1 92 The Evolution Hypothesis. 



other forces, moulds organisms into higher and higher 

 forms. 



" In whatever way it is formulated, or by whatever 

 language it is obscured, this ascription of organic 

 evolution to some aptitude naturally possessed by 

 organisms, or miraculously imposed on them, is un- 

 philosophical. It is one of those explanations which 

 explains nothing a shaping of ignorance into the 

 semblance of knowledge. The cause is not a true 

 cause not a cause assimilable to known causes not 

 a cause that can be anywhere shown to produce 

 analogous effects. It is a cause unrepresentable in 

 thought: one of those illegitimate symbolic concep- 

 tions which cannot by any mental process be elabo- 

 rated into a real conception. In brief, this assumption 

 of a persistent formative power, inherent in organisms, 

 and making them unfold into higher forms, is an as- 

 sumption of special creations : of which, indeed, it is 

 but a modification; differing only by the fusion of 

 separate unknown processes into a continuous un- 

 known process." * 



This criticism is, from the standpoint of the thorough- 

 going evolutionist, perfectly just. An hypothesis in- 

 volving the recognition of a cause of this kind, is no 

 more comprehensible by science than the theory -of 

 special creations. Whether that cause be designated, 

 with Hartman, the Unconscious, or be called God, 



* Biology, Yol. I., 144. 



