* DARWIN'S ' NATURAL SELECTION.* 7 



applied to the uses for which they were found 

 adapted/ 



Matter, according to the advocates of the doctrine 

 of Evolution, is eternal ; and natural physico-chemical 

 forces are, as I have stated their contention to be, 

 the causes of the phenomena hitherto ascribed to a 

 Supernatural creative power. There is, they say, 

 with Lucretius and Descartes, no final cause or 

 design in Nature ; nor any moral order in the 

 world. On the contrary, everywhere there is war 

 of all against all everywhere a struggle for 

 existence. 



To come now to Mr. Charles Darwin's own views 

 as to the mode in which the alleged progressive 

 transmutation of organic bodies from the lowest to the 

 highest grades has taken place. The efficient cause in 

 operation Mr. Darwin considers to have been what he 

 calls ' Natural Selection ' a process described by him 

 as follows : ' Amid the struggle for existence which 

 has been always going on among living beings, varia- 

 tions of bodily conformation and structure, if in any 

 degree profitable to an individual of any species, will 

 tend to the preservation of that individual, and will 

 generally be inherited by its offspring.' 



Thus is * Survival of the Fittest ' the condition 

 for * Natural Selection/ 



A fundamental point in the doctrine of Evolution, 

 as I have before intimated, is that it has been only 

 very gradually that the alleged growth, development, 



