o the future
enlightened by experience and by the employment of a sage induction.
What is the relation existing between these systematic views and the
question of the Creator? This is the sole object of our study.

The opinions of the English naturalist are very dubious as to the vital
questions of religious philosophy. I have pointed out to you the
confusion of his ideas in the use which he makes of natural selection.
In the text of his book, he admits, in the special case of life, the
intervention of the Creator for the production of the first living
being, and he does not speak of man, except in an incidental sentence,
which only attentive readers will take any notice of. If we do not take
the liberty to look a little below the surface, we must say that Mr.
Darwin remains on the ground of natural history. Therefore I spoke to
you of the aberrations of philosophic thought which have been produced
_on the occasion_ of his book. These aberrations are the following:

First of all, natural selection has been taken for a cause, or rather as
dispensing with the necessity for a cause, by means of a confusion of
ideas for which the author is responsible. The system has therefore been
understood as implying, that organized beings were formed without plan,
without design, by the mere action of material causes, and as the result
of modifications casual at first, and slowly accumulated. Divine
intelligence and creative power thus seemed to be disappearing from the
organization of the universe, and to disappear especially before the
lapse of time and the infinitely slow action of physical causes. But
while the system was taking wing, and soaring aloft, lo! the Creator at
the commencement of things, and man conceived as a distinct being at the
highest point of nature, have risen up as two idols and paralyzed its
flight. To Mr. Darwin, however, have speedily succeeded disciples
compromising their master's authority, and addressing him in some such
language as this: "You, our master, do not fully follow out your own
opinions; you strain off gnats,[125] and swallow camels. It is not more
difficult to see in the living cellule a transformation of matter, and
in man a transformation of the monkey, than to point out in a sponge the
ancestor of the horse. Cast down your idols, and confess that matter
developed in course of time, under favorable circumstances, is the
origin of all that is." Matter, time, circumstances--these things have
t