specific Genesis 123 



If each tree's growth, while the special details are determined 

 !{'by the action of external influences upon it. Just in the 

 i same way, I believe, that an innate predisposing cause pro- 

 duces the evolution of new species ; the special details being 

 i determined by subordinate agencies, and amongst them that 

 of Natural Selection. Mr. Wright's illustration suits me so 

 well I will pursue it yet further. He observes : — 



* If we could study the past and present forms of life, not only in 

 different continents, which we may compare to different individual 

 trees of the same kind, or better, perhaps, to different main branches 

 from the same trunk and roots, but could also study the past and 

 present forms of life in different planets, then diversities in the general 

 outlines would probably be seen similar to those which distinguish 

 different kinds of trees, as the oak, the elm, and the pine ; dependent, 

 as in these trees, on differences in the physical and physiological pro- 

 perties of living matters in the different planets, — supposing the 

 planets, of course, to be capable of sustaining life, like the earth, or, 

 at least, to have been so at some period in the history of the solar 

 system.' 



Precisely so once more ! In each case forms would be 

 evolved in accordance with that innate potentiality which 

 God has implanted in each case in the matter of which such 

 planet was composed. Not that there, any more than here, 

 all that was potential would become actual, but that the 

 innate potentiality, modified by external influences, would be 

 determined in special forms in the production of which the 

 innate power, not the external conditions, would be the main 

 evolving agent. 



Mr. Wright seems to consider that the use of such words 

 as ' polarity ' and ' luminosity ' tends to discourage the inves- 

 tigation of the laws and conditions by and through which 

 such properties are manifested. Mr. Wright tells us, some- 

 what dogmatically, that 'definite vital aggregations and 

 definite actions of vital forces exist, for the most part, in a 

 world by themselves.' I should be the last to deny the 



