130 HA ECKEL 



the bottom they were all agreed that the whole 

 inner law of evolution had nothing whatever in 

 common with the other laws of nature and was 

 not subordinate to them. They did not hold an 

 evolution in harmony with the great mechanism 

 of natural laws. Their principle got astride of 

 natural laws at certain points, like a little man, 

 and turned them in this or that direction. 



Very little philosophic reflection was needed to 

 show that they had merely replaced the Creator with 

 a word. The older Dualism remained. On one side 

 was the raw material of the world with the ordinary 

 natural laws ; on the other side a lord and master, 

 the law of evolution, playing with the laws as it 

 pleased, and moulding the material into new life- 

 forms in an advancing series. It is true that they 

 no longer pictured to themselves a venerable being 

 with a white beard creating the ichthyosauri, 

 but the finger of God remained in the law of 

 evolution, attenuated into a special and spectral 

 form. The God that acted from without was 

 banished, but the ^'impulse from within," reduced 

 to a mere skeleton in substance, was put upon the 

 throne. 



The advocates of the law of evolution had 

 assuredly done much in preparing the way for 

 Darwin, as they had insisted that certain advances 

 in detail were undeniable and built up theories from 

 the chaotic material provided by special research — 

 especially seeing that some of the ablest naturalists 

 of the time were amongst them, who determined 

 to retain speculation in zoology and botany. But, 



