Permanence and Evolution. 107 



evolutionist and anti-evolutionist views may 

 possibly be the truth. I see no particular im- 

 probability in it, but I do not see how it could 

 ever be demonstrated, or even raised above the 

 position of a mere conjecture, unless we could 

 actually witness the making of organised 

 beings. 



Also it is necessarily supposed, not indeed by 

 all evolutionists, but by all pure Darwinians, 

 that organised beings have their structure de- 

 termined by no strictly internal principle, but 

 only by an indefinite tendency to vary in all 

 directions, taken advantage of by natural selec- 

 tion, giving permanence and gradual increase 

 to such modifications as are favourable to the 

 creature in the struggle for life ; but the 

 naturalists who urge this are usually the same 

 who insist very strongly on the analogy between 

 living beings and crystals, in which analogy 

 they seem, to themselves, to see the key to the 

 secret of physical life at any rate. Now crystals 



