THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION 375 



Hero again we venture to quote from Professor Blewett's 

 Study of Nature and the Vision of God (1907, p. 53) : 



" In insisting upon the continuity of nature, men of science have 

 been better theologians than the theologians themselves. If God 

 exists at all He is the God of all nature and of every natural law. 

 There are no gaps in His workmanship, no breaches of continuity 

 in His activity. All nature is an activity of His, and every natural 

 law a principle of that activity. If the theologians would be true 

 to theology, what they have to do is to protest, not against the 

 principle of continuity, but against too narrow a reading of it, and 

 too narrow an application of it to reality. The principle of con- 

 tinuity is unworthily treated if it is limited to certain physical and 

 chemical processes. The true field of the principle of continuity 

 is the total history in time, the total evolution, of the universe. 

 And so viewed, it is simply one way of apprehending the essential 

 rationality of God and of the divine action in nature and in history." 



8. In What Sense Is Organic Evolution Progressive ? 



If increasing differentiation and integration is progress, 

 then Oi'ganic Evolution is most certainly progressive. Not 

 only when envisaged as a whole, but when attention is 

 focussed on particular lines, Animate Nature exhibits, as 

 age succeeds age, an increasing differentiation or complexify- 

 ing and an increasing integration or correlating. A locomo- 

 tive of the twentieth century shows, when compared with 

 Stephenson's engine, a much greater division of labour and 

 specialisation of parts ; it also shows a much greater har- 

 mony of action and controllability. The same is revealed 

 in organic nature, when we compare an oak tree with a 

 mushroom, or a bird with a sponge. As age hfe succeeded 

 age, life has been in the main creeping upwards. It is not 

 that we naively rank as progress any ehnngc that makes a 

 creature liker ourselves; there is a discernible standard with 



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