observers for more
than two or three minutes, and was able to give him my whole attention
as soon as I had recovered from my confusion. Dr. Zerffi said:--

Dr. Darwin's theory of evolution and selection has changed our modern
mode of studying the inorganic and organic phenomena of nature, and
investigating the realities of truth. His theory is not altogether new,
having been first proclaimed by Leibnitz, and followed up with regard to
history by Giovanni Battista Vico. Oken and Goethe amplified it towards
the end of the last, and at the beginning of the present century.
Darwin, however, has systematized the theory of evolution, and now the
branches of human knowledge can only be advantageously pursued if we
trace in all phenomena, whether material or spiritual, a beginning and a
gradual development. One fact has prominently been established, that
there is order in the eternal change, that this order is engendered by
law, and that law and order are the criterions of an all-wise ruling
Spirit pervading the Universe. To this positive spirit of law a spirit
of negation, an element of rebellion and mischief, of mockery and
selfishness, commonly called the Devil, has been opposed from the
beginning.

It appeared, till very lately, as though God had created the world only
for the purpose of amusing the Devil, and giving him an abundance of
work, all directed to destroying the happiness of God's finest
creation--man. Treating the Devil from a Darwinian point of view, we may
assert that he developed himself from the protoplasm of ignorance, and
in the gloomy fog of fear and superstition grew by degrees into a
formidable monster, being changed by the overheated imaginations of
dogmatists into a reptile, an owl, a raven, a dog, a wolf, a lion, a
centaur, a being half monkey, half man, till, finally, he became a
polite and refined human being.

Man once having attained a certain state of consciousness, saw sickness,
evil, and death around him, and as it was usual to assign to every
effect some tangible cause, man developed the abstract notion of evil
into a concrete form, which changed with the varying impressions of
climate, food, and the state of intellectual progress. To the white man
the Devil was black, and to the black man white. Originally, then, the
Devil was merely a personification of the apparently destructive forces
of nature. Fire was his element. The Indians had their Rakshas and
Uragas, the Egyptians their Typhon,