Page:Genesis I-II- (IA genesisiii00grot).pdf/89

have a tail, and that we resemble the inferior animals too closely in our growth in the womb to allow of our claim to divine honors on account of our bodily form, while there is no need to deceive ourselves with the notion that mind is shared by us in no degree with the inferior animals

But even here the accounts in Genesis show an incomplete idea of the various parts of organized Nature, which of itself accounts for their mechanical philosophy. The interdependence which we now plainly see to exist between plants and animals, and between these and the inorganic world, is itself inconsistent with acts of separate and special creation. Nature has evidently grown up gradually to be what is to-day through immense periods of time and an infinite number of small adaptive and progressive changes. For instance, the earliest land-plants were flowerless; insect-loving flowers and the particular insects which assist in fertilizing them seem to have developed and grown up side by side, from simpler and more ancient kinds of plants and insects, so far as we can gather the facts from the fossil remains of both. Special discoveries, contradicting the in details the accounts in Genesis, may be plentifully cited, but it is enough that we appreciate the general character of the myth to show its want of correspondence with the facts of Geology and Biology as we now understand them. The crust of the earth consists largely of the remains of both plants and animals, which, when alive, gathered their substance from each other, the earth and atmosphere. There is no comprehension of this fact in Genesis, nothing but a distinguishing of earth, plant and animal, with a mere indication of their surroundings apart from their mutual relations, or merely with reference to a vegetable food for man and animals. The writers of Genesis recognize the different objects as distinct pieces in a puzzle, but our better knowledge shows their interdependence and the way they fit together.