The Dart Maker Blog

Leftovers of “Special Creation” theory or any altogether exceptional mode of earth’s creation is quite ludicrous! Creationism is given also to apply to the more evolved species as well as to the species of a genus, and not even Mr. Darwin’s strongest critics try to propose that the proterozoic bird, reptile, or fish could have been “specially created.” And this broad, this completely unprecedented change in common thought has been the result of the influence of one man, and was brought out in the short space of twenty years! This is the answer to those who go on to maintain that the “origin of species” was not yet discovered. We may acknowledge all this, just as we might confess that there are immense difficulties in the manner of a total understanding of the ancestry and nature of all the parts of the solar system and universe. But we distinguish Darwin as the Newton of natural history, just so certainly as we accept that the uncovering and demonstration by Newton of the law of gravity proved order in place of chaos and laid a sure foundation for all next study of the cosmos, so surely has Darwin, by his discovery of the law of natural selection and his presentation of the great theory of the preservation of useful variations in the struggle for life established a good basis for all succeeding study of nature.

Just to point out the attitude Darwin held of his own study, and he alone claimed to have done, the concluding excerpt of the introduction to the Origin of Species ought to be carefully studied. “Although much rests obscure, and will long continue to bet obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the opinion which most naturalists until recently held — namely, that each species has been independently created — is mistaken. I am fully certain that species are not changeless; but that those belonging to what are named the same species are direct descendants of some other and generally extinct species, in the same manner as the acknowledged varieties of any one species are the descendants of that species. Furthermore, I am sure that Natural Selection has been the most important, but not the only, means of modification.”

The artwork by Michelangelo of Adam and God attests to the brilliance emerging in the evolution of art, philosophy and science.