. Especially in the province of nature, so many things
which could not be discovered by mere observation have been traced
indirectly, and so many important and established facts have been added to
our stores of knowledge, by first starting from hypothetical premises, that
man has again and again endeavored to approximate an answer to the question
of the origin of species by taking the indirect course of hypothesis and
induction, whenever the direct way of observation did not lead to any
result. Religion of course gives a solution to the problem by stating that
the species have been originated by the creative act of God. It is wrong to
say that this solution is opposed to the above-mentioned impulse toward
investigation; for this solution suffices for religion, whether a natural
progress in the origination of species be established or not. For, to the
believer in religion, the whole universe, with all its objective phenomena
and growth, is the work of God as well as the individuals of the already
existing species; and a {25} closer acquaintance with the manner of their
origin is not only no disturbance to his ground of belief, but, on the
contrary, an addition to his knowledge of the method of God's action. In
every man of sound mind, the religious faith is not antagonistic or even
indifferent to the scientific impulse toward investigation, but stands upon
a most intimate footing with it. Hence the human intellect again and again
makes the attempt to find an answer to the problem of the origin of species
in a scientific way, and each endeavor of this kind necessarily ends with
the dilemma that either the first individuals of a species, no matter
whether it be the highest or the lowest, have been evolved out of inorganic
matter, or they originated by descent from the most closely related species
of their predecessors. The denial of the first part of our dilemma, and the
affirmation of the second, is the "Theory of Descent."

But this theory of descent leads us at once into another dilemma. If the
species originated by descent from the most closely related lower species,
and under certain circumstances also from species of the same rank, and
even by degeneration from the next higher, it must have occurred in one of
two ways: either by leaps--called by naturalists "metamorphosis of germs"
or "heterogenetic conception"--or by a succession of imperceptibly small
alterations of the individuals from generation to generation. Each