6 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



let it be said at once and made perfectly clear. 

 They may be described respectively as scientific 

 and materialistic evolution. 



The former deals with well established facts 

 and probable theories. Its conclusions are not 

 wider than its premises. It is scrupulously care 

 ful to distinguish between undeniable evidence, 

 gathered from nature, and mere theories, resting 

 upon what is at the best a likelihood. It finally 

 remains strictly within its own sphere, and is there 

 fore truly scientific. The latter disregards com 

 pletely the limits of its scientific province, and 

 leaps into the foreign realm of metaphysics and 

 religion with which, as physical science, it is wholly 

 incompetent to deal. In place of facts it substi 

 tutes unproved fancies and unprovable theories, 

 converting them into dogmas and creeds. Its 

 openly avowed purpose is to destroy from the 

 hearts of men every vestige of a Personal Creator. 



Many doubtless there are who accept it as the 

 sole alternative of admitting the existence of a 

 Divine Power. Thus M. Yves Delage, a scientist 

 of no slight significance and professor of the Sor- 

 bonne, thus clearly states his own attitude: 



I can easily admit that one species has never been seen to 

 give rise to, or to be transformed into another, and that it cannot 

 be formally proved ever to have done so. I am now speaking 

 of a real and true species, fixed as natural species, and like 

 them maintaining itself without human assistance. Much more, 

 of course, is all this true of genus. 



Yet I consider descent [understood here as materialistic evolu- 



