270 THE WORLD-ENERGY 



least the question of the ultimate Cause involved in the 

 process of evolution should seem to them too remote and 

 shadowy to* have in it the promise of any positive solu- 

 tion; though, as we have seen, Mr. Spencer is too much 

 a philosopher to stop short of at least an intimation of 

 the fact that there lies in the human mind the necessity 

 of considering and attempting to solve that ultimate 

 problem. 



Darwin, on the other hand, deliberately held aloof 

 from this problem; and it can hardly be doubted that 

 in this he did wisely. He had attempted a special task 

 which must tax to the utmost even his exceptional powers 

 for a lifetime. And this task could be performed while 

 yet the larger problem was relatively in abeyance. Never- 

 theless, so long as the larger problem of Evolution in its 

 universal aspects remained but partly resolved, or was 

 left out of account in the consideration of the special 

 problem of organic evolution, this latter problem itself 

 could not but prove insoluble in its most elementary as 

 well as in its most complex phases. Variation in typical 

 forms might be accounted for while yet the beginnings 

 of life, as well as the culminating aspects of life, still 

 remained to all appearance inexplicable. 



And yet it is this fact, as it seems to me, which more 

 than any other has caused the Darwinian theory to be 

 persistently regarded by many as something purely hypo- 

 thetical and even fanciful, in spite of the overwhelming 

 accummulation of empirical evidence showing that specific 

 types have always been unstable, and that there has 

 been actual transition of inferior types into superior 

 types through continued variations, these variations 

 being due in ever-increasing degree to the spontaneity 



