The Interpreters of Genesis and the Interpreters of Nature | Page 6

founding himself on Genesis,
says--water, air, land- population. If a chronicler of Greece affirmed
that the age of Alexander preceded that of Pericles and immediately
succeeded that of the Trojan war, Mr. Gladstone would hardly say that
this order is "understood to have been so affirmed by historical science
that it may be taken as a demonstrated conclusion and established fact."
Yet natural science "affirms" his "fourfold order" to exactly the same
extent--neither more nor less.
Suppose, however, that "fowl" is to be taken to include flying insects.
In that case, the first appearance of an air-population must be shifted
back for long ages, recent discovery having shown that they occur in
rocks of Silurian age. Hence there might still have been hope for the
fourfold order, were it not that the fates unkindly determined that
scorpions--"creeping things that creep on the earth" par
excellence--turned up in Silurian strata nearly at the same time. So
that, if the word in the original Hebrew translated "fowl" should really
after all mean "cockroach"--and I have great faith in the elasticity of
that tongue in the hands of Biblical exegetes--the order primarily
suggested by the existing evidence--
2. Land and air-population; 1. Water-population;
and Mr. Gladstone's order--
3. Land-population; 2. Air-population; 1. Water-population;
can by no means be made to coincide. As a matter of fact, then, the
statement so confidently put forward turns out to be devoid of
foundation and in direct contradiction of the evidence at present at our
disposal.<3>
If, stepping beyond that which may be learned from the facts of the
successive appearance of the forms of animal life upon the surface of
the globe, in so far as they are yet made known to us by natural science,
we apply our reasoning faculties to the task of finding out what those

observed facts mean, the present conclusions of the interpreters of
nature appear to be no less directly in conflict with those of the latest
interpreter of Genesis.
Mr. Gladstone appears to admit that there is some truth in the doctrine
of evolution, and indeed places it under very high patronage.
I contend that evolution in its highest form has not been a
thing heretofore unknown to history, to philosophy, or to theology. I
contend that it was before the mind of Saint Paul when he taught that in
the fulness of time God sent forth His Son, and of Eusebius when he
wrote the "Preparation for the Gospel," and of Augustine when he
composed the "City of God" (p. 706).
Has any one ever disputed the contention, thus solemnly enunciated,
that the doctrine of evolution was not invented the day before yesterday?
Has any one ever dreamed of claiming it as a modern innovation? Is
there any one so ignorant of the history of philosophy as to be unaware
that it is one of the forms in which speculation embodied itself long
before the time either of the Bishop of Hippo or of the Apostle to the
Gentiles? Is Mr. Gladstone, of all people in the world, disposed to
ignore the founders of Greek philosophy, to say nothing of Indian sages
to whom evolution was a familiar notion ages before Paul of Tarsus
was born? But it is ungrateful to cavil at even the most oblique
admission of the possible value of one of those affirmations of natural
science which really may be said to be "a demonstrated conclusion and
established fact." I note it with pleasure, if only for the purpose of
introducing the observation that, if there is any truth whatever in the
doctrine of evolution as applied to animals, Mr. Gladstone's gloss on
Genesis in the following passage is hardly happy:--
God created (a) The water-population; (b) The air-population.
And they receive His benediction (v. 20-23).
6. Pursuing this regular progression from the lower to the higher, from
the simple to the complex, the text now gives us the work of the sixth
"day," which supplies the land-population, air and water having been

already supplied (pp. 695, 696).
The gloss to which I refer is the assumption that the "air- population"
forms a term in the order of progression from lower to higher, from
simple to complex--the place of which lies between the
water-population below and the land-population above--and I speak of
it as a "gloss," because the pentateuchal writer is nowise responsible for
it.
But it is not true that the air-population, as a whole, is "lower" or less
"complex" than the land-population. On the contrary, every beginner in
the study of animal morphology is aware that the organisation of a bat,
of a bird, or of a pterodactyle presupposes that of a terrestrial
quadruped; and that it is intelligible only as an extreme modification of
the organisation of