ADAPTATION 177 



by material laws uncontrolled by design," and adds : " Seventy 

 years afterwards Darwin achieved the task which Kant deemed 

 impracticable ".^ 



" Darwin has not only proved by his theory of selection that 

 the orderly processes in the life and structure of animals and 

 plants have arisen by mechanical laws without any preconceived 

 design ; but he has shown us in the ' struggle for life ' the 

 powerful natural force which has exerted supreme control over 

 the entire course of organic evolution for millions of years." " 



" He discovered in the principle of selection that direct 

 cause of transformism which Lamarck had missed." ^ 



Other Rationalistic authors, as Biichner and the anonymous 

 author of Mr. Balfour s Apologetics and many others, write in 

 the same strain, endeavouring to account for everything, 

 material, physiological and psychical by the Deus ex Machind — 

 Natural Selection. 



It is, therefore, most important to lay emphasis on the fact 

 that not only has Darwin, Wallace, or any of their followers 

 never brought forward a single instance of the evolution of a 

 plant or animal in the wild state, which could be shown to be 

 in accordance with Darwinism ; but, on the other hand, all 

 positive evidence — inductive and experimental — establishes the 

 totally different method of procedure which Darwin himself 

 foreshadowed. 



Indeed, Evolution by Adaptation, on the one hand, and 

 Natural Selection on the other, afford good illustrations respec- 

 tively of the Inductive and Deductive methods of reasoning, 

 when nothing but probabilities are to be had instead of axiom- 

 atic truths- 

 Evolution, per se, is based on an enormous number of 

 facts, of great variety and world-wide distribution, as well as 

 revealed in the past history of life by palaeontology. This 

 inductive evidence is most strongly corroborated by " experi- 

 mental proof" derived from cultivation and domestication ; so 

 that at the present day Evolution stands on an impregnable 



1 Op. cit., p. 266. 2 p, 276. ° P. 80. 



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