The doctrine of descent and Darwinism / by Oscar Schmidt.

  • Schmidt, Oscar, 1823-1886.
Date:
1875
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The doctrine of descent and Darwinism / by Oscar Schmidt. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    world of matter. But the objection which endeavours to cut away the ground from under the doctrine of Descent, not the theory of selection, and represents the origin of life as incomprehensible and supernatural, we naturally regard as an attempt to gain a precedent for the supernatural creation of language. Between begin- ning and end, we naturalists may do as we please. But it is strange that the very side which is so ready to reproach us with a want of philosophic method and induction, should here, where the material substratum is deficient, dispute the claims of the investigation of nature to its logical inferences. In the last page of the “ Origin of Species,” Darwin says: “ There is j grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, j having been originally breathed by the Creator into ! a few forms or into one ; and that, whilst this planet I has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of I gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms i most beautiful and most wonderful have been and I are being evolved.” In this concession, Darwin has certainly been untrue to himself; and it satisfies neither s those who believe in the continuous work of creation by a personal God, nor the partizans of natural evolution. It is directly incompatible with the doctrine of Descent, or, as Zbllner ” says : “ The hypothesis of an act of i creation (for the beginning of life) would not be a logi- cal but a merely arbitrary limitation of the causal series against which our intellect rebels by reason of its inherent ' craving for causality. Whoever does not share this crav- ing is beyond help, and he cannot be convinced. To hold the beginning of life as an arbitrary act of creation, is to break with the whole theory of cognition.” j