Sixthly. There is another consideration of decisive importance. Strauss
says, there are three things which have been stumbling-blocks in the way
of science. First, the origin of life; second, the origin of
consciousness; third, the origin of reason. These are equivalent to the
gaps which, Principal Dawson says, exist in the theory of evolution. He
states them thus: 1. That between dead and living matter. 2. That
between vegetable and animal life. "These are necessarily the converse
of each other: the one deoxidizes and accumulates, the other oxidizes
and expends." 3. That "between any species of plant or animal, and any
other species. It was this gap, and this only, which Darwin undertook to
fill up by his great work on the origin of species, but, notwithstanding
the immense amount of material thus expended, it yawns as wide as ever,
since it must be admitted that no case has been ascertained in which an
individual of one species has transgressed the limits between it and
another species." 4. "Another gap is between the nature of the animal
and the self-conscious, reasoning, and moral nature of man." (pp.
325-328)
First, as to the gap between death and life; this is what Dr. Stirling
calls the "gulf of all gulfs, which Mr. Huxley's protoplasm is as
powerless to efface as any other material expedient that has ever been
suggested."[55] This gulf Mr.
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