THE QUESTION RESTATED 



been the current phase, and which is still the 

 phase officially defended by theologians, does 

 not appear to be compatible with the conclusions 

 referred to. As in treating of the preliminary 

 evidence for the evolution of the higher forms 

 of life from lower forms, we found ourselves at 

 every step arrayed in opposition to the doctrine 

 of special creations bequeathed to us by ancient 

 mythology, so now upon this wider ground we 

 shall have to note that the Doctrine of Evo- 

 lution is throughout irreconcilably opposed to 

 the Doctrine of Creation, so that the establish- 

 ment of the former is in fact synonymous with 

 the overthrow and destruction of the latter. In 

 coming to regard the universe as evolved in 

 accordance with discernible physical laws, work- 

 ing throughout a lapse of time to which human 

 thinking can assign neither a beginning nor an 

 end, we cease to regard it as created at any given 

 point of time in accordance with a preconceived 

 plan remotely analogous to the plans by which 

 finite intelligence adapts means to ends. It is 

 not, as we shall see in a moment, that the one 

 conception metaphysically refutes the other, but 

 that it practically supersedes it, and enables phi- 

 losophy to dispense with it. While upon the 

 time-honoured statical view of things, any given 

 group of phenomena was explained by a refer- 

 ence to the direct creative action of a divine 

 Power extraneous to the Cosmos ; on the other 

 179 



