live in those days to her very
paving-stones; town and university combined to form a hotbed of
intellectual unrest, a breeding-ground for disturbing possibilities.
The "development theory" was in the air; and a book that appeared
anonymously had boldly voiced, in popular fashion, Maillet's dream and
the Lamarckian hypothesis of a Creation undertaken once and for all, in
place of a continuous creative intenention. This book, opposing natural
law to miracle, carried complete conviction to the young and eager.
Audacious spirits even hazarded the conjecture that primitive life
itself might have originated in a natural way: had not, but recently,
an investigator who brought a powerful voltaic battery to bear on a
saturated solution of silicate of potash, been startled to find, as the
result of his experiment, numberless small mites of the species ACARUS
HORRIDUS? Might not the marvel electricity or galvanism, in action on
albumen, turn out to be the vitalising force? To the orthodox
zoologist, phytologist and geologist, such a suggestion savoured of
madness; they either took refuge in a contemptuous silence, or
condescended only to reply: Had one visited the Garden of Eden during
Creation, one would have found that, in the morning, man was not, while
in the evening he was!--morning and evening bearing their newly
established significance of geological epochs. The famous tracing of
the Creator's footsteps, undertaken by a gifted compromiser, was felt
by even the most bigoted to be a lame rejoinder. His ASTEROLEPSIS, the
giant fossil-fish from the Old Red Sandstone, the antiquity of which
should show that the origin of life was not to be found solely in
"infusorial points," but that highly developed forms were among the
earliest created--this single prop was admittedly not strong enough to
carry the whole burden of proof. No, the immutability of species had
been seriously impugned, and bold minds asked themselves why a single
act of creation, at the outset, should not constitute as divine an
origin of life as a continued series of "creative fiats."

Mahony was one of them. The "development theory" did not repel him. He
could see no impiety in believing that life, once established on the
earth, had been left to perfect itself. Or hold that this would
represent the Divine Author of all things as, after one master-stroke,
dreaming away eternal ages in apathy and indifference. Why should the
perfect functioning of natural law not