CHAPTER II. 



ON THE EVOLUTION MATERIALISM AND THEOLOGY. 



8 1. THE real sting; and danger of Darwinism in its 



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theological reference does not lie in the pessimist views 

 that it sometimes suggests even to evolutionists like 

 Haeckel ; for we see that both its distinguished founder 

 and the thinker who has worked it into a new system 

 of philosophy, discern, with some reason, a spirit of good 

 in the evil things that evolution and natural selection 

 bring before us. The origin and permission of pain and 

 evil was, indeed, always an insoluble enigma for theology, 

 on the supposition of a Being of infinite goodness as well 

 as power and wisdom ; for why did He not prevent it ? 

 And the hardy optimism of Leibnitz, which attempted 

 to solve the difficulty by boldly asserting that evil was 

 not really evil but only a privation, a negation of good, 

 or at all events a condition of greater good, is, to say the 

 least, as compatible with the scientific story of the rise 

 and progress of man as with the theological story of his 

 fall and only partial recovery. The danger of Darwinism 

 lies in another direction, namely, in showing us a natural 

 explanation of all the evil, real or apparent, from neces- 

 sary causes that could not conceivably be otherwise; 

 and again, in raising up before our vision the old and 

 threatening apparition of Chance, as a shaping agent co- 

 ordinate with a blind and mechanical necessity in the 



