Now to both Science and Christianity, and especially to Science, this
enrichment of Evolution is important. And, on the part of Christianity,
the contribution to the system of Nature of a second barrier is of real
scientific value. At first it may seem merely to increase the
difficulty. But in reality it abolishes it. However paradoxical it
seems, it is nevertheless the case that two barriers are more easy to
understand than one--two mysteries are less mysterious than a single
mystery. For it requires two to constitute a harmony. One by itself is a
Catastrophe. But, just as the recurrence of an eclipse at different
periods makes an eclipse no breach of Continuity; just as the fact that
the astronomical conditions necessary to cause a Glacial Period will in
the remote future again be fulfilled constitutes the Great Ice Age a
normal phenomenon; so the recurrence of two periods associated with
special phenomena of Life, the second higher, and by the law necessarily
higher, is no violation of the principle of Evolution. Thus even in the
matter of adding a second to the one barrier of Nature, the Third
Kingdom may already claim to complement the Science of the Second. The
overthrow of Spontaneous Generation has left a break in Continuity which
continues to put Science to confusion. Alone, it is as abnormal and
perplexing to the intellect as the first eclipse. But if the Spiritual
Kingdom can supply Science with a companion-phenomenon, the most
exceptional thing in the scientific sphere falls within the domain of
Law. This, however, is no more than might be expected from a Third
Kingdom. True to its place as the highest of the Kingdoms, it ought to
embrace all that lies beneath and give to the First and Second their
final explanation.
How much more in the under-Kingdoms might be explained or illuminated
upon this principle, however tempting might be the inquiry, we cannot
turn aside to ask. But the rank of the Third Kingdom in the order of
Evolution implies that it holds the key to much that is obscure in the
world around--much that, apart from it, must always remain obscure. A
single obvious instance will serve to illustrate the fertility of the
method. What has this Kingdom to contribute to Science with regard to
the Problem of the origin of Life itself? Taking this as an isolated
phenomenon, neither the Second Kingdom, nor the Third apart from
revelation, has anything to pronounce. But when we observe the
companion-phenomenon in the higher Kingdom, the question is simplified.
It will be disputed by none that the source of Life in the Spiritual
World is God. And as the same Law of Biogenesis prevails in both
spheres, we may reason from the higher to the lower and affirm it to be
at least likely that the origin of life there has been the same.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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