able as the attempt to base the eternal truth of religion on what may eventually prove to be a transient phase of scientific belief.

With regard to evolution, however, we are dealing with what may fairly claim to be an established doctrine. Certainly it is not too much to say that in the scientific world it has won its way to security, and has brought over to its side the vast majority of those who have a right to give an opinion on the scientific question. In saying this, however, we do not mean that evolution is stereotyped in the form in which Darwin gave it to the world. No one would more indignantly resent such a possibility than Darwin himself. And it is remarkable that the year which told us the story of Darwin's work and life, found us face to face with two attempts to carry out the doctrine of evolution in different, and as it seems, mutually inconsistent lines. In the July number of the " Journal of the Linnæan Society," 1886, Mr. Romanes propounded a theory-perhaps we should more properly say suggested for consideration a theory-to which he gave the name of physiological selection. Last year, thanks to two excellent articles in "Nature," by Prof. Moseley, and a paper at the British Association on " Polar Globules," we were introduced to Prof. Weismann's " germ-plasma " doctrine.

What is commonly known as Darwinism includes in it two elements which are by no means necessarily connected-the one the Lamarckian theory of descent, the other the more strictly Darwinian theory of natural selection. We had got so accustomed to being told that the experience of one generation became the instinct of the next, and that the transmission of acquired habits was one of the most important as well as the most obvious factors in the variation in species, that it is somewhat startling to be told now that there is no verified case of the transmission of acquired characters, and that the Lamarckian doctrine of descent was never essential to Darwinism, though it existed as a survival in it. Yet this, in short, is Prof. Weismann's view, and it was received with general favor at the Manchester meeting of the British Association. It would seem to those who speak without special knowledge that the two views advocated respectively by Mr. Romanes and Prof. Weismann are mutually incompatible, and that the latter view if adopted would be fatal to some of the most cherished theories of Herbert Spencer. According to Mr. Romanes, "natural selection is not a theory of the origin of species."* According to Prof. Weismann, natural selection is the main cause of such variation. Mr. Romanes talks of the "swamping effects of intercrossing," while Prof. Weismann sees in every case of sexual reproduction a multiplication of the possibilities of adaptation to an unfavorable

* "Journal," p. 398.

fenvironment. Finally, Mr. Romanes postulates a highly variable reproductive system of which no explanation is given, and by this he would explain the sterility of species inter se; Prof. Weismann carries us back to the Protophyta and Protozoa, where strictly speaking there is no reproduction, and to the direct action of environment upon these, from which, in the Metaphyta and Metazoa, by sexual reproduction we get "spontaneous" tendencies multipled in geometrical ratio. These

spontaneous," or, as we prefer to call them, " inherent " tendencies or characters, are transmissible; acquired characters are not. We trust we have not misrepresented these views. We notice them not in the least with a view to deciding between them, though there is little doubt which way the balance of scientific authority at present inclines; still less with the wish to make capital out of their disagreement, but in order to emphasize the fact that, while Darwinism is generally accepted in the scientific world, there is much which as yet is unsettled; in other words, that, while every competent man of science now believes in the origin of species by progressive variations, we can not be too much on our guard against stereotyping any theory as to the proximate causes. It is nearly as true now as when Darwin wrote it in 1878 that, though "there is almost complete unanimity among biologists about evolution, . . . there is still considerable difference as to the means, such as how far natural selection has acted, and how far external conditions, or whether there exists some mysterious innate tendency to perfectibility."*

In the present and a future article we propose to deal with the doctrine so far as it is generally accepted by scientific men, and, without attempting to discuss the evidence on which the doctrine rests, to answer the following question: Given a Churchman who accepts the dogmatic position of the English Church on the one hand, and who, so far as he is able to understand it, believes the doctrine of evolution to be the truest solution yet discovered by science of the facts open to its observation, what reconstruction of traditionally accepted views and arguments is necessary and possible? How is he to relate the new truth with the old?

In so stating the problem we put out of court three classes of persons: (a) those who, intrenched in the fortress of religious certainty, are content to leave intellectual problems alone and ignore the movement of scientific thought around them; (b) those who are so "immersed in matter" that the religious side of their nature has become atrophied by disuse; and (c) those who possess the wonderful power of keeping their intellectual and religious life" sundered as with an axe," who, if they were chal* "Life and Letters," ii, p. 412 (American edition).

lenged to give a theory of human nature, would have to represent it as if it were a modern ironclad built in water-tight compartments.

In contrast, then, with these three classes we take the case of an ordinary Churchman with perhaps something more than the ordinary intellectual and speculative interests, and certainly with more knowledge of what is de fide and what is not, than most Churchmen possess; a man who rejects the modern panacea of indefiniteness, and refuses, even though he might claim the precedent of a Homeric goddess, to throw over the battle-field" a nimbus of golden mist" to cover the retreat or defeat of a favorite hero. Such a man, accepting Darwinism, will expect not only that a reconstruction, or at least a resetting, of his beliefs will be necessary, but also that real effort, moral and intellectual, will be required for the work. No new truth can, without effort, be related with the truth already appropriated by the mind, and the wider and more far-reaching the truth the greater the effort which will be required. This is why the in-rush of new truth means unsettlement, and perhaps, in the reconstruction, a renouncing of something which has been associated with spiritual truth, though not of the essence of the truth itself.

Dr. Asa Gray, the American botanist, writing to Mr. Darwin about the "Origin of Species,"* says: "It is refreshing to find a person with a new theory who frankly confesses that he finds difficulties, insurmountable at least for the present. I know some people who never have any difficulties to speak of."

