Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/334

320 analysis of minerals, of geology to the classification of the earth's strata, or of astronomy to the calculation of the motions and relations of the heavenly bodies.

Nor is there any more mystery in one than in the other. Of course, in biology, the process is more complicated—more difficult to comprehend—but not incomprehensible. Indeed, as will be seen at the proper time, the mysteries of daily occurrence, such as growth, budding, and reproduction, are as great as any which beset the passage from form to form, from species to species. No one who has thought of it sufficiently can deny that the ordinary facts of generation, as the necessity of the union of two cells of nearly-spent vitality to produce a third cell, or a brood of cells, endowed with primeval vigor, present difficulties more unsurpassable than the origin of the germs of living things from inorganic matter; or that the preservation of species, by like producing like, is more difficult of explanation than the beginning of new species by variations in the reproduction, which, as a fact, is more likely to occur than the resemblance. The genesis of life from the inorganic kingdom we can begin to comprehend, because it is more simple and can be referred to known physical forces; but the other—that is, reproduction—is still wrapped in impenetrable obscurity.

A glance at the history of this controversy will make the whole matter clear, and, as remarked, ought to set us right with the rest of the world.

In the dawn of science as we know it—that is to say, in the rise of the Greek philosophy—no other view of creation was thought of than that which modern induction now demands, because, happily for them, there was not in their possession any supposed revelation on the subject, and there was no school which thought of any other solution of the problem than one which could be deduced from observation and speculation. Yet they suggested little that would now be of benefit, the range of their facts and of their analysis being too much limited.

The moderns, notwithstanding that the general principles of the philosophy, and of the philosophical theology of the middle ages were, as we have seen, favorable, have cramped and trammeled themselves with many irrelevant matters. The so-called skeptics are not alone to blame for the unnecessary conflict existing between Religion and Science. In the great religious revolutions of the sixteenth century (incident to revolutions in empire and commerce), from the excitement of religious parties theology and polemics assumed the lead in literature and thought. And such was the increased importance given to individual opinion, arguments, and scholarship, that it is often difficult to separate the idiosyncrasies of the author from the general cause he advocated. In their appeals to history as the principal method of discussing divinity, it was natural that each scholar should, consciously or unconsciously, adopt some scheme of universal history; and it was