"Another gap is between the nature of the animal
and the self-conscious, reasoning, and moral nature of man." (pp.
325-328)

First, as to the gap between death and life; this is what Dr. Stirling
calls the "gulf of all gulfs, which Mr. Huxley's protoplasm is as
powerless to efface as any other material expedient that has ever been
suggested."[55] This gulf Mr. Darwin does not attempt to bridge over. He
admits that life owes its origin to the act of the Creator. This,
however, the most prominent of the advocates of Darwinism say, is giving
up the whole controversy. If you admit the intervention of creative
power at one point, you may as well admit it in any other. If life owes
its origin to creative power, why not species? If the stupendous miracle
of creation be admitted, there is no show of reason for denying
supernatural intervention in the operations of nature. Most Darwinians
attempt to pass this gulf on the imaginary bridge of spontaneous
generation. In other words, they say there is no gulf there. The
molecules of matter, in one combination, may as well exhibit the
phenomena of life, as in other combinations, any other kind of
phenomena. The distinguished Sir William Thomson cannot trust himself to
that bridge. "Dead matter," he says, "cannot become living matter
without coming under the influence of matter previously alive. This
seems to me as sure a teaching of science as the law of gravitation....
I am ready to adopt, as an article of scientific faith, true through all
space and through all time, that life proceeds from life, and nothing
but life."[56] He refers the origin of life on this earth to falling
meteors, which bring with them from other planets the germs of living
organisms; and from those germs all the plants and animals with which
our world is now covered have been derived. Principal Dawson thinks that
this was intended as irony. But the whole tone of the address, and
specially of the closing portion of it, in which this idea is advanced,
is far too serious to admit of such an explanation.

No one can read the address referred to without being impressed, and
even awed, by the immensity and grandeur of the field of knowledge which
falls legitimately within the domain of science. The perusal of that
discourse produces a feeling of humility analogous to the sense of
insignificance which every man experiences when he thinks of himself as
a speck on the surface of the earth, which itself is but a speck