CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



to-day, however skeptical and inquiring he may be, who has 

 any doubt as to the fact of organic evolution, yet no one 

 would assert that it can be demonstrated as one might 

 demonstrate the law of gravitation, or the conservation of 

 matter and energy, or the development of a chick out of a 

 drop of living matter on the top of the yolk of the egg. 

 But how can a conclusion be accepted without hesitation 

 if it is not rigorously demonstrable? The answer is that the 

 evolution-idea is a master key that opens all locks into 

 which we can fit it, and that we do not know of a single 

 fact that can be said to be in any way contradictory. Like 

 Wisdom, the evolution-idea is justified of its children. 



A great zoologist once said that he was willing to stake 

 the validity of the evolution-idea on the evidence afforded 

 by butterflies, and he was quite right. Any fact about an 

 animal or a plant may be an evidence of evolution when we 

 know enough about it. What makes the general idea of 

 evolution convincing is its satisfactoriness in interpretation. 

 It is always borne out by the facts. We repeat the phrase 

 "the general idea of organic evolution" because this must be 

 distinguished from any particular theory in regard to the 

 factors that have operated in the process. In regard to the 

 factors or causes of evolution there is, and there may well be, 

 difference of opinion among naturalists, for the inquiry 

 is as young as it is difficult; but it is unfair and confused 

 to use this admission of uncertainty as to causes as if it 

 implied any hesitation in regard to the ]act of an age-long 

 evolutionary process in which many of the highly finished 

 and very perfect types of animals are shown by the rock 

 record to be preceded by a succession of animals in less 

 finished stages. 



There is eloquence in the evidence from the rock record. 

 As ages passed there was a gradual emergence of finer and 



[14] 



