CREATION BY EVOLUTION 



times one, sometimes the other; sometimes both side by side. 

 Where we find both we usually find a balance in favour 

 of one or the other. We have often to deal with an intricate 

 profit and loss account. 



In our own bodies, for example, the tissues are not only 

 in process of up-building but also in process of down-break- 

 ing. During adult life some sort of balance is maintained 

 on the credit and the debit side of the account. In the 

 healthy child there is a balance of profit through evolutionary 

 upbuilding. In old age there is more loss than gain. In 

 what we speak of as "senile decay" dissolution, through 

 degeneration of the bodily tissues, entails an increasingly 

 adverse balance. 



This distinction between building upward under evolution, 

 and breaking down under dissolution is of very great impor- 

 tance. Surely, wherever we look we find not only progress 

 but regress ; we find not only building up but breaking down. 

 That which is progressively built up under evolution has that 

 mark of the higher which stamps it as a fuller and richer 

 whole with substantial unity. That which ultimately results 

 from dissolution is the scattering of the components which 

 went together to constitute that whole. Much modern work 

 on the atom illustrates dissolution; of atoms in process of 

 evolution there is now little evidence. But many of us 

 believe that it has taken place in the past and may still occur. 

 And what about social life? Here we find abundant evi- 

 dence of evolution in progress. But is there no evidence of 

 dissolution in regress? Must we not recognise jail to lower 

 levels as well as rise to higher levels? 



The question is one of fact. My belief is that this reversal 

 of order, this downward passage in state or in status is a 

 feature of the world in which we live, seen alike in dis- 

 integrating molecules and atoms, in degenerate organisms, 



[344] 



