Philosophic Evolution. 2 1 1 



ends. The inconsistency is surely very great of those 

 who assert that all our knowledge comes from experience, 

 and at the same time that ' creative action ' is incredible, 

 because nature affords no evidence of it. It is so great, 

 because that action must necessarily be unperceived and 

 uncomprehended by us, since of creative action we have 

 and can have no experience whatever. The action of God 

 must necessarily be unimaginable by us in its fulness, but 

 its reality and efficiency can be very clearly conceived as 

 incessant and universal in every form of being known to 

 us. God is thus neither withdrawn from nor identified 

 with His material creation, and no part of it is left devoid 

 of meaning or of purpose. The poet's plaint as to the 

 flower ' born to blush unseen and waste its sweetness on 

 the desert air' is thus manifestly uncalled for every 

 creature of every order of existence being ever, while 

 its existence is sustained, so complacently contemplated 

 by God, that the intense and concentrated attention of all 

 men of science together upon it could but form an utterly 

 inadequate symbol of such divine contemplation." 



4. There is yet one more practical consideration which 

 this controversy seems well fitted to bring home vividly 

 to the student of it ; namely, the question of " wor- 

 ship." The consistent evolutionist, who fully apprehends 

 the great principle of continuity, must recognise the ut- 

 ter hopelessness of any one inventing de novo a form of 

 worship of "the Unknowable" capable of satisfying the 



