RATIONALISM BASED ON DARWINISM 25 



" moral conviction " which is equivalent to a demon- 

 stration. 



The presence of Law and Order is obvious every- 

 where now in the universe ; yet this same universe, we 

 are told by scientists, was originally a homogeneous fiery 

 vapour. This " proves " to most minds the necessity of 

 a " Law-giver " and " Order-maker ". 



But, strange as it may seem to those who knew 

 Darwin in the fifties, Materialistic Monists have seized 

 upon "Darwinism" as the very basis of their Monism. 

 " Darwin gave us the clue to the monistic explanation 

 of organisation . . . mechanism alone can give us a true 

 explanation of natural phenomena ; for it traces them to 

 their real efficient causes, vzs., to blind and unconscious 

 agencies." ^ 



So, too, Biichner says in his Las^ Words on Material- 

 ism : " Darwinism is the chief support of Materialism or 

 Monism ".^ 



It is, therefore, necessary to consider how it came 

 about that Darwin's theory — which he himself thought 

 when he wrote it to be perfectly compatible with a belief 

 in the Creator — came to furnish the very groundwork of 

 the most uncompromising Atheism ever known. 



Some may think that I spend too much time over 

 Haeckel's " puerile argument for Atheism from Darwin- 

 ism," as it has been called ; but Haeckel is an eminent 

 biologist, and by no means stands alone in making this 

 deduction. 



Darwinism has led many scientists to refer all phe- 

 nomena, both of the organic and the inorganic worlds, 

 to physico-chemical forces only. Such a conclusion has 

 landed them in Agnosticism if not Atheism ; because the 



' Haeckel's Riddle, etc., pp. 264, 265. '^ Ibid., p. 139. 



