Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 28.djvu/829

pædia Britannica." But that it does not inform us on these practical matters is surely a valid argument why we should not expect it to instruct the world in geology. Mr. Huxley is particular to point out to us that the bat and the Pterodactyl must be classified under the "winged fowl" of Genesis, while at a stretch he believes the cockroach might also be included. But we should not wonder if the narrator did not think of this.

Scientific men, apparently, need this warning, not less than those whom they punish for neglecting it. How ignorantly, often, the genius of the Bible is comprehended by those who are loudest in their denunciations of its positions otherwise, is typically illustrated in the following passage from Haeckel. Having in an earlier paragraph shown a general harmony between the Mosaic cosmogony and his own theory of creation, he proceeds to extract out of Genesis nothing less than the evolution theory, and that in its last and highest developments:

Two great and fundamental ideas, common also to the non-miraculous theory of development, meet us in this Mosaic hypothesis of creation with surprising clearness and simplicity—the idea of separation or differentiation, and the idea of progressive development or perfecting. Although Moses looks upon the results of the great laws of organic development. . . as the direct actions of a constructing Creator, yet in his theory there lies hidden the ruling idea of a progressive development and a differentiation of the originally simple matter.^[1]

With the next breath this interpreter of Genesis exposes "two great fundamental errors" in the same chapter of the book in which he has just discovered the most scientific phases of the evolution hypothesis, and which lead him to express for Moses "just wonder and admiration." What can be the matter with this singular book? Why is it science to Haeckel one minute and error the next? Why are Haeckel and Mr. Huxley not agreed, if it is science? Why are Haeckel and Mr. Gladstone agreed, if it is religion? If Mr. Huxley does not agree with Haeckel why does he not agree with Mr. Gladstone?

George MacDonald has an exquisite little poem called "Baby's Catechism." It occurs among his children's pieces:

Where did you come from, baby dear?
Out of the everywhere into here.

Where did you get your eyes so blue?
Out of the sky as I came through.

Where did you get that little tear?
I found it waiting when I got here.

Where did you get that pearly ear?
God spoke, and it came out to hear.

Now did they nil just come to be you?
God thought about mo and so I grew.

1. Haeckel, "History of Creation," vol. i, p. 38.