io MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



belief. Thus, like other hypotheses and philosophical 

 systems which have preceded it, Darwinism seems to 

 have entered on a process of disintegration, and it is 

 not easy to divine in what form or forms it may be 

 handed down to our successors. 



While thus liable to different interpretations within 

 itself, the Darwinian evolution has still more varied 

 aspects when we regard it in relation to the other 

 beliefs and interests of humanity. The hypothesis 

 has been applied to all sorts of uses in relation to 

 physical and natural science, as well as to history and 

 sociology, and it has been made a means of revolu 

 tionising our classifications and our ideas of species 

 and other groups. It is sometimes monistic or posi- 

 tivist, and scarcely distinguishable from the old- 

 fashioned atheism and materialism. Sometimes it 

 assumes the newer form of agnosticisnij and poses as 

 neutral and indifferent with regard to those spiritual 

 interests of man which are important beyond all 

 others. Again, it becomes theistic, and here we have 

 adherents of the new system ranging from those who 

 are content to reconcile it with a theistic belief, which 

 recognises a God very far off and shorn of His more 

 important attributes, to those who accept evolution 

 as a new gospel, adding fresh light to that which 

 shines in the teaching of Jesus Christ. At a lower 

 level it is evident that the ideas of struggle for exis 

 tence and survival of the fittest, introduced by the 

 new philosophy, and its resolution of man himself 



