WHAT IS DARWINISM? 73 



no more so, by the variation and change of preceding 

 into succeeding species ? ' 



Those who accept the latter alternative are evolu- 

 tionists. And Dr. Hodge fairly allows that their 

 views, although clearly wrong, may be genuinely the- 

 istic. Surely they need not become the less so by the 

 discovery or by the conjecture of natural operations 

 through which this diversification and continued adap- 

 tation of species to conditions is brought about. 

 Now, Mr. Darwin thinks and by this he is distin- 

 guished from most evolutionists that he can assign 

 actual natural causes, adequate to the production of 

 the present out of the preceding state of the animal 

 and vegetable world, and so on backward thus unit- 

 ing, not indeed the beginning but the far past with 

 the present in one coherent system of Nature. But in 

 assigning actual natural causes and processes, and ap- 

 plying them to the explanation of the whole case, Mr. 

 Darwin assumes the obligation of maintaining their 

 general sufficiency a task from which the numerous 

 advocates and acceptors of evolution on the general 

 concurrence of probabilities and its usefulness as a 

 working hypothesis (with or without much conception 

 of the manner how) are happily free. Having hit 

 upon a modus operandi which all who understand it 

 admit will explain something, and many that it will 

 explain very much, it is to be expected that Mr. Dar- 

 win will make the most of it. Doubtless he is far 

 from pretending to know all the causes and operations 

 at work ; he has already added some and restricted the 

 range of others ; he probably looks for additions to 

 their number and new illustrations of their efficiency ; 



