Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/44

34 theory, ought to be discoverable, the apparent immutability of species, the infertility of hybrids. Whether it was worth while at this time of day to write a somewhat lengthy treatise, for the purpose of putting forward arguments so thoroughly known, is a question on which opinions may differ. We do not mean that the arguments themselves are not deserving of attention; but we do mean that they are very accessible to the reading public in a great many quarters, and are nowhere, probably, stated with greater force than in the writings of the evolutionists themselves. Such as it is, however, the scientific argumentation of this volume is interwoven throughout with argumentation of a purely theological character. The author would, possibly, call the latter philosophical; but, with every desire to be just, we think that term would be misapplied. Take the following as an example of the kind of thing we refer to: "Why depict the infinite God as a quiescent and retired spectator of the operation of certain laws he has imposed upon organized matter, when there are discoverable so many manifest reasons for the special creation of such a being as man?" Here we have Mr. Curtis talking in his usual off-hand way of the Divine Being as being swayed by "reasons," and of these reasons as being discoverable by ordinary human understanding. Have all the lessons of the Book of Job, to say nothing of the "Critique of Pure Reason," been lost upon this latest foe of evolution? It would seem so. Again we are told, in the most magisterial manner, that "in the economy of Nature, which is but another name for the economy of the Omnipotent Creator, there is no waste of power, as there is no abstention from the exercise of power, when its exertions are needed to accomplish an end." Can any one attach a rational meaning to the word "waste" as applied to that the supply of which is infinite? If we imagine, for one moment, the Creator being arraigned for something that, to finite intelligence, looked like waste, might not his reply be that he had infinite reserves of power which were not being put to any use at all? And if the finite intelligence were to rejoin that this was waste on a yet larger scale, what should we have but one more illustration of how hopeless it is for the finite mind to grapple with the infinite and absolute? Working, however, upon his double principle that the Deity never wastes power, yet is always willing to exert the full amount needed for the accomplishment of his purposes, our author is led to disbelieve entirely what the evolutionists assert in regard to the derivation of the human species from lower types of life. As he interprets the facts, the Deity economized power by making man on the same general plan as the rest of the mammalians, instead of drawing entirely new plans for him; and at the same time expended power in creating those specific differences which constitute him Man. A delicate question might here arise as to whether the various "rudiments" found in the human frame were left there through a prudent economy of power, or placed there by a wise exertion of power. We should