Evolution and the fall / by the Rev. Francis J. Hall.

  • Hall, Francis J. (Francis Joseph), 1857-1932.
Date:
1910
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Evolution and the fall / by the Rev. Francis J. Hall. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    sudden creations, as descriptive of the origin of things. The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant, broached the theory of a development of all things out of prim- itive nebula in obedience to physical forces and laws. Shelling regarded nature as vital rather than mechan- ical, and as a process of organic self-evolution. Hegel maintained that God realizes Himself in the evolution of the world through the three stages of mechanical, physical, and organic development. History, he said, begins with spirit, which determines subsequent evolution. The early appearance of such forms of thought, and their wide prevalence, were the natural and inevitable result of men’s observation of the phenomena of growth in individual organisms, and of the gradation of species in the animal and vegetable kingdoms. But previous to the development of modern biological science, evo- lutionary theories were necessarily conjectural; and they could not gain a serious foothold so long as no credible explanation of the method of evolution was forthcoming. Moreover, up to Paley’s time, modem theologians and scientists ahke believed in the fixity of species. With a very few exceptions the notion that species undergo mutation was confined to speculative philosophers.^ The older allegorical interpretation of Genesis was without support, and theologians natu- rally read existing science into the biblical account of 1 The author of the scientific doctrine of the fixity of species was John Ray, a younger contemporary of Milton. It was accepted by Linnteus and Cuvier and became a scientific postulate. See V. F. Storr, Development, pp. 36, 37.