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atory species by flight, mimicry, protective organs, 

 etc. ; it makes such species possible. 



Having made these deductions from its value, can 

 we accept natural selection by struggle as a (or the) 

 great method of evolution and lever of progress in 

 nature? There is no great presumption, surely, in 

 putting the question ! The evidence in favour, not of 

 organic evolution, but of natural selection as its 

 method, is deductive and hypothetical; the same 

 thing indeed is true of many of our scientific theories. 

 The evidence for natural selection is as follows: (i) 

 Struggle and selection are facts; (2) They will 

 given time enough account for quite as much 

 progress, quite as much differentiation, as we see in 

 the cosmos of life; (3) Therefore, by the law of 

 parsimony, they have caused it. All this is only 

 probable evidence, and " the plurality of causes " 

 may undermine it. Accordingly we claim the right 

 of criticising the theory, and asking whether it is 

 antecedently credible. It is thinkable that the evo- 

 lution of life proceeds along lines of struggle ? 

 Surely that is thinkable. The doctrine merely im- 

 plies that living organisms are parts of nature and 

 are treated as such ; that though the organic and the 

 animal may approach the spiritual, they have not 

 yet reached it. And, by naming one intelligible 

 and thinkable process of evolution in organisms, 

 Darwin has even helped the cause of sound philos- 

 ophy and the cause of faith. When we meet with 

 intelligible processes, we perceive the presence of 

 reason in the world ; and when the Christian per- 

 ceives reason at work, he is more than ever assured 

 that the world he lives in is God's world. 



