EVOLUTION OF MAN 99 



Probably the reluctance of certain scientists to 

 acknowledge the possibility of supernatural factors in 

 man's evolution is chiefly due to the assumption that 

 the operation of such factors would constitute a breach 

 in the continuity of natural causation. But this as- 

 sumption is absolutely unwarranted. The working of 

 various factors to produce a common result does not 

 stultify or interrupt the working of any of the several 

 causes which are thus combined. If it did, the law 

 of gravitation, to give an illustration, would be nulli- 

 fied every time one lifted a heavy body from the ground. 

 Gravitation alone could not do the lifting, but the fact 

 that one has to lift at all proves the unbroken continuity 

 of the law of gravitation. The physical laws which 

 are involved in natural evolution do not cease to oper- 

 ate because other and higher laws co-operate. '' Order 

 is heaven's first law," and all possible factors, whether 

 physical or superphysical, operate and co-operate in " a 

 wonderful order," wherein no breach of continuity is 

 possible, but evolution and involution are made to 

 fulfil the one plan of the immanent and transcendent 

 Creator. The continuity of the physical can be under- 

 stood only in the continuity and progress of the larger 

 and higher drama to which it is made to afford a stage 

 and sensible factors. And if the scenery is changed 

 from time to time by invisible hands, this is not to 

 stultify the scenery, but is to employ it for the signifi- 



View of God, pp. 146-150; Cath. Encyc, s. v. "Energy, the Law of the 

 Conservation of"; H. Calderwood, Evolution, ch, x. Cf. the author's 

 Being and Attributes of God, p. 173, note 3, for further references. 



