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to explain only the method in which evolution progressed.

Of the mystery of evolution-of the purpose of the higher or lower specialisation of successive types, or the means by which their differentiation was effected-we know and can know nothing, any more than we can fathom the mystery of life or of its origin.

CHAPTER XVI.

CONCLUSION.

If the Darwinian theory is based on inference unsupported by substantial evidence - the conclusion at which we have arrived in the preceding chapters-it may well be asked why it was so readily accepted by men of science.

Some explanation of the anomaly may be found in the predisposition among educated men, at the time when the theory was first announced, to accept a theory such as Darwin advanced.

The then recent demonstration by geologists that the world, as we see it, had been gradually evolved in the course of ages, had convinced all unprejudiced minds that the Mosaic cosmogony, as interpreted, was not in accordance with the facts; and this triumph of science over theological dogmatism naturally predisposed the scientific world to believe that Darwin had done for

the world of life what the geologists had done for the world of matter. As geologists

had demonstrated that our world had been evolved from chaos by natural forces, in the course of millions of years, so Darwin, it was thought, had shown how its present inhabitants had been evolved from simple forms by natural forces, operating through very extended periods of time. The evidence might not as yet be complete, but further research would doubtless fully establish the new hypothesis.

But this expectation has not been fulfilled.

The generation that has passed away since Darwin's death has added little to his facts or arguments, and now a critical examination of the theory must lead to the conclusion that it is wholly based on inference, and is not supported by substantial evidence.

The intellectual anomaly involved in the ready acceptance of Darwin's hypothesis by men who had criticised and discredited the Mosaic narrative, is not without precedent. In times past some of the best intellects of their day were beguiled from the direct path to knowledge by vain disputations on the properties of angels, or by profitless search for the philosopher's stone, or by the hope of squaring the circle, and it is not improbable

that the efforts during the last half century to discover the means whereby evolution was effected will in their turn be regarded with feelings akin to those we experience, when we think of the talents largely wasted by the wise men of old in their quest of the unattainable.

Biologists have exhibited almost superhuman patience, acumen, and perseverance in seeking to discover the first processes of life and the genesis of organisms, but we venture to suggest that such investigations are neither the fittest to discover the general plan of life, nor the meaning of its phenomena. A landscape cannot be viewed through a microscope, nor the design of an edifice apprehended by scrutiny of the bricks of which it is composed or of the manner in which they are cemented together.

Although we had no knowledge of the origin of a cathedral, we should without hesitation conclude that an architect to design and a master-builder to direct construction were as indispensable to bring such an edifice into existence, as the materials of which it is built or the hands that carried out the masterbuilder's instructions. And if we should be told, that after the foundations were laid this symmetrical building that commands our

admiration was the outcome of a hundred masons working without design, instructions, or concert, common-sense would regard the statement as an insult to the understanding.

But Darwin asks us to believe that organisms, far more elaborate and complicated than any work of man's hands, are the outcome of an analogous process.

Common-sense will prefer to believe, that as the great works of man had their architect, master - builder, and artificers, so also had the infinitely more wonderful works of Nature their Architect and Master-builder, whose artificers we call the forces of Nature.

According to the Darwinian conception, Nature failed at first to produce perfect or at least highly organised animals, and their perfection or higher specialisation came by secondary causes, each working independently and fortuitously, without design control or definite object. We could as easily believe that a box full of miniature bricks persistently shaken through a geological epoch would form themselves into a miniature cathedral.

To Darwin's mind "it accords better with what we know of the laws impressed on matter by the Creator, that the production and the extinction of the past and present

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