Christianity and positivism Author:James McCosh Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: III. Limits To The Law Of Natural Selection. — This Worlli A Scene Of Struggle. — Appearance Of Spiritual Life. — Final Cause. — New Life. — Unity And Growth ... more »In The World. — Higher Products Coming Forth. — Signs Of Progress. nrHERE are clear indications, in the geological ages, of a progression from the inanimate up to the animate, and from the lower animate to the higher. The mind, ever impelled to seek for causes, asks how all this is produced. The answer, if answer can be had, is to be given by science, and not by religion ; which simply insists that we trace all things up to God, whether acting by immediate or by mediate agency. Mr. Darwin would refer it all to the somewhat vaguely enunciated principle of Natural Selection, or the preservation of the creatures best suited to their circumstances, and the success of the strong in the struggle of life. That this principle is exhibited in nature, and working to the advancement of the plants and animals from age to age, I have no doubt. We see it operating before our eyes every spring, when we find the weak plant killed by the frosts of winter, and thestrong surviving and producing a progeny strong as itself. But it has not been proven that there is no other principle at work. I am not satisfied that this principle has produced life out of dead matter, that it has produced sentient beings out of insentient, that it has wrought the conscious mind from the unconscious body, that it has generated man from the brute. There is no positive proof that it has so much as produced a new species of animals out of old ones. In regard to this latter point, it seems to account for some of the phenomena, but leaves others unexplained. In particular, there are gaps in the geological ages between the species of one age and those of another ag...« less