pp. 200, 201.) Really Professor Huxley, by his description of Darwinism as a "method of trial and error and of organisms as being like "grape shot of which one hits something and the rest fall wide," has done more than anybody else to fasten the charge on Mr. Darwin of having attempted to reinstate the old pagan goddess Chance. He should restrain his indignation. How does his grape-shot illustration agree with "the one act of faith in the convert to science," namely, "the confession of the universality of order, and of the absolute validity in all times and under all circumstances of the law of causation"? Where is the causation in the organism which hits and the organisms which fall wide? Could any one, however great his insight into the order of nature, have predicted which one would hit and which would fall wide? Why should any organism hit anything in the circumstances? Need we wonder that any one, having read Professor Huxley on the origin of species, should come to the conclusion that the essence of Darwinism was just this appeal to chance? The appeal to "lucky accidents" is made so often by Mr. Darwin and his followers that one can hardly help thinking of the "lucky accident" as having a part to play in the constitution of things.

Leaving chance and accident out of account on both sides, our contention is that teleology gives us the only tenable explanation of the history of life on the earth. The evidence of organic evolution is so vast, so varied, that most people nowadays must accept the conclusion to which it points. Naturalists are convinced that the plants and animals of to-day

are descended from others of a simpler sort, and that these are descended from others yet more simple, and thus we may conceivably go back to the first beginnings of life. The arguments of Darwin are based on the distribution of animals in space, their successive appearance in time, on actual variations in domestication, cultivation, and in nature, on facts of structure, and on embryology. The evidence seems irresistible. Most scientific men accept it; and they have their rights, and are bound to uphold, vindicate, and expound what they believe to be true. If organic evolution, then, be accepted as true, where do we stand? Have we any interest in what is called "special creations"? If we believe in intelligence as the cause of order, then we should expect that all organic forms have arisen in conformity with uniform laws, and not through breaches of uniform law. We no longer believe-whatever men did once believe-that plants and animals were suddenly thrust into the complex conditions of their life; that the complex of inner relations was suddenly and in a moment adjusted to the complex of outer relations; or that the actual concrete life of a plant or an animal was thus originated and perpetuated. But creation by evolution is still creation.

Evolution is opposed only to a particular theory of creation, and that theory was as much scientific as religious. There is a theory of special creation which can be no longer held. The view was that each species or kind was directly created by God at the beginning of the world, and has gone on reproducing itself after its kind. The clearest statement of this view is to be

found in the great botanist Linnæus, who held that "there are just so many species as there are different forms created by the infinite Being; and these different forms, according to the laws of reproduction imposed on them, produced others, but always forms like themselves." We have something like the same view in Milton's Paradise Lost: lions, tigers, stags, all ready-made, working their way out of the earth,—

"The tawny lion, pawing to get free
His hinder parts," etc.

At the beginning of this century the belief was universal, both among religious and scientific men, that species were fixed and never passed into each other. Now all this is altered, and most scientific men hold a doctrine of descent, or evolution.

It is clear that the doctrine of special creation as set forth, say, by Linnæus, is inconsistent with the doctrine of Darwin. And if organic evolution is true, we have to ask, Are we committed to the doctrine of special creation? or rather, Is the doctrine of special creation as above defined an essential part of theism or Christianity? There was a time when men earnestly contended for the immutability of species, and thought that important consequences would follow from the denial of it. But that time is past, and the immutability of species happily forms no part of the creed of Christendom, nor of the teaching of Scripture; for the creeds of Christendom simply affirm that God is the Maker of the world and all that is in it, and does not say anything about the way and manner in which He made them. The

Scripture says that "He maketh the grass to grow on the mountains"; but says nothing about whether He caused it to grow suddenly or otherwise, directly or indirectly. The Scriptures teach a doctrine of descent, and have no hesitation in saying that all the races of men are descended from one father, and "God hath made of one blood all the nations of the earth." If all the races of men are modified descendants of one primeval man, and if descent with modification can account for all of them, where is the objection on Scriptural and theological grounds to accepting a theory which simply extends to the whole world of organic life a principle which theology has always contended for as true with respect to man? Theology has had its difficulties with regard to Traducianism and Creationism; and the same difficulties, and no greater, appear with respect to evolution and special creation. What is essential is that we maintain and vindicate the continued dependence of all creation on its Maker, and that if things are made so as to make themselves, God is their Maker after all; and if evolution can tell us anything of the method of creation and the order in which the different forms of life appeared, then we ought to rejoice in it.

CHAPTER VII

ORGANIC EVOLUTION (Continued)

Biology before and after Darwin-Physical continuity of life -Laws and conditions of life-Adequacy or inadequacy of Natural Selection?-Inter-relations of life-Professor Geddes on anthropomorphism of the nineteenth century and of the eighteenth--Weismann-Natural selection is elimination of the unfit-Oscillation between natural selection as negative and as positive-Poulton, “that selection is examination "-Teleology run mad--Mimicry -Search after utility-Mutual benefit of species in co-operation-Illustration-Struggle for existence thus

modified-Results.

THE

HE contrast between works on biology which were written before the appearance of Darwin's Origin of Species and those which have appeared since that great work is most striking. There can be no doubt that biologists have got hold of a most fruitful hypothesis, and the conceptions introduced by Darwin have shed a great light on the sciences which deal with life. Things which seemed to be far apart and isolated from one another have suddenly been seen to be closely connected, and structures and organisms are seen to be related to one another, and to be parts of an intelligible whole. The full and adequate appreciation of the worth of the facts and of the laws can be grasped completely only by