That would be evidence
indeed: but until some testimony of the sort is produced, we must
needs believe in the separate and special creation of man, however it
may have been with the lower animals and with plants.
No doubt, the full development and symmetry of Darwin's hypothesis
strongly suggest the evolution of the human no less than the lower
animal races out of some simple primordial animal,--that all are
equally "lineal descendants of sense few beings which lived long
before the first bed of the Silurian system was deposited." But, as
the author speaks disrespectfully of spontaneous generation, and
accepts a supernatural beginning of life on earth, in some form or
forms of being which included potentially all that have since existed
and are yet to be, he is thereby not warranted to extend his
inferences beyond the evidence or the fair probability. There seems
as great likelihood that one special origination should be followed
by another upon fitting occasion, (such as the introduction of man,)
as that one form should be transmuted into another upon fitting
occasion, as, for instance, in the succession of species which differ
from each other only in some details.
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