i.] DARWINISM VERIFIED. 5 



theists as ever. The objection is, therefore, evidently 

 fallacious, and the fallacy is not difficult to point out. 

 It lies in a metaphysical misconception of the words 

 " force " and " cause." " Force " is implicitly regarded 

 as a sort of entity or daemon which has a mode of 

 action distinguishable from that of universal Deity ; 

 otherwise it is meaningless to speak of substituting 

 the one for the other. But such a personification of 

 " force" is a remnant of barbaric thought, and is in 

 no wise sanctioned by physical science. When 

 astronomy speaks of two planets as attracting each 

 other with a " force " which varies directly as their 

 masses and inversely as the squares of their distances 

 apart, it simply uses the phrase as a convenient meta- 

 phor by which to describe the manner in which the 

 observed movements of the two bodies occur. It 

 explains that in presence of each other the two bodies 

 are observed to change their positions in a certain 

 specified way, and this is all that it means. This is 

 all that a strictly scientific hypothesis can possibly 

 allege, and this is all that observation can possibly 

 prove. Whatever goes beyond this and imagines or 

 asserts a kind of " pull " between the two bodies, is 

 not science, but metaphysics. An atheistic meta- 

 physics may imagine such a " pull " and may in- 

 terpret it as the " action " of something that is not 



