ON THE CREATION AND GOD. 51 



Men must postulate a purpose in the past, to control 

 the course of evolution, to dispense with the hypothesis 

 of "a fortuitous concourse of the atoms," to avoid the 

 notion, shocking to the reason, of endless and abortive 

 attempts of the atoms to frame a world and to produce 

 life. We require a guiding inner principle ; we even 

 require to postulate creative agency where a new fact 

 appeared, such as life, sensation, consciousness, unless 

 these too existed from eternity as well as matter ; but we 

 do not require to postulate a personal Creator or special 

 creations of the different species of plants and animals. 

 We must have a purpose, and there must be creative 

 power, at each new appearance between the chemically 

 constituted cosmic vapour and the most developed human 

 species. Evolution is granted, and the difference between 

 creation and evolution is hardly worth disputing about. 

 The first appearance of something wholly new, such as 

 life is it to be called creation or evolution ? This is a 

 question that we care not how it be answered. There 

 is, then, a purpose ; it has been creative, and in a certain 

 sense it is supernatural ; for, as Herbert Spencer admits, 

 there is a "power behind humanity and all things," 

 which is not exhausted in any of its forms as shown in 

 evolution. And this power behind Nature, and yet 

 manifesting itself in Nature, might still be called super- 

 natural as well as natural, were it not for the special 

 association of the former word with miraculous inter- 

 ventions. But the power itself is admitted by all, 

 excepting only those who, like Hume,* maintain that 

 phenomena alone, with nothing behind them, compose 

 the universe. 



The present is not the place to press further the 

 inconsistency and insufficiency of the materialist expla- 



* For Hume's remarkable Theory of the Universe, see p. 315. 



