The Passing of Evolution
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leap to assert that, therefore, it may be reasonably supposed that all the differences between animals or between plants may have arisen in a similar manner. A characteristic difference between the African elephant and the Indian elephant, for example, is that the African ele- phant has three toes on his hinder feet and the Indian has four. While, therefore, it may not be a great stretch of imagination to suppose that this difference has arisen by a natural process, without any outside intervention, it is an indefinitely larger stretch of the imagination to suppose that all the members of the general famP y to which they belong have originated in a like manner; for, this family, or order, includes not only the elephant, but the rhinoceros, hippopota- mus, tapir, wild boar and horse.
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But many of Darwin's followers and expounders have gone to extreme lengths in their assertions, and have an- nounced far more astonishing conclusions than these. Not only do they assert, with a positiveness of which Darwin was never guilty, that species have had a common origin through natural causes, but that all organic beings had been equally independent of supernatural forces. I t is a small thing that the two species of elephant should have descended from a common stock. Nothing will satisfy them but to assert that the elephant, the lion, the bear, the mouse, the kangaroo, the whale, the shark, the shad, birds of every description—indeed, all forms of animal life, including the oyster and the snail-— have arisen by strictly natural processes from some minute speck of life, which originated in far distant time. > ORIGIN OF LIFE I t need not be said that such conclusions must rest upon very attenuated evidence, such as is not permitted to have weight in the ordinary affairs of life. But even this is only the beginning with thoroughgoing evolutionists. To be con- sistent they must not only have all species of animals or plants, > *
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