THE CONCEPT OF EVOLUTION 373 



nature. It is true that a God thus made manifest — made manifest 

 not by the greatness and harmony of nature, not by its abiding 

 law and continuous order, but by its rents and gaps — would be 

 no worthy object of religious devotion. But that is only the 

 beginning of the matter. Once you shatter the continuity of nature, 

 you shatter more than Materialism. You shatter the possibility of 

 all science whatever. You open up the gulf of universal scepticism, 

 and Materialism disappears in it, it is true, but along with it will 

 disappear Theism and Theology and the rational basis for every 

 sort of religion except two, between which men will continue to 

 choose according to their individual dispositions — Stoicism (as a 

 practical temper, not as a philosophy) and Epicureanism." 



§ 8. In What Sense Is Organic Evolution Continuous? 



By continuity in the process of organic evolution the biolo- 

 gist does not mean that there are no breaks, no leaps, no 

 brusque novelties. For there is a growing belief in the 

 importance of transilient variations or mutations. These 

 appear suddenly, without intergrades connecting them to 

 the parents. The Proteus leaps as well as creeps. But 

 though Professor Bateson calls them discontinuous variations, 

 there is no discontinuity in their emergence any more than 

 there is in the metamorphosis of a caterpillar into a butter- 

 fly. By continuity in evolution the biologist means that 

 there are no gaps, no intrusions. As Prof. W. R. Sorley 

 puts it (Proc. Brit. Acad., IV., 1909, p. 5) : " Each stage in 

 the process with all that it contains must find its explana- 

 tion within the universe and not in something outside." 

 One may say more, that each stage is the outcome of what 

 precedes. Whether we think of the evolution of Animate 

 Nature as a whole, or of particular individualities within 

 it, there is a twofold continuity to be recognised. There is 

 the flesh-and-blood linkage, the genetic ' enchainemeut des 

 etres', the continuous succession of immortal germ-cells in 



