If any one thinks that this is an exaggerated picture of the effects of agnostic evolution as applied to man, I may refer him to the study of Herbert Spencer's recent work _The Data of Ethics_, which has contributed very much to open the eyes of thoughtful men to the depth of spiritual, moral, and even social and political, ruin into which we shall drift under the guidance of this philosophy. In this work the data of ethics are reduced to the one consideration of what is "pleasurable" to ourselves and others, and it is admitted that our ideas of conscience, duty, and even of social obligation, are merely fictions of temporary use until the time shall come when what is pleasurable to ourselves shall coincide with what is pleasurable to others; and this is to come, not out of the love of God and the influence of his Spirit, but out of the blind struggle of opposing interests. It has been well said that this system of morals--if it can be dignified with such a name--is inferior, logically and practically, not only to the "supernatural ethics" which it boastfully professes to replace, but to the ethics of Aristotle and Cicero, and that "it will not supersede revelation, nor is it likely to displace the old data of ethics, whether Greek, Roman, or English." Independently of its antagonism to theism and Christianity, it is foredoomed by the common sense and the right feeling of even imperfect human nature.
[2] Those who wish to understand the real bearings of palæontology on evolution should study Barrande's _Memoirs on the Silurian Trilobites, Cephalopods, and Brachiopods_.
[3] Beckett, _Origin of the Laws of Nature_.
[4] _Refutation of Darwinism_, Philadelphia, 1880.
[5] It was scarcely necessary to refer to this childish objection unless the individual skeleton of Adam had been in question.
EVOLUTION AS TESTED BY THE RECORDS OF THE ROCKS.
Having discussed those vague analogies and fanciful pedigrees by which it has been attempted to drag the science of Biology into the service of Agnostic Evolution, we may now turn to another science--that of the earth--and inquire how far it justifies us in affirming the spontaneous evolution of plants and animals in the progress of geological time. This subject is one which would require a lengthy treatise for its full development, and it cannot be pursued in the most satisfactory way without much previous knowledge of geological facts and principles, and of the classification of animals and plants. On the present occasion it must therefore be treated in the most general possible manner, and with reference merely to the results which have been reached. There is the more excuse for this mode of treatment that, in works already published and widely circulated,[7] I have endeavored to present its details in a popular form to general readers.
