158 DARWINIAN A. 



mystery that the problem of variation has now. Cir- 

 cumstances may preserve or may destroy the variations ; 

 man may use or direct them ; but selection, whether 

 artificial or natural, no more originates them than 

 man originates the power which turns a wheel, when 

 he dams a stream and lets the water fall upon it. The 

 origination of this power is a question about efficient 

 cause. The tendency of science in respect to this ob- 

 viously is not toward the omnipotence of matter, as 

 some suppose, but toward the omnipotence of spirit. 



So the real question we come to is as to the way in 

 which we are to conceive intelligent and efficient cause 

 to be exerted, and upon what exerted. Are we bound 

 to suppose efficient cause in all cases exerted upon 

 nothing to evoke something into existence — and this 

 thousands of times repeated, when a slight change in 

 the details would make all the difference between suc- 

 cessive species? Why may not the new species, or 

 some of them, be designed diversifications of the old ? 



There are, perhaps, only three views of efficient 

 cause which may claim to be both philosophical and 

 theistic : 



1. The view of its exertion at the beginning of 

 time, endowing matter and created things with forces 

 which do the work and produce the phenomena. 



2. This same view, with the theory of insulated 

 interpositions, or occasional direct action, engrafted 

 upon it — the view that events and operations in gen- 

 eral go on in virtue simply of forces communicated at 

 the first, but that now and then, and only now and 

 then, the Deity puts his hand directly to the work. 



3. The theory of the immediate, orderly, and con- 



