Difficulties in the Evolutionist View 97 



tion, whereby distinctively new individualities arise, 

 take root, and flourish, alongside of or in place of 

 the "originative stock. This is a scientific description 

 or formulation of the general way in which the system 

 of Animate Nature has come to be as it is. As long as 

 we do not inquire into the biological factors in the 

 process, the evolution-formula remains entirely a 

 modal theory. It does not, in the first instance, ex- 

 plain anything to say that it evolved; for that simply 

 states the manner of its becoming, that it emerged in 

 the course of a continuous natural process. This is a 

 descriptive formula that fits all the facts and is not 

 confronted by any contradiction. And yet the natu- 

 ralists of to-day are not so intellectually comfort- 

 able as their fathers were in declaring a result to be 

 "the outcome of evolution." Not that there is any 

 dubiety in accepting the evolution-formula as the 

 only scientific formula that we can think of, but there 

 is a clearer appreciation of certain difficulties. Per- 

 haps it may be of service to indicate briefly what these 

 difficulties are. 



The inquiries of evolutionists for two generations 

 have been rewarded by some big discoveries, such as 

 Mendelian Inheritance and the frequent occurrence 

 of Mutations ; but there have been many disappoint- 

 ments. It is a fact, for instance, that many of the 

 pedigrees that were hailed with much enthusiasm in 

 early post-Darwinian days have not given satisfac- 

 tion to the zoological College of Heralds. Lineages 

 have turned out to be much more complicated than 



