348 THE STOEY OF THE EAETH AND MAN. 



cannot rise to the highest development either of 

 science or philosophy. 



It may, however, be said that evolution may admit 

 all this, and still be held as a scientific doctrine in con- 

 nection with a modified belief in creation. The work 

 of actual creation may have been limited to a few 

 elementary types, and evolution may have done the 

 rest. Evolutionists may still be theists. We have 

 already seen that the doctrine, as carried out to its 

 logical consequences, excludes creation and theism. 

 It may, however, be shown that even in its more 

 modified forms, and when held by men who maintain 

 that they are not atheists, it is practically atheistic, 

 because excluding the idea of plan and design, and 

 resolving all things into the action of unintelligent 

 forces. It is necessary to observe this, because it is 

 the half-way evolutionism which professes to have a 

 Creator somewhere behind it, that is most popular; 

 though it is, if possible, more unphilosophical than 

 that which professes to set out from absolute and 

 eternal nonentity, or from self-existent star-dust con- 

 taining all the possibilities of the universe. 



Absolute atheists recognise in Darwinism, for 

 example, a philosophy which reduces all things to a 

 " gradual summation of innumerable minute and acci- 

 dental material operations," and in this they are more 

 logical than those who seek to reconcile evolution with 

 design. Huxley, in his "lay sermons/' referring to 

 Paley's argument for design founded on the structure 

 of a watch, says that if the watch could be conceived 



