IF matter and force are from eternity, then we can say that man had no
intelligent creator--that man was not a special creation.
We now know, if we know anything, that Jehovah, the divine potter, did
not mix and mould clay into the forms of men and women, and then breathe
the breath of life into these forms.
We now know that our first parents were not foreigners. We know that
they were natives of this world, produced here, and that their life did
not come from the breath of any god. We now know, if we know anything,
that the universe is natural, and that men and women have been naturally
produced. We now know our ancestors, our pedigree. We have the family
tree.
We have all the links of the chain, twenty-six links inclusive from
moner to man.
We did not get our information from inspired books. We have fossil facts
and living forms.
From the simplest creatures, from blind sensation, from organism from
one vague want, to a single cell with a nucleus, to a hollow ball filled
with fluid, to a cup with double walls, to a flat worm, to a something
that begins to breathe, to an organism that has a spinal chord, to
a link between the invertebrate to the vertebrate, to one that has a
cranium--a house for a brain--to one with fins, still onward to one with
fore and hinder fins, to the reptile mammalia, to the marsupials, to
the lemures, dwellers in trees, to the simiae, to the pithecanthropi, and
lastly, to man.
We know the paths that life has traveled. We know the footsteps of
advance. They have been traced. The last link has been found. For this
we are indebted, more than to all others, to the greatest of biologists,
Ernst Haeckel.
We now believe that the universe is natural and we deny the existence of
the supernatural.