthening their hind
legs by the necessity of keeping themselves erect while jumping,
provoked laughter, but the very comicality of these illustrations
aided to fasten his main conclusion in men's memories.

In both these statements, imperfect as they were, great truths were
embodied--truths which were sure to grow.

Lamarck's declaration, especially, that the development of organs
is in ratio to their employment, and his indications of the
reproduction in progeny of what is gained or lost in parents by
the influence of circumstances, entered as a most effective force
into the development of the evolution theory.

The next great successor in the apostolate of this idea of the
universe was Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. As early as 1795 he had begun
to form a theory that species are various modifications of the same
type, and this theory he developed, testing it at various stages as
Nature was more and more displayed to him. It fell to his lot to bear
the brunt in a struggle against heavy odds which lasted many years.

For the man who now took up the warfare, avowedly for science but
unconsciously for theology, was the foremost naturalist then
living--Cuvier. His scientific eminence was deserved; the highest
honours of his own and other countries were given him, and he bore
them worthily. An Imperial Councillor under Napoleon; President of
the Council of Public Instruction and Chancellor of the University
under the restored Bourbons; Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour,
a Peer of France, Minister of the Interior, and President of the
Council of State under Louis Philippe; he was eminent in all these
capacities, and yet the dignity given by such high administrative
positions was as nothing compared to his leadership in natural
science. Science throughout the world acknowledged in him its chief
contemporary ornament, and to this hour his fame rightly continues.
But there was in him, as in Linnaeus, a survival of certain
theological ways of looking at the universe and certain theological
conceptions of a plan of creation; it must be said, too, that while
his temperament made him distrust new hypotheses, of which he had
seen so many born and die, his environment as a great functionary
of state, honoured, admired, almost adored by the greatest, not
only in the state but in the Church, his solicitude lest science
should receive some detriment by openly resisting the Church, which
had recaptured Europe after the French Revolution, and had made of
its enemies its footstool--all these considerations led him to
oppose the new theory. Amid the plaudits, then, of the foremost
church-men he threw across the path of the evolution doctrines the
whole mass of his authority in favour of the old theory of
catastrophic changes and special creations.

Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire stoutly withstood him, braving
non-recognition, ill-treatment, and ridicule. Treviranus, afar off
in his mathematical lecture-room at Bremen, seemed simply forgotten.

But the current of evolutionary thought could not thus be checked:
dammed up for a time, it broke out in new channels and in ways and
places least expected; turned away from France, it appeared
especially in England, where great paleontologists and geologists
arose whose work culminated in that of Lyell. Specialists
throughout all the world now became more vigorous than ever,
gathering facts and thinking upon them in a way which caused the
special creation theory to shrink more and more. Broader and more
full became these various rivulets, soon to unite in one great
stream of thought.

In 1813 Dr. Wells developed a theory of evolution by natural
selection to account for varieties in the human race. About 182O
Dean Herbert, eminent as an authority in horticulture, avowed his
conviction that species are but fixed varieties. In 1831 Patrick
Matthews stumbled upon and stated the main doctrine of natural
selection in evolution; and others here and there, in Europe and
America, caught an inkling of it.

But no one outside of a circle apparently uninfluential cared for
these things: the Church was serene: on the Continent it had
obtained reactionary control of courts, cabinets, and universities;
in England, Dean Cockburn was denouncing Mary Somerville and the
geologists to the delight of churchmen; and the Rev. Mellor Brown
was doing the same thing for the edification of dissenters.

In America the mild suggestions of Silliman and his compeers were
met by the protestations of the Andover theologians headed by Moses
Stuart. Neither of the great English universities, as a rule, took
any notice of the innovators save by sneers.

To this current of thought there was joined a new element when, in
1844, Robert Chambers published his _Vestiges of Creation_. The book
was attractive and was widely read. In Chambers's view the several
series of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the
highest and most recent, were the result of two distinct impulses,
each given once and for all time by the Creator. The first of these
was an impulse imparted to forms of life, lifting them gradually
through higher grades; the second was an impulse tending to modify
organic substances in accordance with external circumstances; in
fact, the doctrine of the book was evolution tempered by miracle--a
stretching out of the creative act through all time--a pious
version of Lamarck.

Two results followed, one mirth-provoking, the other leading to
serious thought. The amusing result was that the theologians were
greatly alarmed by the book: it was loudly insisted that it
promoted atheism. Looking back along the line of thought which has
since been developed, one feels that the older theologians ought to
have put up thanksgivings for Chambers's theory, and prayers that
it might prove true. The more serious result was that it accustomed
men's minds to a belief in evolution as in some form possible
or even probable. In this way it was provisionally of service.

Eight years later Herbert Spencer published an essay contrasting
the theories of creation and evolution--reasoning with great force
in favour of the latter, showing that species had undoubtedly been
modified by circumstances; but still only few and chosen men saw
the significance of all these lines of reasoning which had been
converging during so many years toward one conclusion.

On July 1, 1858, there were read before the Linnaean Society at
London two papers--one presented by Charles Darwin, the other by
Alfred Russel Wallace--and with the reading of these papers the
doctrine of evolution by natural selection was born. Then and there
a fatal breach was made in the great theological barrier of the
continued fixity of species since the creation.

The story of these papers the scientific world knows by heart: how
Charles Darwin, having been sent to the University of Cambridge to
fit him for the Anglican priesthood, left it in 1831 to go upon the
scientific expedition of the Beagle; how for five years he studied
with wonderful vigour and acuteness the problems of life as
revealed on land and at sea--among volcanoes and coral reefs, in
forests and on the sands, from the tropics to the arctic regions;
how, in the Cape Verde and the Galapagos Islands, and in Brazil,
Patagonia, and Australia he interrogated Nature with matchless
persistency and skill; how he returned unheralded, quietly settled
down to his work, and soon set the world thinking over its first
published results, such as his book on _Coral Reefs,_ and the
monograph on the _Cirripedia_; and, finally, how he presented his
paper, and followed it up with treatises which made him one of the
great leaders in the history of human thought.

The scientific world realizes, too, more and more, the power of
character shown by Darwin in all this great career; the faculty of
silence, the reserve of strength seen in keeping his great
thought--his idea of evolution by natural selection--under silent
study and meditation for nearly twenty years, giving no hint of it
to the world at large, but working in every field to secure proofs
or disproofs, and accumulating masses of precious material for the
solution of the questions involved.

To one man only did he reveal his thought--to Dr. Joseph Hooker, to
whom in 1844, under the seal of secrecy, he gave a summary of his
conclusions. Not until fourteen years later occurred the event
which showed him that the fulness of time had come--the letter from
Alfred Russel Wallace, to whom, in brilliant researches during the
decade from 1848 to 1858, in Brazil and in the Malay Archipelago,
the same truth of evolution by natural selection had been revealed.
Among the proofs that scientific study does no injury to  the more
delicate shades of sentiment is the well-known story of this letter.
With it Wallace sent Darwin a memoir, asking him to present it to
the Linnaean Society: on examining it, Darwin found that Wallace
had independently arrived at conclusions similar to his
own--possibly had deprived him of fame; but Darwin was loyal to his
friend, and his friend remained ever loyal to him. He publicly
presented the paper from Wallace, with his own conclusions; and the
date of this presentation--July 1, 1858--separates two epochs in the
history, not merely of natural science, but of human thought.

In the following year, 1859, came the first instalment of his work
in its fuller development--his book on _The Origin of Species_. In
this book one at least of the main secrets at the heart of the
evolutionary process, which had baffled the long line of
investigators and philosophers from the days of Aristotle, was more
broadly revealed. The effective mechanism of evolution was shown at