The Origin of Organic Forms. 191 



trace evidence of intelligence and will everywhere 

 in the organic kingdoms. Mr. Spencer stakes his 

 theory on a single issue. With him the discussion is 

 narrowed to the inquriy whether the changes which 

 matter undergoes in passing from the unorganized to 

 the organized form, and the series of modifications 

 produced in the vegetal and animal kingdoms, from the 

 simplest to the most highly differentiated organisms, 

 are due wholly to dynamic law, or whether fully to 

 account for the phenomena will require that we shall 

 introduce some other principle or cause. The former 

 view is clearly inconsistent with the facts. It is ten- 

 able as a provisional hypothesis only by dropping out 

 of sight some of the most significant phenomena. 

 To accept the alternative and hold that a cause other 

 than force operating according to dynamic law is 

 indispensable to account for the whole, is to set aside 

 a fundamental principle of Mr. Spencer's philosophy, 

 which cannot admit of any such causation. 



Mr. Spencer examines Professor Owen's "axiom of 

 the continuous operation of creative power, or of the 

 ordained becoming of living things," and condemns it, 

 as no more scientific than the belief in special crea- 

 tions. He says, " Though these highly-general expres- 

 sions do not suggest any very definite idea, yet they 

 imply the belief that organic progress is a result of 

 some indwelling tendency to develop, supernaturally 

 impressed on living matter at the outset some ever- 

 acting constructive fdrce, which, independently of 



