It may be said that Mr.
Darwin is not responsible for these extreme opinions. That is very true.
Mr. Darwin is not a Monist, for in admitting creation, he admits a
dualism as between God and the world. Neither is he a Materialist,
inasmuch as he assumes a supernatural origin for the infinitesimal
modicum of life and intelligence in the primordial animalcule, from
which without divine purpose or agency, all living things in the whole
history of our earth have descended. All the innumerable varieties of
plants, all the countless forms of animals, with all their instincts and
faculties, all the varieties of men with their intellectual endowments,
and their moral and religious nature, have, according to Darwin, been
evolved by the agency of the blind, unconscious laws of nature. This
infinitesimal spark of supernaturalism in Mr. Darwin's theory, would
inevitably have gone out of itself, had it not been rudely and
contemptuously trodden out by his bolder, and more logical successors.
The grand and fatal objection to Darwinism is this exclusion of design
in the origin of species, or the production of living organisms. By
design is meant the intelligent and voluntary selection of an end, and
the intelligent and voluntary choice, application, and control of means
appropriate to the accomplishment of that end. That design, therefore,
implies intelligence, is involved in its very nature.
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