WHAT IS DARWINISM? 273 



no more so, by the variation and change of preceding 

 into succeeding species ? 



Those who accept the latter alternative are evolu- 

 tionists. And Dr. Hodge fairly allows that their 

 views, although clearly wrong, may be genuinely the- 

 istic. Surely they need not become the less so by the 

 discovery or by the conjecture of natural operations 

 through which this diversification and continued adap- 

 tation of species to conditions is brought about. 

 Now, Mr. Darwin thinks — and by this he is distin- 

 guished from most evolutionists — that he can assign 

 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 unit- 

 ing, 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. Dar- 

 win 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 for additions to 

 their number and new illustrations of their efficiency; 



