26 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



natural turn of mind and his scientific training were 

 not of such a character as to lead him to seek for ulti 

 mate causes. He was content with a mojJal evolution. 

 He took matter and force and their existing laws as 

 he found them. He presupposed also life and orga 

 nisation with all their powers, and even seemed to 

 postulate certain species of animals and plants as 

 necessary raw material wherewith to begin his pro 

 cess of evolution. How all this vast and complex 

 machinery came into being he did not concern him 

 self, and was content to leave it as something beyond 

 his ken. Thus, as it appears in the Origin of Species^ 

 evolution is merely a modification of specific forms, 

 and Darwin was content to explain this by an imagi 

 nary struggle for existence, and a supposed natural 

 or spontaneous selection exercised in an indefinite 

 way by external forces and conditions. Thus it really 

 did not touch the question of how the first species 

 originated, but only that of their subsequent modifi 

 cation by means of natural selection, or preservation 

 :of favoured races in the struggle of life. 



Darwin thus did not concern himself much with 

 causal evolution, or the origin of things properly so- 

 called. Indeed, when questioned on these points, he 

 appears to the last to have been in uncertainty and to 

 have desired not to commit himself. To men whose 

 minds are not under the influence of positive theism, 

 or of a belief in Divine revelation, and who attain to 

 large acquaintance with nature, it either resolves it- 



