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Show 272 DARWINIAN .A. Hodge takes to be the denial of any such thing as final causes)· and that the interactions and processes going on whic'h constitute natural selectw. n may su ffi ce to ac-count for the present diversity of animals and plants (primordial organisms being postulated and time enough given) with all their structure~ a~d adaptations- that is, to account for them smenhfical1y, as science accounts for other things. A good deal may be made of this, but does it sustain the indictmenU Moreover, the counts of the indictment may be demurred to. It seems to us that only one of the three points which Darwin is said to de~y is really opposed to the fourth, which he is ~aid to maintain, except as concerns the perhaps ambiguous word unintended. Otherwise, the origin of species throuo-h the gradual accumulation of variationsi. · e., by the addition of a series of small differencesis surely not incongruous with their 01~igin through "the original intention of the divine mind" or through" the constant and everywh~re operative efficiency of God." One or both of these Mr. Darwin (being, as Dr. Hodge says, a theist) must needs hold to in some form or other; wherefore he may be presumed to hold the fourth proposition in. such wise as not really to contradict the first or the third. The proper antithesis is with the second proposition only, and the issue comes to this: Have the multitudinous forms of living creatures, past and present, been pro~uced by as many special and independent acts o~ ?reatwn at very numerous epochs~ Or have they ongmated under' causes as natural as reproduction and birth, and WHAT IS DARWINISM'! 273 no more so, by the variation and chano-e of preceding m. to succee dm' g species~ · 5 T.hose who accept the latter alternative are evolutionists. And D.1·:· Hodge fairly allows that their views, although clearly wrong, may be genuinely theistic. Surely they need not become the less so by the discovery or by the conjecture of natural operations through which this diversification and continued adaptation of species to conditions is brought about. Now, Mr. Darwin thinks-and by this he is distinguished from most evolutionists-that he can assio-n 0 actual natural causes, adequate to the production of the present out of the preceding state of the animal and vegetable world, and so on backward-thus uniting, not indeed the beginning but the far past with the present in one coherent system of Nature. But in assigning actual natural causes and processes, and ap-· plying them to the explanation of the whole case, Mr. Darwin assumes the obligation of maintaining their general sufficiency-a task from which the numerous advocates and acceptors of evolution on the general concurrence of probabilities and its usefulness as a working hypothesis (with or without much conception of the manner how) are happily free. Having hit upon a modus operandi which all who understand it admit will explain something, and many that it will explain very much, it is to be expected that Mr. Darwin will make the most of it. Doubtless he is far from pretending to know all the causes and operations at work ; he has already added some and restricted the range of others; he probably looks fo~ additions to their number and new illustrations of their efficien~y |
