GROUNDS AND CONSEQUENCES OF EVOLUTION. 



TN spite of the objections presented in the last chapter 

 -- to the breadth of Professor Huxley's claim, we are 

 strongly persuaded that the doctrine of the derivative de- 

 scent of animal and vegetal forms represents the truth. 

 We discover no conflict between it and the " creation 

 theory." We even maintain that a philosophic scrutiny 

 of the doctrine will disclose the activity of creative power 

 not alone in the region of " external agency," and inau- 

 gurative eflficienc}^ but in every stage of that derivation 

 which guides and employs biological forces with reference 

 to preconceived results. 



We have not been hastv to reach this conviction. We 

 have pondered many a difficulty and raised many a query, 

 but we have seen old difficulties vanishing and new proofs 

 perpetually arising. We have learned more of the won- 

 derful resources of the h3?'pothesis in explaining the current 

 and the exceptional phenomena of life and organization.* 



* Professor Huxley himself has undergone a similar change of opinion. In 

 his address before the London Geological Society for 1862 he reviewed the palte- 

 ontological evidences of progressive modification of types and concluded with 

 the following inquiry and answer: ''What, then, does an impartial survey of the 

 positively ascertained truths of palaeontology testify in relation to the common 

 doctrines of progressive modification which suppose that modification to have 

 taken place by a necessary progress from more to less embryonic forms, or from 

 more to less generalized types, within the limits of the period represented by the 

 fossiliferous rocks? It negatives those doctrines; for it either shows us no evi- 

 dence of any such modification or demonstrates it to have been very slight; and, 

 as to the nature of that modification, it yields no evidence whatsoever that the , 

 earlier members of any long-continued group were more generalized in structure 



332 



