THE CONSTRUCTOR 225 



be no need to omit the last words of that verse, be- 

 cause the doctrine of evolution is not necessarily 

 anfi-theistic. 



It does not even come into contact with Theism, 

 considered as a philosophical doctrine. That with 

 which it does collide, and with which it is absolutely- 

 inconsistent, is the conception of creation which the- 

 ological speculators have based upon the history nar- 

 rated in the opening of the book of Genesis. There 

 is a great deal of talk and not a little lamentation 

 about the so-called religious difficulties which physical 

 science has created. In theological science, as a mat- 

 ter of fact, it has created none. Not a solitary 

 problem presents itself to the philosophical Theist at 

 the present day, which has not existed from the time 

 that philosophers began to think out the logical 

 grounds and the logical consequences of Theism. 

 All the real or imaginary perplexities which flow from 

 the conception of the universe as a determinate mech- 

 anism, are equally involved in the assumption of an 

 Eternal, Omnipotent, and Omniscient Deity. The 

 theological equivalent of the scientific conception of 

 order is Providence ; and the doctrine of determinism 

 follows as surely from the attributes of foreknowledge 

 assumed by the theologian, as from the universality of 

 natural causation assumed by the man of science. 

 The angels in ' Paradise Lost ' would have found the 

 task of enlightening Adam upon the mysteries of 

 " Fate, Foreknowledge, and Free-will " not a whit 

 more difficult, if their pupil had been educated in a 

 " Real-schule," and trained in every laboratory of a 

 modern university. In respect of the great problems 

 of philosophy the post-Darwinian generation is, in 

 one sense, exactly where the prae-Darwinian gener- 

 ation were. They remain insoluble. But the present 



