e Bible writers would, I presume, have no objection to it
if understood to mean the development of the plans of the Creator in
nature. That kind of evolution to which they would object, and to
which enlightened reason also objects, is the spontaneous evolution of
nothing into atoms and force, and of these into all the wonderful and
complicated plan of nature, without any guiding mind. Farther,
biological and palaeontological science, as well as the Bible, object
to the derivation of living things from dead matter by merely natural
means, because this can not be proved to be possible, and to the
production of the series of organic forms found as fossils in the
rocks of the earth by the process of struggle for existence and
survival of the fittest, because this does not suffice to account for
the complex phenomena presented by this succession. With reference to
the testimony of palaeontology, I have in other publications developed
this very fully; and would here merely quote the summing up of the
argument, as given in my Address of 1875 before the American
Association for the Advancement of Science:

"I have thus far said nothing of the bearing of the prevalent ideas of
descent with modification on this wonderful procession of life. None
of these of course can be expected to take us back to the origin of
living beings; but they also fail to explain why so vast numbers of
highly organized species struggle into existence simultaneously in one
age and disappear in another; why no continuous chain of succession in
time can be found gradually blending species into each other; and why
in the natural succession of things degradation under the influence of
external conditions and final extinction seem to be laws of organic
existence. It is useless here to appeal to the imperfection of the
record or to the movements or migrations of species. The record is now
in many important parts too complete, and the simultaneousness of the
entrance of the faunas and floras too certainly established, and
moving species from place to place only evades the difficulty. The
truth is that such hypotheses are at present premature, and that we
require to have larger collections of facts. Independently of this,
however, it appears to me that from a philosophical point of view it
is extremely probable that all theories of evolution as at present
applied to life are fundamentally defective in being too partial in
their character; and perhaps I can not b