CHAPTER VII.

THE FATHER OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM.

AT this point in our discussion we are confronted with the oft-repeated assertion that all forms of life owe their origin to one, or at most three or four primordial germs. Who then was the father of this numerous, variously endowed family? If the trilobite, which inhabited the ocean when there were no shores to interrupt its waves, was elder brother to the latest philosopher who has soared into the regions of speculative thought; if organisms possessing the minimum vitæ were the parental forms of those endowed with the maximum rationis; if creatures having only parvam scintillam animi were the progenitors of modern scientists, the latter being but the natural product of the united efforts of millions of preexisting animals which succeeded after billions of abortive efforts in evolving an intellect capable of recognizing its indebtedness to a long line of self-sacrificing ancestors— apes, fish, worms, monera, etc.,-then the father of us all, however respectable he may have been, evidently occupied an humble sphere in life. Who was he, who, as his family came drifting down the stream of time, left colonies which consented to continue existence that they might point backwards to the beings whence they were evolved and forwards to their ambitious relatives who decided to go on with the process of evolution, hoping that persistency in a course which had already developed

marvelous organisms might evolve some Haeckel whc would undertake to write a history of the family, thereby inspiring the hope that in a second period of four hundred millions of years man might develop into some being as much superior to homo sapiens as homo sapiens is superior to a tadpole ?

As Darwin and Haeckel are well versed in the mystic lore of the wonderful genealogical charts left by monkeys, marsupials, lizards, and amabæ, we shall let them tell us who was the father of earth's family of beings. We might also ask them to tell us who was the father of the father of animals, since we might become too much bewildered were we to essay the task of tracing the shadowy line of descent into the numberless species of the vegetable world from some organism of which the first animal ought to have been developed if the theory is true, for vegetable life preceded animal life, and, as is well known, the one kingdom glides into the other by such insensible gradations that even those who know all things worth knowing can scarcely tell where one ends and the other begins. Moreover, to render the investigation complete, we ought to inquire what particular plant was the parent of all the rest. Having obtained a satisfactory answer to this perplexing question we might be reasonably expected to inquire whence came the germ of life. Did it wiggle itself out of a grain of sand? Alas, we had supposed that matter was helpless. "The despicable dupes of theology" have been illogical enough to imagine that if we may not regard inertia as a property of matter because it is a merely negative terms, still we are not at liberty to ascribe to matter the power of originating life. Of the powerlessness of matter to change its condition there is abundant evidence even though we may have no more right to say that inertia is an essential property of

matter than we have to assert that good-for-nothingness is the mark by which we can distinguish the midge from every other entity in the universe. There is no proof that matter can originate life. You have as much reason for affirming that absolute helplessness created the universe as for affirming that inert matter originated life. We are told by Haeckel that life first appeared in "a homogeneous atom of plasson"; by Huxley, that "protoplasm" is the physical basis of life. Will they ascertain whence life came, what it is, and why it selected so humble a tabernacle in which to make its first appearance on earth? Neither protoplasm nor a homogeneous atom of plasson is declared to be life, but simply the body it inhabits; even if it could be proved to be life and the parent of all animal and vegetable existences, the problem of man's origin would not be solved, but merely rendered more intricate. Science would then ask, What was the origin of protoplasm ?-what was the origin of this wonderful homogeneous atom? Was matter, which is so helpless that it cannot move itself when at rest, nor stop itself when in motion? Can that which is in itself inactive originate a series of acts extending through ages? When they have forced assent to this, other questions will press for solution. Which material element gave birth to life? Did it annihilate itself in the effort? If not, why has it ceased business? Or, if all matter is resolvable into one element, then what is that element? Why is it no longer turning out products equal to its original gift to the world? How did that element come into existence? What are its properties? Had it more qualities than those which reason decides to be essential to the existence of an atom? Where is the proof that it had any quality not now possessed by matter? If there is no proof, why assume that it gave birth

to life? But it is perhaps said, it must have been subject to certain forces. Well, were those forces inherent in it or were they delegated to it? In either case, can it be proved that they were capable of producing life? And if this can be established, can it be shown that matter has lost some force? But force is indestructible. And yet, if matter once possessed this force, it must have lost it, else life would be still originating in earth's material laboratories, occasionally at least.

Nor would the difficulty be solved even if it should be demonstrated that life, in infant form, had its origin in matter. Logic, if indisposed to question whether such might not be the case would persist in asking, Whence came matter? How came it possessed of this life-giving power? If it is capable, operating with unity of design through centuries, of producing the varied forms of living things, it could not have originated in chance, for every step in its subsequent evolution is characterized by intelligence, suitable means being employed for the accomplishment of ends predetermined. It could not have been self-created, for the self-creation of matter from nothingness is inconceivable-more so than the origination of the universe ex nihilo by the fiat of Divine Intelligence, which science is disposed to pronounce preposterous. It could not have been eternal, for modern reasoning has proved this impossible. Besides, the human intellect finds it more difficult to believe in the eternity of matter than in an eternal God. Moreover, if the various species of animals have been evolved from a few parental forms, and these parental forms were evolved from vegetable organisms, and all species in the vegetable kingdom were evolved from a few primordial germs, and these from inorganic matter, then matter, it would seem, ought to have been evolved from some

pre-existing substance as inferior to what we designate matter as this is inferior to mind.

Evolution thus carries us backwards through the cycles of buried millenniums without furnishing a satisfactory solution of man's origin. He has been evolvedthat is all it can say. It cannot tell us the origin of this potent principle of evolution by which he was evolved. This must have been evolved from some less complex principle previously existent; this, in turn, from some antecedent, still simpler principle-the succession emerging from the depths of a shoreless infinity.

Life is brief. Therefore it is prudent to content one's self with endeavoring to trace man's descent from the period when, as evolutionists say, his ancestors were animals or at least primordial germs of animal life.

Having proved in the preceding chapters, as is believed, that the christian, if disposed to accept the principle of evolution, or if he shall hereafter feel constrained so to do, is nevertheless under no necessity of regarding man as an evolution from the ape-family, we come to a consideration of the following questions: Is the animal kingdom in its various species, an evolution from a few primordial germs?-Have all species in the lower orders been evolved from the moneron?-Was the parental form, whether cell, germ, moneron, or atom of matter instinct with life, a product of spontaneous generation? In the three succeeding chapters, in which the above questions are considered, attention is invited to the second stage of our argument in favor of the teachings of Scripture in reference to origins. If it has been made apparent that the hypothesis of a God is necessary to account for man's origin; and if, as will scarcely be denied, it is improbable that the tardy process of evolution is the mode which Divine Intelligence chooses to adopt