In attempting to answer the question we have proposed to ourselves, we do not profess to be of the number of those happy or unhappy people who have "no difficulties." We can, at most, hope to remove some difficulties which are more apparent than real, and, with regard to others, to suggest hints which have helped us, in the hope that they may be of use to others:

1. The first difficulty which will probably occur to any one is this: Darwinism offers an explanation of the origin of species. How is this reconcilable with the first article of the creed, the first sentence of the Bible? A man of average intelligence will not hesitate long here, unless the issue has been confused for him by the one-sided statements of ignorant partisans. For science neither says, nor professes to say, anything about the ultimate origin of things. Mr. Darwin says: "I believe that all animals are descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or less number.t. . . All the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth may be descended from some one primordial form." And he adds, "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having * "Life and Letters," ii, p. 66. +"Origin of Species," p. 424. + Ibid.,

p. 425.

been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one."

came.

Haeckel and some other evolutionists would go further. They would believe, though all the experimental evidence is at present against such a view, that life ultimately arose from inorganic matter. But even here there is no suggestion as to the ultimate origin of that matter, out of which all the world, as we know it, In the language of technical theology, evolution deals with secondary (i. e., derivative), but does not touch primary, creation. In Haeckel's less exact way of stating the distinction it deals with "creation of form," but knows nothing about creation of matter." Of the latter, i. e., original creation, Haeckel says: "The process, if indeed it ever took place, is completely beyond human comprehension; and can, therefore, never become a subject of scientific inquiry."†

66

Prof. Tyndall, speaking of the "evolution hypothesis," says: "It does not solve-it does not profess to solve the ultimate mystery of this universe. It leaves, in fact, that mystery untouched." Prof. Clifford again says: "Of the beginning of the universe we know nothing at all." Herbert Spencer, indeed, rejects primary creation, but not on the ground that evolution offers an alternative for it, but because it is "literally unthinkable"; and Prof. Huxley, on the ground that, as science knows nothing about it, nothing can be known. Q. E. D. But Mr. Darwin tells us that "the theory of evolution is quite compatible with the belief in a God"; that when he was collecting facts for the "Origin" his "belief in what is called a personal God was as firm as that of Dr. Pusey himself";#; while even at the time when the "Origin of Species" was published, he deserved to be called a theist." || Later on he says: "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us; and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic." Yet, three years later (1879), in a private letter, he writes, "In my most extreme fluctuations I have never been an atheist in the sense of denying the existence of a God." These quotations, which of course might easily be multiplied, are enough to show that evolution neither is, nor pretends to be, an alternative theory to original creation. An evolutionist, therefore, who denies the fact of creation, goes as far beyond the evidence which science offers as if he had asserted his belief in "the Maker of heaven and earth."

2. But then evolution does clearly offer us a theory as to how the world came to be what it now is, and in this we are told it contradicts the Bible and the unvarying faith of Christendom. We have here a clear issue raised between two alternative the+"History of Creation," i, p. 8, English translation. # Ibid., ii, p. 412. Ibid., i, p. 282. Ibid., i, p. 274.

* "Origin of Species," p. 429.

"Life and Letters," i, p. 277.

A

ories-the one the theory of Darwin, the other the theory of special creation," and they are mutually destructive. If the theory of "special creation" is true, Darwinism is false; if Darwinism is true, "special creation" is false. And this issue is plainly accepted by both parties. Thus Mr. Darwin says, "I have at least done good service in overthrowing the dogma of separate creations"; and Haeckel, in the preface to his "Evolution of Man," boasts that "when, in 1873, the grave closed over Louis Agassiz, the last great upholder of the constancy of species and of miraculous creation, the dogma of the constancy of species came to an end, and the contrary assumption-the assertion that all the various species descended from common ancestral forms -now no longer encounters serious difficulty." Darwin was fully aware of the opposition his theory would have to encounter. And he feared the men of science as much as the theologians. "Authors," he says, " of the highest eminence seem to be fully satisfied that each species has been independently created." When he first hinted at the theory to Joseph Hooker in 1843, he says, "I am almost convinced that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable,”* and his utmost hope is that he may be able "to show, even to sound naturalists, that there are two sides to the question of the immutability of species," and that "allied species are co-descendants from common stocks." Whether true or not scientifically, this does not sound like a dangerous heresy, and yet the outcry raised from the side of religion was as great as that raised by contemporary science. Even now religious people are surprised to be told that it is a purely scientific question, to be decided solely on scientific evidence, and to be dealt with effectively only by scientific men. It is not the question whether species were created by God or came into existence independently of him, or (as Huckleberry Finn puts it) "whether they were made or whether they just happened." For science repudiates chance-except as a name for unexplained causation-as earnestly as religion does. It is a question between two views as to secondary creation, or, more strictly, between a theory and the denial of the possibility of a theory as to the method of this creation. The question is this: Were species directly created at the first, or by intermediate laws, as individuals are ? Were they independently created, or descended from other species ? "To say that species were cre|| ated so and so," says Mr. Darwin, "is no scientific explanation, only a reverent way of saying it is so and so."A "Special creation" is here on the agnostic side, while evolution at least attempts to bring God's action in the past in line with his action

* "Life and Letters," i, p. 384.

* Ibid., i, p. 394.

VOL. XXXIII.-8

Ibid., i, p. 389. | Ibid., i, p. 437.

Ibid., i, p. 893. ▲ Ibid., i, p. 437.