Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 4.djvu/338

324 appears that, owing to the requirements of modern society, our volitions are called upon now to check feeling, now to force it into play. The studied graces of smile, dilating eye, and mellifluous voice, make up a perfectly new order of quasi expressions, which might perhaps in a highly-artificial state of society gradually supplant many of the older and familiar forms of emotional utterance. Whether the agencies which tend to sustain genuine emotional expression will prove to have more vitality than those which go to suppress it, and how far, supposing spontaneous utterances of emotion to grow out of date, artificial imitations of them will continue in fashion, are points which we do not attempt to determine. Enough has been said, perhaps, to show how curiously complex are the conditions of the problem.—Saturday Review.



HE theory, or rather doctrine, of the Evolution of Living Things has not yet received that uniform acceptance to which it is undoubtedly entitled. That it will in time become generally received may be reasonably presumed; but at present, with many theologians at least, the creative hypothesis obstinately holds its ground. Two causes may be assigned to account for this fact. First, there is the preconceived but erroneous idea of the method of creation derived from a misconception of the first chapter of Genesis. Secondly, there is the unfortunate but very general want of any scientific training, not only among the clergy, but in the public generally; and, as a result, there is that absence of a due power of appreciation of the arguments of the scientific man, which is so conspicuous in their style of reasoning.

In order, therefore, that the proof of the wisdom and beneficence of the Almighty, as shown in the processes of evolution, may not be considered as based on unsound premises, it will be desirable to point out the untenableness of the present theological position, as well as the grounds upon which evolution is founded; and which will, let us hope, be soon recognized as incontrovertible by all who seek the truth in earnest. Until comparatively recent times the book of Genesis was supposed to reveal in its first chapter an explicit account of the origin of living things, namely, by direct creative fiats of the Almighty. All the known animals and plants being far fewer than at the present day, their differences were more pronounced than their resemblances. Each animal and plant was observed to bring forth