HUXLEY AND EVOLUTION. 321 



indicate that he reserves a place for original creative 

 agency. He says: 



" Though we are quite clear about the constancy of 

 nature at the present time, and in the present order of 

 things, it by no means follows necessarily that we are 

 justified in expanding this generalization into the past, 

 and in denying absolutely that there may have been a 

 time when Nature [evidence J did not follow a fixed [first] 

 order, when the relations of cause and effect were not 

 [fixed and] definite, and when external agencies did not 

 intervene in the general course of nature."* 



And again: 



" My present business is not with the question as to 

 how nature has originated, as to the causes which have 

 led to her origination, but as to the manner and order of 

 the appearance of natural objects [her origination]. * * 

 This is a strictly [an] historical question. * * But the 

 other question about creation is a philosophical question, 

 and one which cannot be solved or even approached [or 

 touched] by the historical method." 



The first of the above quotations is not wholly unam- 

 biguous. It seems that the lecturer must employ the 

 term " cause " in a physical rather than a metaphysical 

 sense. He directs our attention to a time when the pres- 

 ent order of nature had not begun to exist, and the 

 orders of sequence of physical effects had not been or- 



* The words in brackets are contained only in the Tribune report ; the words 

 in italics are contained only in the revision as it appeared in the Popular Science 

 Monthly. It would seem that the word "not" in the last clause is inadvertently 

 employed, since it makes the idea incongruous with the one immediately pre- 

 ceding. The author apparently intended to say that " we have no right to deny 

 that there may have been a time when external agencies did intervene in the 

 general course of nature," or " that we have no right to affirm that there never 

 was a time when external agencies did not intervene. ' 

 21 



