WHAT IS EVOLUTION? 27 



self into a cosmos which manifests the power and 

 divinity of a creative will, or it becomes disintegrated 

 into a chaos of confused and conflicting forces battling 

 with one another. Darwin s view was of the latter 

 kind, and hence to him the life of organised beings 

 was a struggle for existence, or, at least, this appeared 

 to him far more potent than the opportunity and desire 

 to improve and advance, on which the great French 

 naturalist, Lamarck, based his theory of evolution. 



It is evident that such a view of nature has the 

 appearance, at first sight, of being wholly subjective 

 and illusory. It does not touch the question of 

 origins, fit assigns no adequate causes for either the 

 movement or the uniform direction of the supposed 

 development. It seems to enthrone chance or accident 

 or necessity as Lord and Creator, and to reduce the 

 universe to a mere drift, in which we are embarked as 

 in a ship without captain, crew, rudder, or compass, 

 and without any guiding chart or star. | 



Let us inquire, however, how Darwin justified a 

 position apparently so unscientific. He took his 

 initial stand on the idea that, as he expresses it, * a 

 careful study of domesticated animals and plants 

 would offer the best chance of making out this obscure 

 problem of the introduction of new species. Hence 

 he was led to study the variation of animals and 

 plants under domestication, and to infer similar effects 

 as taking place in nature by a spontaneous power of 

 * natural selection exercised by the environment. 



