Suppose that hundreds
of millions of years ago there existed upon this earth a single
primordial form of the very lowest life, or suppose that three or
four such primordial forms existed. Change of climate, of food, of
any of the circumstances which surrounded any member of this first
and lowest class of life would tend to alter it in some slight
manner, and the alteration would have a tendency to perpetuate itself
by inheritance. Many failures would doubtless occur, but with the
lapse of time slight deviations would undoubtedly become permanent
and inheritable, those alone being perpetuated which were beneficial
to individuals in whom they appeared. Repeat the process with each
deviation and we shall again obtain divergences (in the course of
ages) differing more strongly from the ancestral form, and again
those that enable their possessor to struggle for existence most
efficiently will be preserved. Repeat this process for millions and
millions of years, and, as it is impossible to assign any limit to
variability, it would seem as though the present diversities of
species must certainly have come about sooner or later, and that
other divergences will continue to come about to the end of time.
The great agent in this development of life has been competition.
This has culled species after species, and secured that those alone
should survive which were best fitted for the conditions by which
they found themselves surrounded. Endeavour to take a bird's-eye
view of the whole matter. See battle after battle, first in one part
of the world, then in another, sometimes raging more fiercely and
sometimes less; even as in human affairs war has always existed in
some part of the world from the earliest known periods, and probably
always will exist. While a species is conquering in one part of the
world it is being subdued in another, and while its conquerors are
indulging in their triumph down comes the fiat for their being culled
and drafted out, some to life and some to death, and so forth ad
infinitum.
C. It is very horrid.
F. No more horrid than that you should eat roast mutton or boiled
beef.
C. But it is utterly subversive of Christianity; for if this theory
is true the fall of man is entirely fabulous; and if the fall, then
the redemption, these two being inseparably bound together.
F. My dear friend, there I am not bound to follow you. I believe in
Christianity, and I believe in Darwin. The two appear
irreconcilable. My answer to those who accuse me of inconsistency
is, that both being undoubtedly true, the one must be reconcilable
with the other, and that the impossibility of reconciling them must
be only apparent and temporary, not real. The reconciliation will
never be effected by planing a little off the one and a little off
the other and then gluing them together with glue. People will not
stand this sort of dealing, and the rejection of the one truth or of
the other is sure to follow upon any such attempt being persisted in.
The true course is to use the freest candour in the acknowledgment of
the difficulty; to estimate precisely its real value, and obtain a
correct knowledge of its precise form.
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