and in that of an
elephant the same; the primitive germs from which a man, a dog, a frog,
and a lobster are gradually evolved, to all appearance the same--the
same microscopic atom of homogeneous matter, undistinguishable by any
known test from an animalcule almost at the bottom of the organic scale!
Above all, that the courses by which animals of all degrees of
complexity are gradually developed from apparently equally simple germs
should, whenever traceable, be found to consist of progressive
ramifications, so that every higher animal, before arriving at maturity,
passes through several stages at the end of each of which lower animals
have stopped! How impossible, or how easy, to understand, according as
the one or the other hypothesis is adopted, is the phenomenon of what in
the one case will be treated as rudimentary, in the other as obsolete,
organs! No one need scruple to regard these as apparatus which the
creature has outgrown and allowed to fall into decay through neglect;
but whatever there is in us of real nobleness of feeling revolts against
the notion of their being apparatus which a divine Creator began to
build but was not able to finish. And yet again, how insultingly
irreconcilable with any rational estimate of Divine nature is the
possibility of any existing type of mammals having been created, seeing
that if so, it must have been created with _false_ marks of nourishment
from the womb of a mother that never existed!

These are some of the main grounds on which the Darwinian theory rests.
Of the abundance of detailed illustrations from which it may derive
additional support no adequate idea can be formed, except by careful
perusal of its author's own writings, and these fortunately may without
much exaggeration be said to be in everybody's hands. Of the arguments
that have been brought forward in opposition to it, all seem to me to
be susceptible of very complete answers, and one or two of the
strongest, of answers more complete than they have yet received. True,
there is no disputing the testimony borne by the paintings and
sculptures of Egyptian tombs, and of Ninevite palaces, that the basement
floors in Thebes and Memphis were infested by much the same sort of
beetles as those which are such nuisances in London kitchens; that
Sardanapalus, if ever he exchanged indoor for outdoor sports, may have
hunted with dogs and horses that might pass muster at an English meet,
and that the Pharaohs were served