nists; that these laws
in connection with the modifying influences of environment
(surroundings,--soil, climate, etc.) account for and explain the various
species that have existed in the past and now exist upon earth, man
included. That there are no gaps in the process but that there is
demonstrable a steady ascent from lower to higher (simple to more
complex) forms of life, until man is reached, the acknowledged highest
product of evolution.

The extreme evolutionists hold that all the power and potency of the
universe was stored up in that primordial cell, and that all things have
been worked out without any superintending agency other than the forces
resident in matter. Every operation of God is ruled out, or deemed
unnecessary. This is sometimes called atheistic evolution.

The theistic evolutionist ("theistic" from "theism," the belief in a
personal God) makes place for God in the beginning and all along the
line of development, as overlooking the process, perhaps reinforcing and
to a certain extent directing the energy, but not interfering with the
fixed law or rule of evolution. According to theistic evolution, God did
not create plants and animals as separate species (as related in Genesis
1) but created matter as a crude form and placed it under certain laws,
by which this matter was, during untold ages, gradually evolved into
worlds. That out of this matter, called inorganic, plants came into
existence, from some germ or property existing in matter. The origin of
animal life is explained in various ways by the so-called theistic
evolutionists. Some hold that the primordial plant life contained
potentially the lowest and simplest principles of animal life, and from
it the simplest animal forms were evolved; that from these latter were
evolved forms a little higher, until, after long ages, all the
gradations were passed through until man, the highest form, was the
result. Others believe that there is such an essential difference
between plants and animals that the latter could not have come from the
former, that there must be a new start on the animal side of life.
Therefore they claim that when the evolutionary development of matter
reached a certain stage, God appeared on the scene and endowed certain
forms with the principle of animal life, in its lowest elements. These
lowest forms of animal life then entered upon a series of evolutionary
growth, each lower form evolving one a little more complex, each ser