ATTITUDE OF WORKING NATURALISTS. 249 



page merely for accepting the permission \ At first 

 sight, it might be thought that our author is exposing 

 himself in one paragraph to a share of the condemna- 

 tion which he deals out in the other. But the per- 

 mitted views are nowhere adopted as his own ; the 

 evolution is elsewhere restricted within specific limits ; 

 and as to " mediate creation," although we cannot 

 divine what is here meant by the term, there is reason 

 to think it does not imply that the several species of a 

 genus were mediately created, in a natural way, through 

 the supernatural creation of a remote common ances- 

 tor. So that his own judgment in the matter is prob- 

 ably more correctly gathered from the extract above 

 referred to and other similar deliverances, such as that 

 in which he warns those who "endeavor to steer a 

 middle course, and to maintain that the Creator has 

 proceeded by way of evolution," that " the bare, hard 

 logic of Spencer, the greatest English authority on 

 evolution, leaves no place for this compromise, and 

 shows that the theory, carried out to its legitimate 

 consequences, excludes the knowledge of a Creator and 

 the possibility of his work." 



Now, this is a dangerous line to take. Those defend- 

 ers of the faith are more zealous than wise who must 

 needs fire away in their catapults the very bastions of 

 the citadel, in the defense of outposts that have become 

 untenable. It has been and always will be possible to 

 take an atheistic view of Nature, but far more reason- 

 able from science and philosophy only to take a theis- 

 tic view. Voltaire's saying here holds true : that if 

 there were no God known, it would be necessary to 

 invent one. It is the best, if not the only, hypothesis 



