20 MODERN DIFFICULTIES 



organisms affected, in so far at least as these organisms 

 were not evolved into their new forms or varieties 

 without the higher and intelligent action of the breeder.^ 

 (When, therefore. Darwinians describe the evolution 

 •of species in general by the phrase "natural selection," 

 they suggest the inference that a similar dependence 

 ; upon supernatural and intelligent operation and con- 

 / trol is involved ; and they cannot exclude this inference 

 I so long as they employ the phenomena of artificial 

 ' selection as evidence of natural selection. No doubt 

 they substitute natural law for the personal breeder. 

 But if the work done by natural law is correctly 

 described in the terms of personal agency, we cannot 

 reasonably escape the inference that such law is simply 

 the method employed by an inteUigent and super- 

 natural Person.^ No one who gets thus far can con- 

 sistently limit the operations of this supernatural Person 

 by the native capacities and resident forces of existing 

 organisms. Supernatural involutions and miraculous 

 interventions, so far as they are involved in progress 

 and in the general plan of God, are obviously to be 



^ The varieties which are produced by artificial selection do not 

 diflfer in kind from the species which are thus modified, and the 

 possibility that the slower operations of nature might produce the 

 same results is a real one. The supernatural factor appears in 

 the rapidity and personal control of the change, 



2 The phrase "natural evolution" describes merely the sphere of 

 the process — not its whole method, nor all of its factors. That 

 of "survival of the fittest" describes only its result. "Natural 

 selection" is the only phrase, generally employed, which can be 

 taken as descriptive of the method of evolution; and when this 

 phrase is scrutinized, it is seen to imply personal agency. 



