240 MODERN IDEAS OF EVOLUTION 



rational views of the vastly complicated and still mysterious 

 causes which have no doubt conspired under Creative! 

 guidance to bring about the succession of living beings in 

 geological time. In this respect the work is similar in its 

 tendency to Drummond s Natural Law in the Spiritual 

 IVorld ; and in another aspect both may be regarded as 1 

 examples of the tendency of theology to conform itself to 

 the philosophical and scientific hypotheses which are ever 

 cropping up and disappearing. For a time such conformity 

 carries all before it, but it incurs the danger that when th&amp;lt; 

 false or partial hypotheses have been discarded the high 

 truths imprudently connected with them may be disc 

 also. 



I am reminded here, however, to express one 

 obligation which the world owes, not so much to a 

 ing system of evolution, as to the discussion and o 

 those systems. It is that attention has been direct 

 manner never before witnessed, to the power of heret ^ 

 environment, of use and disuse in improving or deterior. 

 humanity. The bearing of this on the physical, me. 

 and moral education and advancement of man is of i 

 practical importance, and merits a more full discussion th 

 it has yet received on the part of those who are not ev 

 lutionists in the ordinary sense of the term, but who believe 

 in development and in causation. 



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